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Outhouse › Dark Patterns › Access

Paywalls and sign-up walls

Content that stops partway and asks for an account, an email address or a subscription.

Paywalls and sign-up walls: Metered, from Shitely Revenue
Metered, from Shitely Revenue
Paywalls and sign-up walls: Identity Wall, from Shitely Revenue
Identity Wall, from Shitely Revenue
Paywalls and sign-up walls: Retain, from Shitely Revenue
Retain, from Shitely Revenue

Why it matters

Content that anyone can read has no value, because anyone can read it. A wall partway down the page shows the visitor what they are missing, then asks for an email address, a password and a date of birth for verification purposes.

The most effective walls appear after the second paragraph, where the visitor has learned what the article is about and not yet what it says.

How Outhouse measures it

Outhouse looks for wall wording such as subscribe to continue, sign in to read and you've reached your free article limit in the page text. One scores in full.

This audit counts towards Dark Patterns, with a weight of 2. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

Install Metered. Available on selected plans. See all products.

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