Washington Post Blocks Some Online Readers Who Block Ads

“Old-school major newspaper organizations have had to try out a lot of methods to drive revenue, but this is a new one: The Washington Post is stopping people who use ad blockers from reading the site,” reports GeekWire.

The GeekWire post also stated, in part:

The news comes from BuzzFeed, which reported that “The Washington Post has begun intermittently redirecting desktop users to a subscription page if they are using the popular AdBlock software.”

Typically, the New York Times and the Washington Post‘s paywall allows you to read 10 free articles per month before hitting the subscriber block, but I still haven’t hit my 10 free articles for the Washington Post, and it’s blocking me from reading articles.

“Many people already receive our journalism for free online, with digital advertising paying only a portion of the cost,” a Washington Post spokesperson told BuzzFeed about today’s ad-block test.

“Without income via subscriptions or advertising, we are unable to deliver the journalism that people coming to our site expect from us,” the Post statement continues. “We are currently running a test using a few different approaches to see what moves these readers to either enable ads on The Washington Post, or subscribe.”

According to Business Insider, the ad-blocking experiences varies according to browser, Safari “denied access every time,” and BuzzFeed reporting that using search in Firefox for a specific article allows access but then you are blocked if you try to read another article.