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Comment by kenny_r | Hacker News Reader

FYI: HN has a recent feature where there's a link labeled "web" under the article link, which brings you to a web search.

Clicking the first result will bypass the paywall.

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It doesn't work on mobile. Please stop linking to WSJ.

Exactly the same thoughts as me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12683017

In other threads (as of yesterday), people claimed that this wasn't working for them. Still works for me, though.

Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't.

WSJ should not be classified as having an easily-bypassable paywall.

Not anymore, that was true once, but doesn't work for me anymore (Germany).

Paywalls only have to allow you visit their site 3 times a day for free if you come from google [0]. It might not work because you have visited more then 3 articles already today. Deleting your cookies or entering the private mode of your browser should do the trick, though.

[0]

I haven’t visited their site at all in the entire past week.

Just VPNed into a German ISP and it worked for me. Are you using a plugin that blocks the referrer?

Works for me. Also from Germany here.

Incognito mode does the trick.

How does that even work?

It's a by-product of the broken paywall model. Sites want to protect their content, but they still want traffic to their site. Checking that the referrer is a search engine is a weird middle-way workaround.

Just use a referer switcher like Referer Control on Chrome.

Most paywalls check the request referral and let it through when it comes from the big search engines. This ensures they will remain listed and hence relevant.

Sorry, where is that? Cannot see at all and the link in the title sends me to the paywall.

Thanks.

You have to go to the comments page for a link, and then you'll see it just below the main link.

Thanks, I had never seen it.

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