Those could or should already be prepended in the title with PAYWALL or alike, so one can already at point of reading the title decide not to click on it.

HN shows you the link origin from the main page.

Don't open X links or set up ad blocker to remove posts linking to it from the DOM.

True but my memory doesn't seem to tell me which sites are paywalled upon reading the links often.

... One can ask for archive links. Usually the request will be fulfilled. I do it all the time on articles of interest. Most of the time, there's already an archive link under the post.

Thats good service by some fellow hackers. thanks!