this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
22 points (77.5% liked)

Asklemmy

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22
Why hard paywalls is not blocked on Lemmy? (ponder.cat)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I started to notice some people posting NYT, Bloomberg or other websites with hard paywalls, that leads to people in the comments that are unable to read the article to discuess the headline without any analysis and some times spreading misinformation, which cannot be countered by the article, due to the paywall.

Which bring me to this: Why does no one thought about blocking hard paywalled articles for the sake of quality of discussion?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Because like it or not, actually paying for stuff is the only way to save journalism and by extension our democracies.

The alternative is to link shitty clickbait / AI spam. At least this way:

  1. People might be encouraged to pay for journalism.
  2. There are many ways to bypass the paywall for those who won't or can't pay.

Please don't ban paywalls.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Because like it or not, actually paying for stuff is the only way to save journalism and by extension our democracies.

Paying for things does not prevent enshitification.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago

But not paying for it almost guarantees it.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago

I disagree. The alternative to news is no news. If you don't have anything interesting to share, just don't post it.

If you want to share news articles, just use a link to the internet archive, if available, or copy-paste the text if it's behind a paywall.

Information should be open to all on a platform like Lemmy imo. If you're willing to pay for news, you won't need this platform for that.

Please ban paywalls.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Some of us subscribe to some of them, sometimes they're gift links, other times we can use archive.is or the Wayback machine to get access. Bonus points when these mirror links are in the post body.

It's important to link the canonical source though.

[โ€“] TacoButtPlug 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No because archive.today exists

[โ€“] [email protected] -5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

How accessible is this to smart phone users?

While it's kind of easy to bypass paywalls on desktop, it's hard to do it on smart phones.

[โ€“] xmunk 8 points 5 days ago

Type your favorite archive site mirror into the address bar (I'm partial to archive.is) then add a forward slash and then the full URL. I do this on my phone all the time.

You'll also often find someone posts an archive link on any articles with a hard pay wall - if you see such a link give them some internet points so they feel warm and fuzzy.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Just tested it now, extremely accessible.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

There are extensions on Firefox for Android that do this for you. I think it's very accessible.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

https://github.com/bpc-clone/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

However, I would suggest that if you do decide to use this that you pick one or two of your favorite periodicals and either donate or subscribe to them. The Guardian and your local paper might be two good choices.

Also, if you have uBlock, turning off javascript can sometimes defeat a paywall.