How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social media sites and apps

Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by mola on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @11:47AM (#14797462)

I am curious as how these sort of guides are taken as incouous fun reads while a guide to, say, shoplifting would seem less than legitimate.

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by rdiddly on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @02:51PM (#14799063)

But this is about an arbitrary distinction between two groups of non-paying customers!

However I dispute the "customer" analogy too. In fact, turning this tired and one-sided analogy of a "store" on its head, how about it's my browser, and while they're in it, they can play by my rules?

There is nothing about a client-server paradigm (especially nowadays with thick clients) causing me to be "in their premises" or causing that to be a better analogy than their being in my premises[1]. The "online store" was just an analogy, and was how the www was sold to millions of profiteering dullards starting in the 90s, so naturally the idea has gotten a lot of traction and you can be forgiven for still thinking of it that way.

[1]Neither is accurate of course - The truth of the matter is that my robot handshakes with their robot across space. (And then their robot asks the Twitter robot whether my robot has the special Twitter street cred badge.)

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by andrewla on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @01:20PM (#14798296)

I think a better analogy is sneaking into a movie theater, for which there are a large number of "innocuous fun" articles out there [1] (although not featured on HN so much)

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+sneak+into+a+movie+th...

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by corybrown on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @11:49AM (#14797475)

Because, unlike a news article, the marginal cost of the shoplifted good is nowhere near zero.

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by amelius on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @12:06PM (#14797631)

And how about a guide to illegally copy Spotify tracks without an account?

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by clarkenheim on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @12:33PM (#14797867)

link?

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by amelius on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @12:42PM (#14797971)

Just hypothetical. I'm curious about the perceived value of music versus news articles.

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Re:How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social... by linkregister on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @01:16PM (#14798261)

I wouldn't be surprised if a shoplifting guide made it to the front page of HN.

I mean, how many HNers have read the MIT lockpicking guide or the Anarchist's Cookbook? At least half?

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