Anyone else just read content in source?
Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
71–80 of 123 posts
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#72It's insane that news sites with thousands or even millions of monthly users have paywalls like this. Sure it's great for anyone who wants to read for free, but some individuals make their livings now through paywalled articles. If the big guys can't protect from exploits, what about everyone else?
I created https://turbolink.io to attempt to solve this problem.
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#73Many sites don't contains the full content even if you do that. I'm not sure of how it works (does it subscribed to them all?) but https://archive.ph/ is a good way to see the content in those cases. But really, if you are regularly reading content on a site you should subscribe to support the journalists employed there.
https://12ft.io is another good one but yes agreed, you should cough up for the subscription when possible
I've tried that on like 3 or 4 different sites and it didn't work for a single one
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#74Many sites don't contains the full content even if you do that. I'm not sure of how it works (does it subscribed to them all?) but https://archive.ph/ is a good way to see the content in those cases. But really, if you are regularly reading content on a site you should subscribe to support the journalists employed there.
I subscribe to a major newspaper. But I'm not going to subscribe to all major newspapers. The individual subscription model doesn't really fit a world where you can go to one site, and click links to articles from lots of different publications. If they had a common subscription, where you pay one reasonable fee and they divide it up according to whose articles you read, I'd subscribe to that. Since they don't, I sub…
There is a common subscription mostly overlooked. Your local library.
What most of the press subscription services make the mistake of is trying to simplify the billing process to the individual. Ripe opportunity for someone to come along and make an all in one paid subscription service at the county level and make it easy to log into all sites with your library membership.
The current one is per site model is way too much from too not be worth it.
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#75Many sites don't contains the full content even if you do that. I'm not sure of how it works (does it subscribed to them all?) but https://archive.ph/ is a good way to see the content in those cases. But really, if you are regularly reading content on a site you should subscribe to support the journalists employed there.
I stumbled upon a link to an article with an interesting headline. I would like to read it, so I click the link, but there's a paywall. I have no idea what site that even is. This is the first and probably last time I'm seeing it. No way it gets a single cent from me. This just can't work when there are so many news websites competing for subscriptions.
Yes, archive.ph works most of the time, can't recommend it enough.
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#76A handful of sites will present the subscribers view of the page if you put a dot after the tld part of the url, i.e. https://site.com./1235/article Those behind Cloudflare don't seem to be vulnerable to this though. I've emailed the sites I've found where this works and none of them have fixed it after a year.
Why would this work? I know FQDNs sometimes require specifying a period at the end, and browsers seem to accept it as well, but I wonder why this would affect some frameworks' displayed content. Normally a site would rely on a cookie to maintain logged-in status, and that shouldn't be affected by the request URL.
Maybe some backend concession to allow viewing the article on hostnames/uris that are meant for internal use, partner sharing sites, etc? Like an if/then that checks the origin hostname?
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#77Another option no one has menitoned is AMP. Many sites that try to use "paywalls" have AMP URLs which point to pages that have all the full text of the article in tags. These AMP sites generally look great in a text-only browser that does not run Javascript. Popular example is WSJ. In the URL, add /amp before /article/. Paywalls are insidious because they target non-subscribers. Why let non-subscribers view articles.…
> maintaining their Section 230 protection
There’s no such thing as maintaining protection. It’s not something you “lose.”
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the number of AMP versions is dwindling as Google is no longer forcing it.
Yep. And the browser vendor can make changes to DevTools, archive.ph is already privacy-unfriendly and blocked in some countries, it could disappear, 12ft.io could disappear, and so on. The fact that seems least likely to change is that most "paywalls" rely on Javascript, CSS or some other "feature" of so-called "modern" web browsers. I have lost count of how many times an HN comment alleges "paywalled" in a thread a…
My 25 year old knowledge of lynx has come in handy too!
While I’m sure some combination of plugins can do it, Tor is another go-to for me for paywall avoision.
Too bad violoncello is no longer available in the iOS App Store.
Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#79Re: Getting around website paywalls with devtools alone
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I subscribe to a major newspaper. But I'm not going to subscribe to all major newspapers. The individual subscription model doesn't really fit a world where you can go to one site, and click links to articles from lots of different publications. If they had a common subscription, where you pay one reasonable fee and they divide it up according to whose articles you read, I'd subscribe to that. Since they don't, I sub…
How about getting a paid membership for certain higher education institutions’ libraries, which will give you access to not only books, but also a plethora of periodicals. And that will be fully legal and ethical.
Do you have examples of institutions that do this? A Google search only returned subscriptions to access research papers but not books or periodicals.