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Comment by SteveWatson | Hacker News Reader

Please stop posting links to paywalls.

The Economist limits the number of articles you can read in a week, so it's not a total paywall. The number of articles you have read in a week is stored in a cookie, as a reader of HN I think you now know what to do :-)

Please note, however, that if you clear your cookies several times in a row, they end up identifying your machine in some other way (I think IP based? But that wouldn't work for very busy IPs, e.g. busy workplace with many employees, so maybe it's IP and amount of traffic over time?).

Disclaimer: I am a paying subscriber since 2010 and have tried the above just out of curiosity.

What's the limit? This is the third economist article I've loaded in over a month and it's already paywalled.

Edit: I suppose the simple answer is "3 articles", but that just seems like a rather low limit to me, hence my question. I'm wondering if maybe their detection is simply bad (e.g. maybe my browser reloaded an article and it counts that as an additional read?)

I think the latest limit is 2 articles per week, it used to be higher, the change has been introduced recently, I remember seeing a pop-up announcing it.

I think whatever the limit is should be the limit that news source can post to this site. IMO.

Posts are made by users, not the news source itself, and your proposed limit is based on the assumption that most users read each and every article submission that is made to HN, which doesn't seem likely at all.

What? You don't like my brilliant plan?

You've been posting nothing but complaints about paywalls and web annoyances. Those are not substantive comments, so please stop.

Re paywalls, HN's rule is that they're ok as long as there's a standard workaround. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

IMO The Economist subscription is worth every penny.

Agreed. Just got mine a couple of days ago, and I'm enjoying it so far.

Doesn't always work, but hit the "web" link under the article tittle. It'll usually get you around those paywalls.

I didn't seem to get a paywall at the link, did you? If so, out of curiosity, do you block Referers?

I get a paywall and don't block referrers.

Interesting, wonder if it's a number of articles restriction or similar, you might try just dumping your cookies, trying private browsing mode or setting Privacy Badger or similar to eat them for that site.

You could also try the Facebook linkout method:

http://facebook.com/l.php?u=<URL> (or just otherwise spoof your referrer to facebook.com)

Yet to find a paywall willing to deny social media traffic. They'll die without it and they know it.

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