I visited the page, but wanted to read it as a PDF in my preferred reader.
It asked me to login, so I tried to login through Facebook. It's a pdf, so I am not too worried about what it might post.
It asked for permissions to post to access my news, and I was a bit surprised, why would scribd need to access my news? There was no explanation.
So I denied it that access.
At some point it demanded that I sign up for a paid plan that it assured me was just a $10 per month and easy to cancel. There seemed to be no other way to access that file unless I joined their paid plan. If there is such a way, it seems very non-obvious how to do it.
This all so I could download a pdf that it had offered to me in the beginning.
Now maybe it's because I am something of a Facebook newbie, or maybe their facebook app was having problems, or maybe my combination of Chrome settings and extensions broke their app somehow.
Regardless, it seems terrible that scribd demands access to post on my timeline, to read my news, and that I pay to login.
I have flagged this link as spam (sorry sr3d) and though I understand that scribd is a YCombinator alum, I hope more than ever it fails and fails hard. Scribd was and always has been an abomination.
Go to scribd.com and click the sign up link. You can create a free account there.
On the download link, under the place that asks you to login with Facebook, there is a small link to login with your scribd account instead. Click that and login, and you can complete the download. No money is involved.
Hmm, actually tried that later, and scribd still tried to make me pay to read this pdf. A pdf that according to the author he is selling and that scribd has no permission to be distributing and is not sharing their profits with him.
It turns out I was able to download it for free, and this was before I knew that scribd did not have permission to distribute it, and that was by taking advantage of their "offer" to upload a document to get the document I wanted.
Comments
I visited the page, but wanted to read it as a PDF in my preferred reader.
It asked me to login, so I tried to login through Facebook. It's a pdf, so I am not too worried about what it might post.
It asked for permissions to post to access my news, and I was a bit surprised, why would scribd need to access my news? There was no explanation.
So I denied it that access.
At some point it demanded that I sign up for a paid plan that it assured me was just a $10 per month and easy to cancel. There seemed to be no other way to access that file unless I joined their paid plan. If there is such a way, it seems very non-obvious how to do it.
This all so I could download a pdf that it had offered to me in the beginning.
Now maybe it's because I am something of a Facebook newbie, or maybe their facebook app was having problems, or maybe my combination of Chrome settings and extensions broke their app somehow.
Regardless, it seems terrible that scribd demands access to post on my timeline, to read my news, and that I pay to login.
I have flagged this link as spam (sorry sr3d) and though I understand that scribd is a YCombinator alum, I hope more than ever it fails and fails hard. Scribd was and always has been an abomination.
Go to scribd.com and click the sign up link. You can create a free account there.
On the download link, under the place that asks you to login with Facebook, there is a small link to login with your scribd account instead. Click that and login, and you can complete the download. No money is involved.
Hmm, actually tried that later, and scribd still tried to make me pay to read this pdf. A pdf that according to the author he is selling and that scribd has no permission to be distributing and is not sharing their profits with him.
It turns out I was able to download it for free, and this was before I knew that scribd did not have permission to distribute it, and that was by taking advantage of their "offer" to upload a document to get the document I wanted.
All of that is crap.