HN Explorer

Ask HN: Can we stop linking to subscriber only content?

20 points by zombio ↗ HN
Why is it that submitting content that requires a Google or Facebook sign in is so frowned upon, but linking to subscriber only content is perfectly acceptable. The most common case of this is The New York Times, as seen in this link that is currently number 10 on the front page.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/gxR2Ma6.png

Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6111352

16 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 46.5 ms ] thread
t0
You're probably the only one to visit the New York Times 10 times. I'm still at zero.
johnward
The pay wall only appears after 10 views? I was so confused because I never see the paywall and I see people complain.
chris24
10 articles per month, yeah.
BruceIV
If they haven't changed their policies lately you get a certain number of free articles daily as well (five, I think, but they might have removed that).
danso
This is your question:

> Why is it that submitting content that requires a Google or Facebook sign in is so frowned upon

A New York Times article does not require a sign-in. The article in question is not subscriber only-content. You do not need to sign-in nor be a subscriber to read this article.

The NYT allows 10 articles a month to be read for free. So your question should be phrased as: "Why does HN allow links to sites on which I have exceeded the amount of free content that I am personally allocated?"

But you don't even need to go that far. You can turn off the JavaScript in your browser, which, for many of FB-login type websites, would not work.

paranoiacblack
To summarize this for you OP: no, fuck you, do it yourself.

#HN

gruseom
I've noticed a pattern. People who sneer at HN—of whom there are more than a few, it's quite a thing now—always think it's other people who are the assholes.

To reply to zombio: it's probably that NYT and WaPo are such major publications that a site that wants to link to the best content can't very well exclude them. I agree it's annoying. What I do is visit the URLs in an incognito browser window.

paranoiacblack
> of whom there are more than a few, it's quite a thing now

lol

gruseom
It's quite true. There are lots of examples here and many more on Twitter.

I suspect the reason is that once something has reached a certain popularity, it becomes more of a status move to identify against it than with it.

paranoiacblack
Please stop talking about counter cultures like it's some new idea you came up with. You don't even realize why it's so easy to make fun of y'all, goddamn.
strathmeyer
What do I do when incognito doesn't work? Why can't posters link to real content?
gruseom
When incognito doesn't work, you can usually get the piece by Googling the title. Google almost always returns a link that bypasses the paywall.

Posters post these links because the content is unavailable any other way. HN would be poorer without any stories from the NYT and WaPo, inconvenient as this all is.

zombio
> A New York Times article does not require a sign-in. The article in question is not subscriber only-content. You do not need to sign-in nor be a subscriber to read this article.

> "To see the full article, subscribe here." ... "To continue reading, subscribe for just 99c for your first 4 weeks"

I'm baffled as to how you can say "YOU do not need to sign-in nor be a subscriber to read this article" when my screenshot clearly shows the exact opposite is true. Whether some people have or have not exceeded their 10 free articles this month does not change the fact that yes, this IS subscriber only content and I DO need to pay and sign in to see it (assuming I don't take the time to hack around it).

> But you don't even need to go that far. You can turn off the JavaScript in your browser

I don't know what you think that would accomplish.

ivank
Firefox and Chrome have a cookie whitelisting feature. You can let non-whitelisted sites set whatever cookies they want, but have them cleared on browser exit.
notahacker
There's also the ability to open a URL in a new private window. I suspect circumvention of cookie-based blocking is the second most used reason for "private browsing" after looking at porn.
meadhikari
For New York Times articles, I have started to use viewtext. It works everytime and I just get the text

http://viewtext.org/api/text?url=<nytimesurl>

Edit: How about all New York Times articles get redirected through the viewtext route? Or would that be just too much