Why YSK: Information should be free and open for all
Copy and paste the article URL into https://archive.is/ and view an archived version, thus bypassing the paywall
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There is also https://12ft.io/ as well as the “Bypass Paywalls” extension in Firefox
12ft had a few months of being great, but I think they ended up selling out or giving in to legal pressure, and doesn’t do anything on several major news outlets anymore
That’s my experience, as well. It worked great for a while but I have no luck with it anymore
iOS users: add this shortcut to your share sheet and click on it when you encounter a paywall and itll open the archive link which lets you read and share the article without a paywall https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ede57eb29515446ab7cd68b5a8a6e311
Or use this Praxis Browser app in the same way but it wont let you share the article https://apps.apple.com/us/app/praxis-browser/id1598706451
Android users: this Web Archive Viewer app seems to do the same thing as the iOS shortcut but ive never used it https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=web.archive.viewer
Firefox users on any platform: this extension opens the archived version of the article and lets you read or share the article without paywalls https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archive-page/
The firefox extension can be used on android and ios as well (ios users can install it with the Orion web browser)
Just as a side note (and I’m not advocating for anything, I just think it’s good for people to think things through and have the full picture), the reason why many publications went to a subscription model is that so many people started using ad blockers. The publications have staff who want to be paid for the job they do, and other expenses like server infrastructure. They used to pay for all of that by selling ads on their sites, but then people found ways to avoid seeing ads, so the advertisers didn’t want to pay for them anymore.
So the publications had a choice between shutting their doors or charging a subscription, and many chose the latter. Now people are using techniques like this to avoid the subscriptions. The publications will either have to figure out a more effective paywall, come up with a different business model, or go out of business.
I wish the micropayments model people were proposing twenty years ago had taken off. I don’t have any interest in subscribing to The New York Times, for example, because I just don’t read it very much, but I wouldn’t object to paying a few cents every time I happened to read one of their articles.
Yeah, I agree that model is more tenable. Honestly, if the websites hadn’t gotten so riddled with completely obnoxious ads, people might have been less motivated to use ad blockers when they were first available. Our older two kids were teenagers in those days, and told us we should start using them. I told them the same thing about the business model, and they just insisted that the content should be free. I said then, and I say now, that’s unrealistic. I know I wouldn’t work a full time job for no pay, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.
I was perfectly fine with having header/footer/banner ads and left my adblocker off, unfortunately almost all advertisements have become so obnoxiously placed and irritating. If they weren’t so greedy, I feel like most people would have been okay with it.
I’m okay with my physical newspaper running ads too but not putting super intrusive ones or the ones that are disguised as actual reporting.
Yes, it’s a weird one. We got used to the fact that everything is pretty much free on the internet. Unfortunately, nothing is free, we either pay with out personal data, watching and interacting with ads or through subscriptions and paywals.
There is just no incentive for people to provide good content on the internet unless they have other means of sustaining themselves or they charge for it.
For instance, there is so much free stuff thanks to developers making their hard work open source. However, they are only able to do it because even if they are not getting payed for this, either they have a job that pays for other work they do or they have access to other means of financial support like family for instance. And I am not saying that much of open source (not all) is not essentially people giving away their hard work for free but I am saying that if the choice was to make some program for free and go hungry or charge for it and have a meal then we all know what it would look like.
Almost makes it seem like a UBI would be a good way to support the people who do work that no one wants to actually pay for (usually because the people avoiding payment aren’t getting paid enough in the first place)
On Firefox, usually reader mode ignores paywalls. It is also nice for showing pages in a standard format, ignoring the styles of the site, which is nice for sites with crap layouts.
+1. I accidentally stumbled upon that one day and it’s been great since then.
I stumbled into this the other day. It’s awesome!
I’ll also add a real simple first step: view in incognito. So many sites will show full article if viewed in incognito it’s always worth a try.
Archive.is is useful, for sure. Another option that I have used for a long time is BypassPaywalls. It works on Firefox, as well as Chromium based browsers. https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
If you use uBlock Origin there is an option to toggle JavaScript. This should be sufficient for most of the articles
Could you please add a “Why YSK:”? It’s rule #2. Thank you. :)
added
Anyone else from Reddit feeling weird seeing this exchange?
I’m from Reddit; why is this weird?
Because of how civil it is compared to reddit maybe
oh yeah now I get it. I think my question would have just been downvoted there…
A lot of articles load all of the content before the paywall, so another easy (but kind of scuffed) option is to just stop the page from loading after the content has loaded but before the paywall has
That’s some real quick draw skill for a lot of people with good computers/phones and gigabit speed internet.
Hahaha you got me there! This little hack may be more feasible for those with shoddy xfinity internet like myself
Here’s another alternative, I save the article into Pocket and that usually works.
Or Wallabag, an open source alternative for those hearing about Pocket for the first time.
Reader view in mobile Safari often works. As does switching to a private window. Failing that Google usually has a cache if archive.is doesn’t.
Same in Firefox. And if you only get the preview in reader mode, refresh after you are in reader mode.
A lot of paywalls disappear when you turn off javascript. I use a plugin that adds a button to quickly toggle javascript for specific web pages. It works for a large percentage of paywalled articles. On the few paywalled sites where I actually use javascript, it is easy to just turn it back on again when needed. The plugin I use is JavaScript Switcher, but there are others out there.
That’s nice to know. There’s also “reader mode” built right into Firefox.
I did not know about reader mode. It seems that it is unavailable for some websites, so it can still be useful to switch off JavaScript in those cases.
