From the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html):

> "Are paywalls ok?"

> "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."

> "In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."

How do you read the article?

Take the viewable title of the article:

"A $10 Accessory Proves Smartphones Are Too Big"

Paste it in to google, and click the first link that takes you back to that website.

Due to google's requirements of the search bot seeing what normal people can see when coming from google, they have to honor this...

This doesn't always work for me. When it doesn't, I open a private window and try again, since some sites set a cookie, but even then it sometimes doesn't work.

Google stopped requiring that a while back.

click image search. A picture is worth 1,000 pay-walled words.

For the WSJ, add the word "full" before wsj in the domain name. You end up on the WSJ site and they use this for an additional viral factor, so Facebook users can see and share the full article.

I'm not sure if you have to have a Facebook account - I think you don't.

bypass paywalls extension

ffx https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

WSJ doesn't paywall users coming from Google. Just search for the title and click the outbound link.

google the article headline

Add the following to your bookmarks and click it when you come across a paywall:

  javascript:window.location=%22https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=%22+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

This doesn't always work ( i use it with my social bookmarking application. You need incognito mode mostly as well)

Or you could always, you know, subscribe to the WSJ.

The way HN reacts to paywalls is beyond ridiculous. It's like if every comment thread on a story about a Netflix original series was nothing but questions and answers about where to go to torrent it.

Please don't take HN threads on ultra-repetitive tangents like this. It's tedious, and there's no point in rehearsing it in every thread.

One straightforward magnet link solves the Netflix problem. The problem with the web is that running hostile code creates endless types of fuckery, and thus endless ways of sidestepping that fuckery.

If the story was a 20 second clip I would sure hope it's hosted elsewhere and I don't have to buy a full subscription.

I see maybe 1 article every 3 months that I want to read on there. Must I subscribe for this? I'd much rather just skip the article; It wont cause me much unhappiness if I do.

I agree with paying for journalism BUT think about just how important is this particular piece is.

Edit: the last 'is' added.

Another perspective is if it isn't that important, there's little need to read it, much less going out of one's way to bypass a paywall.

This is a fine thought by itself. As long as you don't imply that anyone doing an unimportant action is behaving incorrectly.

In other words, someone that says "I don't care much but I looked anyway" is not a hypocrite.

"I have no interest but I showed interest" Strikes me odd, and should likely be confusing to an observer. It seems an oxymoron which is somewhat analogous to hypocrisy

Only if they say they have absolutely no interest. If they just say it's unimportant, or not worth paying for, there shouldn't be any confusion.

Relatedly, I think it's worth 0 cents to go flip my phone over on the table. But I'm going to do it anyway.

You mean cure FOMO? :D

I really don't mean to be snarky here, but you could pay to read it?

A lot of people on HN dislike advertising, but content creators are going to need to get paid if they want to create good content, and paying for it seems like a great alternative to advertising.

WSJ is having a deal right now where you can get the subscription for $1 for 2 months, which IMO is more than reasonable.

I would, if I could make a micropayment for an individual article.

In an environment where everyone consumes just a few articles each from a very large number of sources, it's not reasonable to expect a monthly subscription to a particular source just for the sake of reading one article. I do pay for an online subscription to one newspaper, but I'm not willing to go back to the days of reading only one newspaper.

I might put up with a reasonable amount of advertising, if it didn't track me around the web, attack me with malware, double my bandwidth usage and run scripts that bog down my computer.

and then how much does it cost after the 2 months? and how hard is it to unsubscribe? and how many people subscribe to read a couple of articles then forget about it and end up paying hundreds of dollars in money drained away in drips and drabs in recurring credit card charges?

I like journalism, but it would be really nice to have a better model (I'd even go with pay per article). Subscriptions that you may or may not use have always been a dark pattern, whether it's for journalism or apps or gym memberships.

I'm 100% with you, and I also really would love something better, but I think there are a lot of little issues that still need to be solved (like how micropayments still don't seem to be workable with current credit card systems), and some trust that needs to be built up.

I honestly don't know how it all works with WSJ, but I figured I'd just point out the deal they are having.

It is SUPER hard to unsubscribe, they make you call and jump through hoops.

The model where information is published is going to have to change.

Until it does those who are stuck in the old economic model will suffer.

The concept that you can contain information and retain some value in the distribution of it is obsolete and asking people to pretend that model will still work is silly.

This is not a viable model. First paying $1 to read an article that might or might not be good is not something I’m into and something that would result in lots of spam and SEO if customers actually did that. So $1 for 2 months of WSJ and the 75 other sites linked to from here is not something I can afford.

Second, the mental fatigue from signing up and putting up with their spam for the rest of my life makes me sad just to imagine. Having a business relationship with hundreds of sites is complicated and not fun to manage.

If there was a way to pay a penny and then maybe 10 cents if I like it, I would gladly do it. But publishers value their content higher than that.

Flattr has a good idea where they would divide up your monthly media budget across publishers, but that didn’t take off. Brace Browser is similar.

I think the biggest issue is that I don’t trust publishers because all my interactions with them are unpleasant (eg, intrusive ads, spam, AstroTurf, etc).

The only real action I can take is to Adblock/corcumvent paywalls. That’s something I can do. Hopefully publishers will adjust models and stay in business. But if every paywall site goes out of business, I’m ok with that as well. I think the world would be net better off if we only had BBC/NPR/etc. definitely some downsides, but a net positive.

It breaks the UX of the site - at least sticky a solution so people can read the article