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Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

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31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#31

Companies need to make money somehow. If not with paywalls, it’s harder for them to avoid monetizing by tracking and advertising

I assume that the companies with paywalls still advertise and track on top of that (one reason I refuse to pay for them).

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#32

Community discussion seems like an interesting vehicle for article micro-payments. Could someone try to negotiate a pooled deal with the WSJ based on a valid HN cookie with >X internet points? Or just a single subscription with the agreement that it would be scraped and self-hosted by the community?

I dig this idea as well.

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#34
A lot of comments point to the fact that companies need to make money on the articles they publish.

However, a lot of interesting and cool stuff is posted outside of the realms of professional journalism. I mostly come here for the cool new product, an interesting blog article, or a research paper.

In my opinion, corporate journalism is more noise than good content here.

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#35
Why don’t we, as HN community, find a solution to pay for content before we take away the only legitimate, non-intrusive way to make a living from journalism. Remember Jamal khashoggi could have decided to become a software engineer and could have been drinking the SF koolaid instead of sacrificing his life.

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#37
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where the aforementioned workarounds come in.

Many workarounds have stopped working, due to incognito mode detection or other means. Regardless, I shouldn't have to waste my time digging around to find a working workaround when the submitter could have taken a few minutes to see if there's a similar-quality article covering the same topic on a free site. While I'll occasionally click on an archive.is link, ethically (and legally) it's not great to mirror someone…

I don't think any of us are sitting around reading articles on HN because we're optimally using our time. I'd rather know an article exists and see if there's a means to read it than never hear about it. Unless it's a piece of breaking news, there's probably not another equivalent source. It's unlikely some other source performed the exact same in-depth investigation with the same quality into whatever the paywalled piece is about.

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#38
post #13

I think it's worth paying for good quality journalism. It's nice to support the institutions that serve a vital role to the checks and balances of our democracy. Also, some of you may not know it but you can access the news for free through your local library. For example, I get the NY Times online via the Santa Clara County Library.

New York times, forbes, Washington post, wall street journal 600 a year.

Median individual income in the United States is $865.

If you are a highly paid engineer imagine writing a check for 3k for news. Poorer people could use the library if they had time between their 2 jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#39

Community discussion seems like an interesting vehicle for article micro-payments. Could someone try to negotiate a pooled deal with the WSJ based on a valid HN cookie with >X internet points? Or just a single subscription with the agreement that it would be scraped and self-hosted by the community?

How many paywall sites have half decent forums/discussions? It seems like that's the sort of thing they could leverage to drive their subscriptions, kind of like how the letters to the editor section used to get used. At the moment this is outsourced to twitter/facebook/reddiit/etc and they get no revenue from it.

Re: Ask HN: Can we stop linking to paywalls?

#40
post #13

I think it's worth paying for good quality journalism. It's nice to support the institutions that serve a vital role to the checks and balances of our democracy. Also, some of you may not know it but you can access the news for free through your local library. For example, I get the NY Times online via the Santa Clara County Library.

Ok, but quality journalism is, uh, not the NYT or WaPo. They sold themselves out awhile ago. I guess you can claim some performative woke points for it though.
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