
Ask HN: The WSJ paywall workaround no longer works. Why are their links allowed? - ddevault
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html<p>The official guidelines only permit paywalls with a viable workaround and the WSJ workarounds have all stopped working for many people, myself included. I&#x27;m getting pretty tired of clicking links and getting a headline + 12 words.<p>Before someone asks, I don&#x27;t think the WSJ has earned a subscription from me. But that&#x27;s beside the point - isn&#x27;t it now in violation of HN&#x27;s rules?
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rubidium
A few points: 1) The workaround works for me if I open an incognito chrome
window and copy/paste the "web" link from HN. It doesn't work w/o incognito.

2) If the article gets upvotes, then enough people have subscriptions (or
workarounds) to warrant a discussion. Let the votes do their job.

If you really don't want to see WSJ articles, install/make a browser extension
that does it for you.

~~~
irq-1
> Let the votes do their job.

Voting doesn't work if people are disenfranchised. 20% of HN discussing an
article the other 80% can't read will be the end of HN. Maybe if this was a
sub-reddit "community" where access to the WSJ was assumed, but HN is a
general and open discussion board.

(Also, when politics or people like Taleb Nissam or Paul Krugman are
discussed, the voting isn't very informative.)

~~~
rubidium
Using "disenfranchised" in this case with made up statistics of 20% and 80% is
rather odd.

There are _plenty_ of discussions to participate in here. WSJ make up maybe
1-2 articles on the front page per day? Can someone explain why this matters
enough to even consider a banning of content?

For those who don't want to see it: upvote other things!

I'd much rather see a surge in voting non-mainstream media content then for HN
to enforce banning. Come on people, we can be better!

[[As a personal aside, I typically don't upvote and rarely read discussions
about mainstream press (WSJ, NY times, WashPost,Economist) here. ]]

~~~
enraged_camel
>>There are _plenty_ of discussions to participate in here. WSJ make up maybe
1-2 articles on the front page per day? Can someone explain why this matters
enough to even consider a banning of content?

1-2 articles on the front page per day is _a lot_.

To answer your main question though, while I think banning wsj.com would be
heavy-handed, I'd be in favor of penalizing the domain so its articles are
less likely to reach the front page and stay on it for so long.

I think the reason people are having issue with it is that the topics
themselves tend to be interesting, but without access to the article,
participating in the discussion becomes difficult. This can be rather
frustrating for people.

I know this first-hand because the incognito "trick" used to work for me, but
no longer does for some reason. So I find myself effectively blocked out of
the conversations.

~~~
z0r
I don't think this is the kind of comment that should be downvoted. I'm in the
same boat as enraged_camel.

------
michaelhoffman
If you start an incognito window with a Google News search for the headline
and can't access it, use the "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of the search
page to let Google know.

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TheTrotters
Why should we discourage articles behind a paywall (with or without a
workaround) in the first place? What's so bad about a website that relies on
subscriptions instead of ads?

~~~
sheepmullet
The quality of the discussion ends up a lot lower because most people don't
read the article?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
This. It's bad enough when people comment after reading no more than the
headline (guilty!) but it's much worse when _most_ people are commenting
without getting the full picture.

~~~
jaredklewis
Seems the problem is then with user behavior, not the link.

There is no rule that people have to comment on articles they can't read.
Seems backwards to forbid interested people from linking to and discussing an
article in earnest just to reduce posting from bullshitters.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Seems the problem is then with user behavior, not the link

Perhaps in a sense, but many things that are discouraged by the rules
(including paywalled articles without effective workarounds) are discouraged
because they are observed to contribute to undesirable user behavior to a
degree that responsibility g tomthe individual undesirable behaviors
reactively is an inadequate remedy.

------
tqwhite
Back in the day, Google didn't reference links that showed a different page to
the bot from what it does to users. the WSJ presence in their search has
substantially reduced the utility of Google's results. I do not understand why
they allow it.

~~~
thinkloop
It's likely that the page is not different, just "updated", like if you fixed
a spelling error on your blog post after it was indexed. There will be a lag
where the index is different from the content but google can re-crawl and get
the same content.

I believe the paywall is turned on and off consistently for all clients,
probably not violating terms.

------
johnward
It's a bad user experience if a majority of readers can't actually RTFA.

~~~
onion2k
I agree, but I don't think banning links to the WSJ is necessarily the right
solution. They're presumably interesting articles that warrant discussion here
if people are upvoting them, even if those users are in the minority. When a
better (e.g. more accessible) link is found the HN admin frequently replace
the original URL.

~~~
snarfy
People are upvoting based on the article header, not content (because it's
inaccessible).

~~~
onion2k
Or they're WSJ subscribers who can read the article.

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mgliwka
Just take the original url and put it behind
[http://facebook.com/l.php?u=<insert](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=<insert) WSJ
URL here>

Confirm the facebook warning about the redirect.

EDIT: Check your local law first. I've just noticed during research using
facebook that i don't get the paywall coming from there. This is only a proof
of concept, if you want to read WSJ, than you should consider paying for a
subscription.

~~~
lostredditor
Why not just do that for all of the links by default?

------
dhimes
Just confirmed: doesn't work with Firefox private browsing. Web -> right click
-> New Private Window takes me to Google, and clicking the link there takes me
to a pay-walled page.

I agree with OP.

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s_dev
If anyone on wants to know why paid content isn't welcome on HN just pay me $5
and I'll explain why.

~~~
overcast
Just forward me your bank account number, and I'll directly deposit the $5.
Let me know when you've received it, so we can continue discussion. I eagerly
await your response.

~~~
thinkloop
I also have similar information, my bitcoin address:
18ZcPit6NYHqj5rZ6hU2m3rAq8DeWHoEDq

~~~
overcast
Sorry, not familiar with bitcoin.

~~~
thinkloop
That's not true, you're probably top 20% most sophisticated users:

> I was doing this on the now defunct Cryptsy with the popular alt coins.
> Using relatively basic exponential moving average calculations. There just
> really wasn't enough volume to be doing it constantly. I was lucky to get a
> few trades in a day that made sense. I made money, and lost money. Basically
> breaking even. Mostly just a learning exercise. At this point though, all of
> the big players are getting their hands in. Not really worth it anymore.

(from "High-Speed Traders Are Taking Over Bitcoin")

pay up :-D

~~~
overcast
Quiet you!

------
rpdillon
If I think only of the WSJ in isolation, the OP's position might seem extreme,
but when I consider that the HN front page may be dominated by links to
various paywalled sites (because we allow them, right?) I can see how the user
experience will quickly become atrocious. As a site centered around voting and
discussion, it's important to make access to the content being voted upon and
discussed readily accessible to a large fraction of the readers. While it may
come to pass that most HN readers will have a WSJ subscription, it will likely
never be the case that most HN readers have subscriptions to most submitted
paywalled sites. I would support a policy that forbids submissions that
require payment to read for this reason.

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geuis
I'm with Sir_Cmpwn. No sites with paywalls of any kind should be allowed here.
I shouldn't have to go out of my way to get around barriers to get content for
free. I'm also realizing I'm having a hard time saying what I mean
effectively. If they want a paywall then it should just be a wall. It's
awkward and unethical to bypass the wall to get the content for free anyway,
yet that is what is expected when those links are allowed on HN. So those
links should just not be allowed at all then.

------
DanBC
Did you email mods about this? What did they say?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us
> questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If
> you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I did, they ignored my email.

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madiathomas
I don't mind seeing paywalled articles on the front page but I feel I must be
warned that it is a paywalled link. The same way we are warned when content is
a PDF. That way I won't waste my time opening the link. I don't even want to
use workarounds. If it is paywalled and/or requires me to disable AdBlock, I
don't want to waste my time on it.

------
amyjess
The WSJ "workaround" has never consistently worked for me.

It works sometimes, but other times it won't work even with a Google Search
referrer in an incognito tab.

------
rockostrich
My friend works on WSJ for Dow Jones. Recently, he stumbled upon a query param
that you can add to any article link to remove the paywall. It's ridiculous
how many things have come up with WSJ to get around what I assume is one of
their main sources of revenue besides ads.

~~~
philipodonnell
You can't just say you have a workaround that someone stumbled on that
addresses a problem for a huge number of people and then drop the mike and
walk off stage. :-)

~~~
bbcbasic
Replace WSJ with Netflix, would you suggest he share the link then? Many of us
live of SaaS but complain about it when newspapers do it.

------
rsp1984
The Google Search workaround does a perfectly fine job for me.

~~~
gtirloni
It doesn't work for me any longer (maybe since a few days ago).

~~~
turnip123942
Seconded. Even articles that pop-up directly in my Google News feed don't
display the full article.

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muricula
It worked for me when I switched from https to http, but it may have had to do
with the referrer. I do know that it doesn't work with encrypted.google.com,
only with vanilla Google.com.

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Forge36
Being on mobile I agree. Add-ons aren't a viable fix

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brudgers
It's stopped working for me on Firefox using Private windows.

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teh_klev
There are some days for no good reason I can't get past some paywalls using
the HN workaround, when that happens I fall back on
[http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/)

~~~
raxi
Yes, archive.is hides the paywall layer above the content. This is the
workaround which still works. But how long will it work? WSJ could change the
paywall logic at any moment.

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jellicle
Really baffling that HN management doesn't understand that paywalled links are
poison to a discussion site. They're broken links.

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timrawl9
Yeah, and also get rid of links to software that costs money, because that's
free advertising, too!

~~~
joekrill
The equivalent in this case would be if you couldn't even know what their
software DID without paying for it.

Hacker news is a forum for discussing topics. How can you possible discuss an
article you can't read? You can, however, discuss a piece of software based on
it's intended purpose.

------
meesterdude
confirmed - I can't access via incognito or google search. I did the other
week, as if by magic - but it's gotten closer to impossible now for whatever
reason.

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m52go
I don't understand the issue. If you don't like sites from a particular
publisher, don't visit them.

HN lists the root domain right next to the link.

~~~
Kurtz79
The issue is whether it makes sense to post a paywall link on HN, since only a
(probably small) subset of users can access it, if there is no workaround
available.

EDIT: It could be argued that the upvote system would take care of that
naturally (if only few users are able to access it, few would upvote it), but
I can understand why it could be considered an issue.

------
jmsduran
I too am disappointed that the Google redirect workaround no longer works. I
recently cancelled my WSJ membership as part of an effort to minimize my
monthly expenses, so now I am effectively cut off from all their news stories.

IMO it's not a big deal though, as I've turned to Bloomberg for most of my
market news. My health has also improved considering that I no longer subject
myself to skimming through the WSJ comments section.

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ainiriand
I flag WSJ links wenever I see them but seems to have no effect.

~~~
aaronhoffman
Hopefully by now your flag carries little weight

------
maverick_iceman
The only thing that works for me now is to Google the first paragraph they let
you see (not the headline). Usually the article is available elsewhere. None
of the other techniques like incognito mode, copying link, Google referral,
blocking Javascript or any combination thereof doesn't work. (Facebook
referral still works but it's not easy to find a FB link to a specific
article.)

