HN Explorer

Ask HN: What do you do with paywalled HN articles?

36 points by adamlangsner ↗ HN
I read HN everyday. There'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't read it. I have a subscription to the Washington Post app that I use for everyday news but I don't want to pay a monthly subscription for every single major publication.

I tried Apple News+ but I'm not crazy about it and it's pretty walled in.

Is this a shared frustration? What do you typically do?

30 comments

[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 67.9 ms ] thread
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... 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
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
duxup
I'm happy to subscribe digitally to NYT and a couple other news sources (some with walls, some not).
neonate
Many can be read via http://archive.is or https://archive.org. I usually look there, and if I find a readable version I come back here and post the link for others.
davidjnelson
Sometimes disabling JavaScript via a browser extension can help. Not always though.
koala_man
I hit the "web" link under the title, click the first hit on the Google search, and read it without a paywall.
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).

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.

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.
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.
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.
[dead] yspeak
Use disable JavaScript plugin Firefox mobile for Android for but and a few others ( usually the ones that limit free articles to set number). Does not work for wsj but I have a subscription for that. I believe wsj only works for sponsored Facebook shares if you are not a subscriber. Irks me they do not let subscribers share articles to others, they used to.
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.

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.
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.