
Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls? - cloudking
Frequently finding upvoted links to paywalled news sites, which usually ends up in a search for a similar article from a free news source. How much time could we save each other by not linking to paywalls?
======
dang
If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the
thread.

This is in the FAQ at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
and there's more explanation here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

If you're seeing paywalled articles where there was _no_ workaround, please
let us know (hn@ycombinator.com is best). But if you're seeing paywalled
articles with workarounds, that's normal. Please don't post about it, since
it's off-topic and has been discussed many times. We all know the paywalls
suck. It's just that HN would suck worse without NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc.,
articles.

~~~
kemonocode
Please allow a paywall tag of some kind then, and a listing of common
workarounds somewhere. Then I'm sure the amount of threads about this would
decrease by a lot.

------
tomhoward
You should look up the many comments about this topic by HN moderator Dang:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20paywall%20workaround&sort=byPopularity&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20paywall%20workaround&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

The decision (and community consensus) is that paywalled sites are OK if there
is a known workaround.

Usually someone will post a workaround in the comments.

Usually the workaround involves [https://archive.is](https://archive.is).

If none exists, the article shouldn't be on HN and you should flag it.

Longtime HN users accept that this is the least-worst resolution to the issue.

The more-worst version would be that nothing with a paywall is ever allowed,
meaning that content from some of the world's leading publications (NY Times,
Washington Post, The Economist, WSJ) would never be seen here.

HN could never claim to be a place for discussing the most important topics if
those publications were excluded.

------
oconnore
Community discussion seems like an interesting vehicle for article micro-
payments.

Could someone try to negotiate a pooled deal with the WSJ based on a valid HN
cookie with >X internet points? Or just a single subscription with the
agreement that it would be scraped and self-hosted by the community?

~~~
catchmeifyoucan
I like this. Would be cool to start a HN News fund

~~~
catchmeifyoucan
Thinking more about implementation - although users could use micro-
transactions among themselves, providers might be more inclined to opt-in if
we offered to pay by block. For example, if a paywall article starts ranking
up, we could let the provider know to remove the paywall for certain duration.
Kind of like a scheduled spot instance on a Cloud VM.

I bet there's a flag that toggles paywalls on articles and is easier for
providers to implement than restrictive access.

Using our fund - we could then pay the provider. Assuming that an average top
HN post gets 10K views - and each user pays $.05 per viewing. That makes a
total of $500. We would give the provider an upfront payment of say $500
dollars based on estimations. A $20 contribution to the fund means almost 400
articles [enough for more than a year] on front-page paywalled subscriptions
for a user.

So the spiel to providers are - we'll pay you $500 for 6 hours of free article
read time. That's all they need to know. We handle collecting funds on our
side from actual readers.

It's actually genius because content providers can write and support articles
catered to a particular community and are incentivized because they don't have
to worry about conversion of users to paid subscribers.

------
madsbuch
A lot of comments point to the fact that companies need to make money on the
articles they publish.

However, a lot of interesting and cool stuff is posted outside of the realms
of professional journalism. I mostly come here for the cool new product, an
interesting blog article, or a research paper.

In my opinion, corporate journalism is more noise than good content here.

------
harikb
Why don’t we, as HN community, find a solution to pay for content _before_ we
take away the only legitimate, non-intrusive way to make a living from
journalism. Remember Jamal khashoggi could have decided to become a software
engineer and could have been drinking the SF koolaid instead of sacrificing
his life.

------
kelnos
Absolutely agree. I don't begrudge news sites for charging to keep the lights
on, but IMO HN as a community shouldn't be driving traffic to paid sites,
especially since there will always be quite a few people who can't read any
given article... who is going to have a subscription to 3, 4, 5, 6 or more
news sites? That gets expensive quickly.

------
pmontra
I agree with you but maybe the poster of the link sometimes forgets to be
posting a paywalled page. In any case, how about making the HN submit page
check the URL against a list of well known paywalls and warn the poster? There
is a short list at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Websites_utilizing_pa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Websites_utilizing_paywalls)
and a longer one at [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox)

------
medymed
Another option would be a convention to add a tag that the article is
paywalled.

~~~
noodlesUK
I think this is a great idea. It’d stop me from constantly clicking on items
that I can’t read, without affecting the discourse on HN.

------
gremlinsinc
Can we? I'm sure it's possible.

Will we? Probably not.

FYI: F12 > application > clear all site data works like 80% of time.

------
ryandvm
Sooo... not to rag on HN or anything, but this seems like the kinda thing that
ought to be implemented as a user profile preference (e.g. a pay-wall boolean
or perhaps even a whitelist). Because without getting into a philosophical
debate, whether or not a user is interested in seeing submissions that are
behind a paywall is most definitely a user preference.

------
Austin_Conlon
So what if media outlets charge money for good journalism? Move on.

------
camillovisini
Outline.com - however, it does not work on some sites, e.g. WSJ...

------
colechristensen
Why should we stop linking paywalled articles and not books or software or
other non free things?

~~~
mkl
An article is a few minutes, and we get way more out of those other non-free
things. If there was a way to pay e.g. 10c to read just that article, I would
do it without much thought if the opening paragraphs told me it was worth my
time, but I'm not subscribing and paying every month for 0-2 articles per week
that I might care about. I just move on.

------
stillbourne
How dare people ask for money.

------
anorman728
Personally, I agree. I have no problem with paywalls, and actually subscribe
to one paid site and wouldn't mind subscribing to more. But it can be pretty
irritating for an aggregator. I go to paid sites individually, not from an
aggregator.

------
ronenlh
I believed that if the news outlet breaks the news that should be the link,
even if paywalled. Free news outlets just paraphrase after it.

There could be a correlation of it being a pivotal article and having a paid
business model.

------
jammygit
Companies need to make money somehow. If not with paywalls, it’s harder for
them to avoid monetizing by tracking and advertising

~~~
imgabe
I assume that the companies with paywalls still advertise and track on top of
that (one reason I refuse to pay for them).

~~~
jammygit
Yes, that is very unfortunate. Ars Technica at least will disable trackers on
paying members

------
tschellenbach
Is anyone experimenting with other models than personalized advertising or
paywalls?

~~~
flukus
Many countries have state funded news organisations, BBC, A(ustralia)BC, DW,
etc. It's a tried and proven model but many will here will be ideologically
opposed to it.

------
flukus
Absolutely. They are perfectly entitled to put their content behind a paywall
but they want to freeload off the open web driving traffic to their sites as
well, they're parasites.

Might also lift discussions standards (pot meet kettle) if everyone could
RTFA.

------
sk55
I think it's worth paying for good quality journalism. It's nice to support
the institutions that serve a vital role to the checks and balances of our
democracy.

Also, some of you may not know it but you can access the news for free through
your local library. For example, I get the NY Times online via the Santa Clara
County Library.

~~~
borski
I did not know this! I would totally do this instead of going around them! Do
you have more info on this?

(I do pay for those I really like, but for those in which I only read an
occasional article or two, I don’t particularly feel like subscribing)

~~~
sk55
Here are the details for Santa Clara County Library

[https://sccld.org/emagazines-
news/?_ga=2.59104363.719460146....](https://sccld.org/emagazines-
news/?_ga=2.59104363.719460146.1581470184-1919441446.1580196296)

------
imgabe
> How much time could we save each other by not linking to paywalls?

Not very much? How much time do you really spend clicking "Back" after hitting
a paywall?

Most have very simple workarounds and/or someone will post an archive or
outline link in the comments.

~~~
kelnos
It's not just about wasting time. Often a headline will interest me, click,
oops, nope, can't read it. Some stories certainly are genuinely unique to a
particular news site, but often most of the NYT/WSJ/etc. articles posted
aren't exactly high-quality and something very similar can be found on CNN,
AP, etc.

~~~
imgabe
This is where the aforementioned workarounds come in.

~~~
kelnos
Many workarounds have stopped working, due to incognito mode detection or
other means. Regardless, I shouldn't have to waste my time digging around to
find a working workaround when the submitter could have taken a few minutes to
see if there's a similar-quality article covering the same topic on a free
site.

While I'll occasionally click on an archive.is link, ethically (and legally)
it's not great to mirror someone else's paid content for free.

~~~
imgabe
I don't think any of us are sitting around reading articles on HN because
we're optimally using our time. I'd rather know an article exists and see if
there's a means to read it than never hear about it. Unless it's a piece of
breaking news, there's probably not another equivalent source. It's unlikely
some other source performed the exact same in-depth investigation with the
same quality into whatever the paywalled piece is about.

