Can we stop linking to paywalls?

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 and there's more explanation here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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.

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&que...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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... and a longer one at https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

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

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

Will we? Probably not.

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

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.

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

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

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

How dare people ask for money.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

> 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.