Until a few days ago, The Washington Post tracked its online readers through browser cookies, storing gender, birth year, and zip code. They finally got wise that this was insufficient at best. My tracking info told them that I am a 39 year-old female living in Maryland, so it may have been incorrect, as well.
After several years of this, they learned, so the site now requires registration. When I first logged on, I was annoyed. The marketing people may have figured out that I was lying to them, but they haven’t gotten smarter. The new “slogan” is ridiculous. “REGISTER NOW. IT’S FREE AND IT’S REQUIRED.” Wow, that gives me the warm-fuzzies.
Unfortunately, I still need my fix of Redskins news. I started to register.
When I got to Year of Birth, I entered the real value, then saw the note that says “under 13? Go here.”This is the web page that pops up:
It’s obvious that they’re following the law. However, why should kids under 13 be excluded from reading the “regular” news? Is it just for adults? Will there be boobs? What, pray tell, is the explanation?
Since I’ve read the garbage that is the print edition of the KidsPost, I assumed the explanation is that The Washington Post believes kids are stupid. To find out, I clicked the link in the popup window. You can click the picture to see where the link ends up.
Let me make sure I understand this. The kids are the stupid ones who shouldn’t be reading the news? How are they supposed to read the sanitized, dumbed-down news intended for them if the adults programming the site can’t get the links coordinated?
I’ll tell you how the kids are supposed to read the “sanitized, dumbed-down news intended for them.” It’s called “Newspapers in Education.” And we’re subsidizing it.