Mozilla is working on a paid news subscription

The maker of Firefox, Mozilla, recently announced that it is exploring some “alternative funding models for the web”. Now we’re seeing the first of those funding endeavours, with the company testing an ad-free news subscription product for $5 (about R70) per month, in collaboration with Scroll — a news subscription startup.

Its news service will offer ad-free browsing, which is essentially a permanent ad-blocker that won’t necessarily hurt publishers. Because you’re paying a fee for it and they, presumably, get a cut. It’ll also give users access to audio versions of news articles and cross-platform syncing of news stories from multiple websites.

Scroll currently offers an ad-less news subscription in collaboration with 12 media partners, including Slate, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Gizmodo, USA Today, and Vox. Although some of these don’t necessarily use a paywall for revenue, they do display ads on their pages. Except, with Scroll, you don’t have to bother with ads. Or blocking them. 

“We will be collaborating with Scroll to better understand consumer attitudes and interest towards an ad-free experience on the web as part of an alternative funding model,” wrote Peter Dolanjski, Firefox product lead in a blog post.

Mozilla is apparently only testing the feature with a select few browser users to measure interest. Beyond this, we’re not yet sure how subscription revenue will be split or what publishers get out of it. 

Source: Mozilla Blog