HN Explorer

Is there a way to stop news aggregs like HN to stop showing pay walled content

41 points by theGeatZhopa ↗ HN
Hi,

Just wondering how useful it is to have pay walled content posted on Hackernews and why there is no option to see/block it upfront?

More and more content behind the pay wall is posted to HN littering the section.

So who is doing it? Why? Getting on one's nerves by suggestions and then hitting the pay wall makes it not more possible to get more subscription. I don't even have the possibility to pay easily and if I see something interesting but paywalled, I look up Google for exact that information - and sometimes find something more interesting than this paywall providers offer.

So what's the idea behind making the HN unusable in some terms

(Disc. No offense. I just try to understand why this is done and whether the one's doing that is really not realizing, that doing so might have negative impact?)

41 comments

[ 1.0 ms ] story [ 91.7 ms ] thread
greenyoda
Most of the paywalled sites posted to HN have simple workarounds, such as disabling cookies and/or JavaScript with a browser extension (works for NY Times, Washington Post, etc.), or submitting the URL to a site such as archive.is (even works for the WSJ).

Here's what the HN FAQ[1] says about paywalls:

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.[2]

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

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...

theGeatZhopa
Thank you. Exact what I wanted to know. One does not invest much time into trying to trick the website and just switch the window to Google.

Now I'll first try to get past the paywall :)

sabellito
Aren't the "workarounds" just piracy? It's odd to me that hackernews encourages that.
natdempk
I don't know if this is actually a good argument, but the way I view it is they're willing to give out the content for free to many sources, but then restrict it fairly arbitrarily. For example I'll often get paywalled based on the specific device or browser I'm using, which is basically just nonsense in my view. If they're giving the content away for free to archive.is, google caches, etc. I don't really feel bad looking at one of the places they willing give it away to. They could actually paywall the content fully, and some sites do this like the Financial Times. For those, I just don't read their paywalled articles and move on with my life, but for the sites that do give the content away for free sometimes I don't really have a problem. I also do subscribe to some sites that I find particularly valuable where I want to read the truly paywalled content. I think it would be more like piracy if they actually restricted the content and someone who paid for it was re-sharing it. Curious to hear alternative views as well though, as I said I don't actually know if this is a reasonable argument.
jolmg
Having the preference to not run javascript on the web does not mean that you're committing piracy against Foo when you ask Foo for content and they give it to you. That's just Foo paywalling some but not all legit forms of access.

Some paywalls are complete enough such that they don't give you the content with any legit request.

I don't think those sites with incomplete paywalls are because of oversight. There's probably interest in keeping some access open so the content can spread interest and be shared in hubs like HN.

tsjq
IMO: paywall links okay. but please share the 'bypass' link also somewhere in the thread.
muzani
Yeah, nearly all paywalls on HN have the bypass methods in the comments.
sabellito
Isn't that simply piracy?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
zivkovicp
Sometimes using the browser's "reader mode" will show the full article, so you can try that also.
luke2m
Yep, surprisingly many sites blur with css.
ale42
Or have JavaScript removing nodes from DOM after they are actually there... might require some attempts with Reader Mode and reloads (as it's timing dependent) but it's worth a try if you want to read a specific article.
_rpd
Counterpoint: high quality journalism must be well funded, and funding based on advertising and 'clickbait' undermines quality. So paywalls it is.
rini17
Is funding based on annoying prospective readers really better?
tonyedgecombe
You are only annoyed because you haven't paid. Therefore your annoyance is irrelevant to them.

I must say I have more sympathy for the people creating and selling the content than those trying to get it for free.

lobe
For me it's not paying that's the issue, but rather having to sign up to an individual service and pay a monthly fee for every piece you read on every different website.

There really needs to be a Spotify for journalism and similar content. I know there are some attempts (apple news for example) but they haven't cracked it yet.

The average person skips paywalls for the same reason the average person used to pirate movies. It isn't about cost, but about the most convenient means of access

MrTortoise
because spotify has done so many wonderful things for musicians ... oh wait no it hasnt
theGeatZhopa
Counterpoint accepted. But what they mostly do is some clickbait title and/or teasertext and when you visit that link and start reading ... please pay.

That is waisting time, because there is no obvious hint to the pay wall given upfront.

I would support, but not if they play tricks on me, or, if they're out of the legislation area I live in.

And then, wanting 2.5$ for one article is just transferring the real world to the online. But online is not working on the same principles like the real world.. my thoughts.

belorn
Counter-counterpoint: Culture, art and science only exist if its accessible. It not much point to a discussion about such topics if the participants does not have access to the material.

High quality comments on HN get undermined if only a small selection of people has access to the topic of discussion. Comments based only on the title is usually a sign of low quality.

gtirloni
"accessible" doesn't necessarily needs to mean "free".
uniqueid
That's a problem for an aggregator site like HN. Dozens of paywalled sites are likely to show up here. Even if the average reader wanted to subscribe to them, he or she might not have the money and time to do so.
dredmorbius
The existing funding mechanisms for journalism exacerbate the problem.

The highest-quality generally-accessible journalism is virtually uniformly some form of national or public media, usually broadcast: BBC, DW, CBC, ABC (Australia), Al Jazeera, PBS, NPR. These treat journalism as the public good it is.

For Internet media, I'm increasingly of the view that news costs should be bundled into primary connectivity whether wired or wireless.

The total budget for journalism in the US amounts to less than $200/person. The cost of managing subscription-management systems often greatly exceeds this. (There's no such thing as a free lunch-monetisation system.)

At the 2005 advertising peak, ads income (a cost born by the public through product purchases) was $50 billion. Subscription expense in 2020 was another $11 billion. Pro-rated per person among the 330 million population of the US:

- Advertising: $50 billion -- $150/person ($12.60/person-month)

- Subscription: $11 billion -- $33/person ($2.75/person-month)

- Combined: $61 billion -- $183/person ($15.40/person-month)

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers...

An advertising-free subscription assuming 2.5 persons per household on average would run less than $40/mo. With advertising, the cost would be less than $8/mo. This would fund journalism at the levels of 2005, whilst making the work product available to every household in the US.

My suggestion would be to further index ISP fees to the typical household wealth of an area. Richer locations would pay more, poorer locations would have their news source somewhat subsidised. Businesses could be similarly assessed.

It turns out that either paying directly for news, or indirectly through advertising, creates tremendous distortions.

joshxyz
i really like archive.is.

paywalled content is okay, those people gotta earn money to sustain their curation processes.

dredmorbius
For the past several months, archive.is itself (and its numerous aliases) has been subject to immensely aggressive CAPTCHA blocking. To the point that I usually give up on it.

(I'm also opposed to the use of Google and Cloudflare CAPTCHA on several considerations, including but not limited to compatibility and privacy)

draw_down
I flag paywalled content when I come across it, personally.
m-p-3
I wish there was a middle-ground here, where paywalled entries are labelled and filterable.
[dead] draw_down
My thought is, if it can’t be read it can’t be discussed, so why is it here?
atatatat
To dead sibling: because hackers can still read it =]
gtirloni
Constantly flagging content that should not be flagged (per HN's FAQ) is a sure way to have that privilege removed in the future.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
navjack27
It would be cool if hacker News just implemented their own archive.is and ran every link posted through that
oriettaxx
What happens to me is that sometime I do not realize I am sharing a link that I can see while my friends cannot (maybe because I always clean cookies at every Firefox start, so websites think I am a new user, so I am allowed to see something for awhile?)

Anyhow, you are more then right!

Btw: a great trick somebody published in HN some years ago still works well for many websites: just add a dot (".") at the end of the domain (not the end of the URL), and the website treats you like an anonymous (so it often lets you see content and bypass the pay wall): I do it with the Guardian, all the time, so

https://www.theguardian.com./international

instead of

https://www.theguardian.com/international

(you can even use this https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ plugin to automatically rewrite some urls by adding that dot at the end)

duxup
Even if I can't read it I like knowing what sites people think have good content.
mbfg
Similar to how one sees [PDF] or [2002] in link titles, it would be nice if [PAY] would start being used.
qwerty456127
Why would you? I don't like paywalls either - because subscribing to them would mean paying constantly for actually reading just a couple of really interesting articles a year. Nevertheless, when paywalled article makes it to the HN chances are it's worth some extra clicks to bypass the paywall.
jryb
There's also a negative impact of not posting paywalled links: it lowers the quality of the content we discuss here. Some really great stuff is behind paywalls. There's a reason people pay for subscriptions when there are still free news sites available.
Abishek_Muthian
Hey, I've been tracking this problem - 'Paywall avoidance for submission sites'[1] on my validation platform.

I feel there's a need-gap for a solution which tells the website when there are visitors from high traffic sites like HN or particular subreddits to remove the paywall; Technically there's not much to implement as utm_source or ref parameter is enough but the coverage of solution among major media brands is crucial.

[1] https://needgap.com/problems/229-paywall-avoidance-for-submi...