Leave it to a Bezos-owned company to confuse customers and mislead them for profit.
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dfb6908b-ec22-4611-b7a6-a6b0428ff3f7.png
Misleading pricing:
Using the billing period as the header and showing the price for the billing period... except for monthly—which shows 1/4 the price and says "every week" in smaller, gray text.
Punishing non-subscription payments:
Adding a $6.50 (1400%) surcharge for wanting a weekly one-time payment instead of a recurring subscription.
Charging more for longer periods:
Monthly billing, once you remove the dark pattern and convert it to its actual price, is $2. There are 12 months in a year, meaning it would cost $24 to maintain that subscription for a year.
Why is the yearly subscription $29, then?
If you want to verify this for yourself, you're going to need to clear your cookies and reload an article a lot. They do A/B tests and show different subscription requied modals. This one was the worst.
PieFed
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I actually pay for 404 Media, because they are a small investigative outfit and do not do ads. That's worth something!