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Ask HN: Why are WSJ/paywalled links allowed?

16 points by cweagans ↗ HN
Even if the content is interesting, I have absolutely no desire to fork over any money to the Wall Street Journal for the honor of reading their articles online. While I understand that they need to make money too, I can easily find other things on the Internet to read. It's frustrating to click a link that seems interesting, and then get a paywall.

This frustration has been expressed to me by other HN readers in my local area, as well.

Is there a reason for allowing paywalled links? Or a reason for not disallowing them?

11 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 46.6 ms ] thread
minimaxir
Hacker News requires that the original article be submitted. Unfortunately, WSJ/The Information are good at getting exclusives.
cweagans
That's great, but is it really so common for HN readers to have WSJ subscriptions? I mean, unless people are upvoting things without reading them...

It just seems unusual that so many WSJ links are getting to the front page lately.

DanBC
It is trivially easy to bypass most paywalls, if that's what you want to do.
cweagans
While this is tangential to the topic, I would argue that there are better uses of time than figuring out how to get past a paywall for some article I likely won't remember in a week anyways.

If it's really that important, I would further argue that there will be other people writing about the same topic, so why not link to those other people?

DanBC
Link to those other people if they are good articles. The best version of an article should be linked to, even if it's behind a paywall.

Perhaps HN users could agree on tagging any articles that are paywalled?

Of course, they might not have hit the paywall limit and might not know thT the article is paywalled.

cweagans
Actually, that sounds like an awesome compromise. A tag on a paywalled article is enough of a heads up to not even bother for me (assuming, of course, that this is enough of a bother to anyone else to even consider implementing).
PeterisP
Such requirements are arbitrary and can easily be changed by Hacker News for the common benefit.

A rule "submit the original article, unless it's behind a paywall - in that case a copy/derivative is recommended" is reasonable and would be an improvement.

anigbrowl
As has been pointed out many, many times, it's very easy to circumvent the paywall by searching on the article's title. Yes, this is inconvenient, but if the story is newsworthy and the publication is the primary or only source, then it's a tolerable inconvenience. I don't have a subscription to the WSJ or NYT either, but I can dig up the article or wait for it to be summarized elsewhere if I don't feel like dealing with the paywall.

I don't see any great rise in the frequency of WSJ links. It has always been a popular source on HN and the paywall has been in place for years.

DanBC
It helps avoid shitty clickbait arties and article headlines from news sources who are desperate for clicks to get ad impressions to get enough money to operate.
yitchelle
I would hate this type of policy. For me, a policy such as this is almost like censorship. Would it not be better to know they are such articles available than not knowing at all? Admittedly, you may have to pay for it, but at least you know that it is available.
hvass
You make two points:

1) You do not want to "fork over any money' to WSJ. 2) You are frustrated by paywalls.

Notice how it is all about you? :-)

Have you considered that other people are here to discover great and high-quality content and are not frustrated by paywalls and are gladly willing to support quality writing?