No, the answer is that we as a community ignore content behind paywalls and they will fade from relevance.
There goes NYT, fading into relevance, because 10,000 nerds on Hacker News don't click nytimes.com links anymore...
Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
61–70 of 147 posts
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#62https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
This repo is also a great alternative. Bypasses almost all known paywalls.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is an inditement of the crypto space that this obvious use case never materialized.
I point the finger directly at regulations. Who has the time to track lightning transactions for IRS capital gains reporting. Hopefully we see a bill where small amounts aren't taxed.
My bank sends me a 1099 when I earn $0.14 of interest on my checking account. There is no reason this hypothetical crypto company couldn't do the same.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#64In my opinion if we keep popularizing technologies like this we will lose them. Look at the number of websites that are now blocking ad blockers because we all installed ad blockers on our parents machines and popularized the technology. We should keep some technology under the radar and just for hackers.
It'll always be a cat-and-mouse-game.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#65Has never worked for me
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piracy is a usability problem. People want to read one article, not subscribe for a year. This is just like pirating one song instead of buying the album.
Piracy is a business problem. They'd happily sell you one article a year if you're willing to pay more to offset the lack of a predictable revenue stream. Feast or famine tends to be a big problem for sustainability though, and it's one reason companies like Adobe moved Photoshop to a subscription model.
Right, the problem is nobody cares about the business at all. They care about the content. The same problem exists for streaming services and cable TV channels before them. People want one or more specific shows, they don’t think Netflix is any better than Hulu, and are happy to cancel and move their streaming dollars from service to service when something else interests them.
Subscriptions just subsidize mediocrity.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#67https://12ft.io/proxy?q=http://washingtonpost.com Fails. :-(
Doesn't appear to be working for Bloomberg, NY Times, etc.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#68I’m still waiting for micro transactions. I won’t pay $5 a month for a newspaper I might read one article from but I would gladly pay 25 cents for that one good article. How are there still minimum amounts and fees on transactions when everything is supposedly digitized and networked?
How do you know what is "one good article" and what isn't until you actually read it?
There is already an increasing problem with clickbait as sites have to fight for eyeballs to get ad revenue. Making online journalism microtransaction based will completely kill whatever is left of the industry.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#69In my opinion if we keep popularizing technologies like this we will lose them. Look at the number of websites that are now blocking ad blockers because we all installed ad blockers on our parents machines and popularized the technology. We should keep some technology under the radar and just for hackers.
No useful technology can be kept under the radar. In fact I think ad blocking is a good example of something that got so widespread that it became impossible to block. The "disable your adblocker to read this site" banners are quickly disappearing from the internet now that a critical mass of users has adopted them and companies are realizing they can't give up all that traffic.
Re: Hate paywalls? 12ft.io is the answer
#70I've been getting less and less success with 12ft.io. I mostly use it on my phone. On my computer I use Bypass Paywall Clean[0] (chrome/firefox addon) which uses different tricks to access the full article. [0] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
bypass paywall clean is excellent. And you can use it on your phone, at least if you have the relative freedom of Android. You need firefox nightly, which allows any extension to be added; other versions of Firefox limit add-ons to a curated list. There are other builds of Firefox for Android that allow any add-on, but Firefox Nightly is an easy install from the Play Store.
Then you need to make a personal collection of addons at the firefox addon site, link firefox nightly to your Add-On collection, and as long as you added bypass paywall clean (custom) to your collection, you're off the races. The "custom" version of the add-on has a simplified UI with better defaults for a mobile phone. This is not a tutorial, but it's not too hard to get this addon working on Android. Firefox nightly despite the name is stable on my Pixel 6 pro.
This has greatly improved my browsing experience on my phone. For the record, I subscribe to the Economist, Wired, NY Times, Telegraph (UK), the Guardian, The Age, lwn and the Conversation (via repeating donation) so I don't think I am much of a free-loader.