
Ask HN: What do you do with paywalled HN articles? - adamlangsner
I read HN everyday. There&#x27;s often articles on the front page from NY Times, WSJ, Bloomberg, The Economist, etc. that are paywalled. When I get to the sites I can only read the first paragraph of the article. Sometimes incognito works but not always so I just give up and am kind of frustrated that I couldn&#x27;t read it. I have a subscription to the Washington Post app that I use for everyday news but I don&#x27;t want to pay a monthly subscription for every single major publication.<p>I tried Apple News+ but I&#x27;m not crazy about it and it&#x27;s pretty walled in.<p>Is this a shared frustration? What do you typically do?
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neonate
Many can be read via [http://archive.is](http://archive.is) or
[https://archive.org](https://archive.org). I usually look there, and if I
find a readable version I come back here and post the link for others.

~~~
alpha-oliveira
How do you read the New York Times in archive.org?

~~~
neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/science/microscope-
atom-magnetic-mri.html)

then

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190701220022/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190701220022/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/science/microscope-
atom-magnetic-mri.html)

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c22
I read the comments on HN. Usually I can glean enough of an outline of the
article that I don't feel like I have to read it. If I am compelled to check
it out anyway (most likely because there are few comments and the title is
very baitey) I'll try incognito mode or occasionally check the web link/google
cache. But if it's not easy I just move on.

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ConcernedCoder
I hit the back button

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btown
outline.com is an amazing tool. Prepend it to most URLs (e.g.
outline.com/https...) and it gets you through.

(Mods - my apologies if this isn’t kosher to share, feel free to remove.)

~~~
adamlangsner
Thanks! I actually just learned a bout that tool a minute a go from this
medium article about how to bypass paywalls: [https://medium.com/black-edge-
consulting/how-to-bypass-virtu...](https://medium.com/black-edge-
consulting/how-to-bypass-virtually-every-news-paywall-705602c4c2ce) which
ironically is paywalled.

There's also a firefox extension that requests the site from a different
country thus getting rid of the paywall.

All this stuff is ethically and legally dubious. I wish there was like a
spotify for news.

~~~
ElFitz
Pretty much like Apple's News+, but with more newspapers?

~~~
adamlangsner
Yeah and multi platform. Obviously Apple news+ is inherently limited to the
Apple ecosystem

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rmellow
I consciously refuse to consume it.

HN used to be better at avoiding paywalled articles, but it's become
increasingly common in the last year (source: myself, consuming it since
2011).

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duxup
I'm happy to subscribe digitally to NYT and a couple other news sources (some
with walls, some not).

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natch
I refuse to pay for most sites since they tend to offer little value and/or
use dark patterns such as barely disclosed trial periods. Even high value
sites like NYT, I refuse to pay for because of their semi-deceptive trial
periods but just as importantly their remarkably high pricing after the trial.

After using up the few trial articles for a given month I just don't read from
that site. Maybe two or three times a year total I might go to extremes like
firing up a different browser to try to load a story with a fresh session, if
it's something I really want to read.

I do pay decent money for some valuable sites that offer good content. And I
end up paying even in months when I don't consume their content, and I don't
mind, because I like supporting the site and I can go back any time with full
access (as long as I am subscribed) and get any content I missed. This tends
to be more tech how-to stuff, as opposed to news. Like NSScreenCast and
objc.io, which are both great in different ways. And their pricing is not
insane for what they offer. It's fair.

Unlike the news sites, which have utterly crazy pricing if you do a quick
calculation of how much it would cost you to subscribe to a dozen or so of
them. I dip into way more than several dozen news sites that want me to pay.
No way I could make the budget fit even a small subset of them, at the prices
they want.

~~~
sloaken
Which sites do you deem to be worth paying for?

~~~
natch
I mentioned them already in the comment.

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flensortow
I pay for NYT and WaPo, so I have no issues with these.

It is frustrating though that despite many alternative sources available there
seems (from my perspective) to be a really large number of low-added-value
postings of Bloomberg articles.

I can usually search for the subject or some content from the first paragraph
and find alternative stories about the same topic and read those instead.

~~~
duxup
I get the feeling Bloomberg just lets anyone post there....it feels like
medium sometimes.

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zzo38computer
If I cannot access it, then I will just not read it. Although sometimes there
are comments that I might read and maybe also reply to, even though since I
have not read the article I could not properly comment on the article itself.

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envolt
If the site offers 2-3 free articles to read, then I'm good. Otherwise I just
back out.

If my 2-3 article trial is over, I just open on Private mode or Temporary Tab
extension on Firefox.

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pwg
> What do you typically do?

Close the browser tab when a paywall appears.

~~~
adamlangsner
I usually give up. I just don't read the article. I read the first paragraph
that's visible above the subscription CTA and then I go back to binging on
whatever else is on HN

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m-p-3
I use this: [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox)

Or I send it to Outline or Pocket.

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react_burger38
I use Brave browser's script and cookie blocking abilities. In the browser,
you click on the Brave logo to the right of the url input. In the menu that
appears, you can block all scripts and cookies.

This is usually enough for me to see NYT, WaPo, Economist, and other articles.
Only in rare cases has this strategy not worked. I consume a lot of news, so
whenever I see a paywall -- boom! Scripts blocked, paywall goes down.

It seems that it remembers these settings on a site-by-site basis, as well. I
encounter fewer paywalls as time goes by.

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davidjnelson
Sometimes disabling JavaScript via a browser extension can help. Not always
though.

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koala_man
I hit the "web" link under the title, click the first hit on the Google
search, and read it without a paywall.

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buboard
Most of the time there is not even a reason for a paywall, as the same report
can be found in other media for free. HN should have a policy to not allow
paywalls unless there is no alternative.

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if_by_whisky
I use a chrome extension to bypass paywalls

