
Ask HN: Why HN lets sharing content that is behind a paywall e.g. WSJ? - milkers
I frustrate when I clicked to a title or entry and when I go to the tab I see that I need to pay for a subscription to see the content. I think this creates a great struggle in an open community like HN.
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bristleworm
True, although I wouldn't like prohibiting paywalls. Maybe displaying
[Paywall] next to the title would be a solution?

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tastroder
The domain is visible next to the submission. Tags like [video] and [pdf] are
useful when it isn't completely obvious but the WSJ domain is already strong
enough of an indication to check the comments for alternatives imho if that's
something you need.

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tomhoward
This topic gets questioned/debated weekly, including most times a paywalled
article gets on the front page.

It is answered in the FAQ [1] and re-iterated frequently by dang.

Paywalled pages are OK if a bypass is available. If there is one, usually
someone will post it in the comments.

If nobody has yet, you could try viewing the article in
[http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/) or
[https://outline.com/](https://outline.com/), and if it works, share the link
here.

If no paywall bypass is available, the item should not be on HN, so you should
flag it.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

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omosubi
Can I make a feature request to have the non paywalled version as a separate
link next to the post? Seems like there are a fair number of sites that this
could be generated for automatically(wsj etc.)

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tomhoward
I can think of several reasons - some to do with tech implementation and some
to do with things like dimplomacy with publishers and copyright issues - why
it would be better for this to be handled organically by the community.

I know the status quo seems imperfect; it absolutely is, but thoughtful
consideration always leads to the conclusion that the status quo is the least-
worst of the available options.

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italiano
People w subscriptions should just copy and paste the articles in the comments

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LUmBULtERA
Because some valuable content may cost money to access. FWIW, at least
many/most U.S. library systems let you access such paywalled content for free,
so I recommend getting yourself a library card if you're in the U.S. :).

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gtirloni
Let me be the devil's advocate and ask: Why should paywalled content be
penalized?

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trilinearnz
By presenting a barrier to entry for accessing the content, the volume of
discussion is reduced since a smaller portion of the community can get to it.
This is particularly undesirable when a free alternative may exist.

The quality of the discussion may also reduce, as the non-subscribers can only
respond to commenters without benefit of context of the original material.

Should enough of these posts exist, the effects could impact the community at-
large; resulting in a decrease in diversity of opinion, and the popularity and
relevance of HN as a site. This, in turn, could give rise to, or cause a
traffic shift towards, more open competitors.

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busymom0
Don't have an answer for why but usually when I find a paywall, I paste the
link on either archive.org or archive.is and find the article without paywall.
archive.org often works better.

