HACKER Q&A
📣 thomasfromcdnjs

How could HN reduce the amount of paywall articles?


I've been reading HN since about 2008, love it.

Though as modern media has caught up with present-day monetisation models, the paywall is rather prevalent. (Not trying to cast aspersions at paywall setups)

Just, as an Australian (insert any nation), it's hard for me to justify paying for non-my-own-nation media channels.

The archive.org links are great, but someone generally has to post as a comment, or dang (who is already too dedicated) has to manually change the url.

I don't have any great ideas, nor good ones, but the paywalls are starting to frustrate my experience.


  👤 version_five Accepted Answer ✓
Why is it such a big deal to click the archive link, or use archive yourself. If the alternative is to not see the article, archive is a pretty good compromise.

👤 sysadm1n
A bandaid solution is for the HN commentariat to post archive.today[0] links, which somehow through some magic sauce presents the unpaywalled article. (Don't ask me how this is done, I haven't researched it, but hey, it works!).

[0] https://archive.ph/


👤 hammyhavoc
Here's the thing, most of the worthwhile current affairs coverage comes from paywalled publications. Should we only limit ourselves to clickbait? No, of course not, not when there's alternatives.

The problem isn't HN, it's the publications. It's a problem to solve at a publication level.


👤 helph67
Comment from `crazypython' to --> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26212645

I just use Bypass Paywalls[0] and Web Annoyances Ultralist (blocks cookie banners, autoplaying videos, sticky navs). https://jameslu.substack.com/p/hide-cookie-banners-paywalls-... [0]: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...

[1]: https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances


👤 jqpabc123
Seems like addressing this would be fairly simple to me.

Allow paywall articles to be flagged as such.

Allow users to filter out flagged articles.


👤 Utkarsh_Mood
I use https://12ft.io/ works great for me

👤 ilaksh
I think the issue is that with effective ad blocking, they have to collect money via the paywalls in order to continue operating.

It would be nice if there was a way to do a microtransaction instead. An advanced cryptocurrency could be perfect for that.

HN could automatically link to an archive service or have a button to generate a link if they wanted. But that is kind of antagonistic to the monetization of those sites.


👤 cyanydeez
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