

Ask HN: Can we stop linking to subscriber only content? - zombio

Why is it that submitting content that requires a Google or Facebook sign in is so frowned upon, but linking to subscriber only content is perfectly acceptable. The most common case of this is The New York Times, as seen in this link that is currently number 10 on the front page.<p>Screenshot: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;gxR2Ma6.png<p>Thread: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6111352
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meadhikari
For New York Times articles, I have started to use viewtext. It works
everytime and I just get the text

[http://viewtext.org/api/text?url=<nytimesurl>](http://viewtext.org/api/text?url=<nytimesurl>)

Edit: How about all New York Times articles get redirected through the
viewtext route? Or would that be just too much

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ivank
Firefox and Chrome have a cookie whitelisting feature. You can let non-
whitelisted sites set whatever cookies they want, but have them cleared on
browser exit.

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notahacker
There's also the ability to open a URL in a new private window. I suspect
circumvention of cookie-based blocking is the second most used reason for
"private browsing" after looking at porn.

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t0
You're probably the only one to visit the New York Times 10 times. I'm still
at zero.

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johnward
The pay wall only appears after 10 views? I was so confused because I never
see the paywall and I see people complain.

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BruceIV
If they haven't changed their policies lately you get a certain number of free
articles daily as well (five, I think, but they might have removed that).

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danso
This is your question:

> _Why is it that submitting content that requires a Google or Facebook sign
> in is so frowned upon_

A New York Times article does not require a sign-in. The article in question
is not subscriber only-content. You do not need to sign-in nor be a subscriber
to read this article.

The NYT allows 10 articles a month to be read for free. So your question
should be phrased as: "Why does HN allow links to sites on which I have
exceeded the amount of free content that I am personally allocated?"

But you don't even need to go that far. You can turn off the JavaScript in
your browser, which, for many of FB-login type websites, would not work.

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paranoiacblack
To summarize this for you OP: no, fuck you, do it yourself.

#HN

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gruseom
I've noticed a pattern. People who sneer at HN—of whom there are more than a
few, it's quite a thing now—always think it's other people who are the
assholes.

To reply to zombio: it's probably that NYT and WaPo are such major
publications that a site that wants to link to the best content can't very
well exclude them. I agree it's annoying. What I do is visit the URLs in an
incognito browser window.

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strathmeyer
What do I do when incognito doesn't work? Why can't posters link to real
content?

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gruseom
When incognito doesn't work, you can usually get the piece by Googling the
title. Google almost always returns a link that bypasses the paywall.

Posters post these links because the content is unavailable any other way. HN
would be poorer without any stories from the NYT and WaPo, inconvenient as
this all is.

