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Comment by cntlzw | Hacker News Reader

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The Economist is one of the few publications I consider worth my money. Its journalism is thoughtful and for the long term, rather than sensationalised click-bait.

The HN FAQs [1] state that paywalled articles are OK as long as there is a known workaround so everyone can read it, even with a little effort.

Someone usually posts a link to the workaround in the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22800580

It's not ideal, but better than banning every site that might ever have a paywall, which, aside from leading to the loss of a big chunk of quality content, would create confusion relating to the fact that paywalls behave differently based on regions, previous site visits, click origins etc.

So it's the least-worst solution.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Someone usually links to an archive, so hey. And if they don't, you can just ask for one.

Let’s never pay for content. Ever.

There goes the fourth estate.

The "Bypass Paywalls" browser extension is effective on this article.

At the risk of coming across as insensitive, there's an easy way around paywalled articles: Pay to read the content.

People need to be paid for their labors under the system we currently have, so either pay up or don't click.

There is no generally workable way to pay, in that it'd cost at least $1000/year for all the popular sites.

Worth adding that anyone with access to a university account should check if they can’t log in to the economist via their library service, and users of local libraries can often access magazines on tablet for free via digital lending.

Here is a puzzle for today - should we post links to articles that have significant content, but are behind a paywall? Should we post all links behind paywalls? Should we just say - it's ok, you can steal it by disabling JS? The slider has many positions here. I looked in faq, but could not find anything about it.

Personally I don't like links behind paywalls. I also respect the desire of the publisher to have a paywall, so I don't read the articles even if I can find away around the paywall. But, I can't really see a downside to posting the links. Either they will be voted up and I won't read it, or it won't be voted up and I won't read it. But if it's voted up, I guess large numbers of people want to read it. The world doesn't have to revolve around me. I think that the best thing people can do if they see an interesting topic posted is to try to find an equivalent non-paywall article and submit it. Frequently I've seen paywalled articles replaced by non-paywall articles, so I don't think there is really a problem whatever you do.

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