I also don't have an account, so I got the same message as you. I wonder how Medium decides which stories are fenced with "create an account" page and which not, because most of the stories I can read normally.

They have dark UX patterns that makes the content creators mark a setting for doing this. Most of them are not aware it introduces an account-wall for their articles.

Maybe, a smart move would be to have a system that would look at how much traffic certain story has and then depending on the flow of traffic the 'create an account' wall turns on. Although, I doubt they have such a system, but it would make certain things easier.

I advise everyone to flag this submission as it's not really readable by most people, because of the account-wall.

I would really like HN to institute a policy that only publicly-accessible articles are valid submissions. I am tired of seeing links to dozens of stories in newspapers/journals that I can't read. I am all for paying for content, but I can't be expected to subscribe to all of these newspapers/journals. Paid content is fine, but it is not part of the open web, so should not profit from HN traffic.

HN should be a link site to the open web.

HN is a business (YC marketing site), not a charity