Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 66 posts

Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#1

Post by NicoJuicy »

I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my web experience of reading HN.

The first post on the page is mostly a TLDR or a link to an alternative article instead of a real comment. For example the current #1 post : Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone (wsj.com) - https://gyazo.com/440858bfcc2f94d912a087ca2ef7ce26

There will always be a discussion about paywalled articles and or alternative sources, which takes the discussion away from the topic and there is a high chance that this will be a top comment ( because of upvotes).

The current #1 link and #7 link are currently unusable to me : https://gyazo.com/578b105ce67f9b6d14cefe0dfeb43efb

The trick with bypassing it through the web doesn't work for me anymore ( and multiple others). This was good in the past, but not anymore.

An alternative like automaticly hiding articles from wsj.com would be nice, but i think it's more effectively to just ban the domain? Because it has no use for many HN-readers.

Suggested alternative: Add (paywall) automaticly to the link

Please discuss or give your opinion?

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#2

Post by NicoJuicy »

Screenshots of the comments of the current #1 HN post of a wsj article: https://gyazo.com/440858bfcc2f94d912a087ca2ef7ce26 . Which takes the discussion away from the topic and will always be related to paywalled articles or alternative sources.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#4

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

I agree with the proposal to ban paywalled sites. Workarounds are annoying and/or temporary. HN should be about open discussion of freely available content; we shouldn't be encouraging the ghetto-ification of the web. The typical paywalled sites are almost never the only (or even the best) source of an article.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#6

Post by geuis »

I support this proposal. I support any independent company's right to perform their business how they want. I also support that popular sites that encourage open dialog and discussion should not include companies that disallow public viewing of their content.

Let's also extend this to companies that prevent those with content blockers from viewing their pages. Forbes is one, and techcrunch is another. Techcrunch doesn't block content, but their site UI is messed up enough that when content blockers are used that it makes their site unusable.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#7

Post by bryanlarsen »

Does the web link work from an incognito session? I suspect that WSJ just sets a cookie on first visit to show the paywall on subsequent visits.

I personally agree with the current HN paywall policy. If the Google workaround doesn't work, then WSJ will get banned from Google, which is a far harsher penalty than getting banned from HN.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#8

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

tsukikage wrote: post #3

Slap (paywall) into the article title. Then people who find it a problem know to skip it.

The trouble is, that's locking a set of people out of the debate entirely, which is surely not what we want to encourage. Much better to have an alternative, freely-accessible article from a different source.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#10

Post by danso »

I disagree with banning sites that have leaky paywalls. Sites that do good journalism deserve the pageviews. We shouldn't incentivize blogspam just because it's convenient. In the case of the WSJ, they were the outlet that did the investigative work that broke Theranos, among many other stories.

The question boils down to whether the paywall is leaky enough. The "web" option, which helps the user find the article via Google because the WSJ paywall let's through the Google-referer, still works for me and many others, but apparently, not for other users. That's a strange technical quirk. I've tried emulating it on desktop vs. mobile, and using a VPN for different parts of the world, and the Google-referer-workaround still works fine for me.

So why can't some users get it to work? Could they be using a plugin that blocks the referer? Is the use of such a plugin enough of a common-case to block good journalism for the rest of the users on HN?

Post reply on HN