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Comment by digitalengineer | Hacker News Reader

(Via reddit) There is a way to get around the paywall for all articles with no limits. WSJ considers links to articles from Facebook to be advertising, and allows full access. Next time you find a WSJ article you want to read, simply paste the following address BEFORE the address of the paywalled article in your URL bar:

http://facebook.com/l.php?u=

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OR just don't read the article. If WSJ wants to charge for access, and I'm not entitled to said access, then I'm just not reading the article. This is as close to voting with my wallet as I can get.

Routing around with outline.com or redirects through fb.com doens't really help the problem. Stop reading it and move onto other sources who welcome your eyeballs without direct payment. Support the indie journalists.

Throwing it in [outline.com](https://outline.com) has been the easiest for me so far

This finally broke. https://outline.com/sSMk7s

I don't have Facebook and don't want to be tracked anymore. It's just paying with extra steps.

This may be against a TOS, but I'm sure if you changed your User Agent to match a common web crawler you would observe... something.

Or just bypass them to being with. Here's a good plugin for firefox: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

If you can afford a subscription, please consider supporting our Free Press. Last year, 53 journalists like khashoggi were murdered in their quest to keep us informed. America's leader has a war on the Fourth Estate constantly labeling them, "Fake News". American Journalists are paying the price for this toxic rhetoric.[2][3] In this time more than ever, those that can afford it, please support real journalism like WSJ, NYT, and Wapo.

Social Media has been a gift to dictators, allowing them to speak directly to their subjects. It also has embolden them to use violence against journalists that report the world in a way that conflicts with their message.

I've been trying to do my part by giving out digital subscriptions to friends and family that share actual fake news on social media.

[1] https://www.apnews.com/2deb8e97a7454800803bc5d156c36d2f

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Gazette_shooting

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2018_United_States_mai...

As a quick reminder to readers of the parent comment, there are A LOT of details related to the Khashoggi murder that may invalidate the reference being made in the above comment. To elaborate more would take this discussion even more off-topic and likely would lead to a rapid gray-down and flagging of this comment.

Some good people got murdered, so give your money to this big corporation? I don't follow.

First of all there are still local newspapers that have enough business to support investigative journalism. We can thank the Miami Herald for their work in breaking the Trump labor Sec. / Epstein scandal wide open. [1]

Secondly there are nonprofit like ProPublica that do amazing work. They were a major force that brought the dangers of fracking into light.[2]

Finally, Investigative journalism isn't cheap. The orgs need to pay a salary and travel costs for months and years on a story that may or may not pan out. In an interview, the journalist that broke it said that it took months to research and fact check an anonymous tip to develop it into a full blow story.

So no, I don't feel bad about NYT being a "corporation" when their quality journalism brings to light stores like this.

[1] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html

[2] https://www.propublica.org/series/fracking

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...

This is a more reasonable line of argument. Start with this rather than "pay party A in order to balance out harms to party B".

The NYT also enabled harvey weinstein and spread lies about yellowcake which caused an illegal war and countless dead middle easterners.

https://www.thewrap.com/media-enablers-harvey-weinstein-new-...

Giving your family subscriptions to these companies is just as bad as given then facebook accounts.

You seem to be under the childishy impression that if one is bad, then the other is good. That's not how things work. The NYT and Trump could both be bad. The NYT and Facebook can boh be back.

For all the talk about how bad social media is, so many news people are all over social media begging people to buy subscriptions.

The WSJ is owned by one of the wealthiest men in the world. Why are you begging people here to buy a subscription? If you can't make ends meeet, why not ask one of the riches men in the world to invest more in his company?

And for every journalist who died, millions of innocent people died from wars from lies pushed by these journalists. How much blood of the innocent are on the hands of the WSJ, NYT and Wapo just in the past 18 years?

If "Social Media" has been a gift to dictators, what do you think newspapers are? And what message are these journalists reporting? The message of the wealthy?

There is no denying that social media can be toxic and bad for society. But that goes for the WSJ, NYT and Wapo as well.

There have been tons of studies and reports noting how bad news is for you.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

Frankly, social media became toxic when it got overrun by journalists and the news industry. Politics and news is why social media is so toxic.

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