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Copy and paste the article URL into https://archive.is/ and view an archived version, thus bypassing the paywall
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
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.
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.
If you use uBlock Origin there is an option to toggle JavaScript. This should be sufficient for most of the articles
