You know what would be a really nice HN feature.. when you submit a URL it can be flagged as "pay per view" and I can have a profile setting to filter them out.
It would be nice if HN posts could include an "alt link" which would be paywall free. (like an archive.is link or similar)
There’s a ton of opportunities here to use (paywall), or simply use an alternative link. The admins here don’t, won’t; and sadly, worst off - discourage comments like this.
I will never read a paywalled article on HN, by principle alone. I don’t come here to see information I have to pay for. I don’t think anyone here does.
HN is an exceptionally clean, minimalist website. Instant page loads. No ads, no "accept cookie" banner, no autoplaying media, in fact no media of any kind, no engagement-maximizing algorithm. Quality moderation via dedicated human mods.
Then everyone comes here to talk about their Svelte ESnext 69.0 x serverless kubernetes 3d metaverse animated gif NFT marketplace subscription-based growth hack horror they're about to inflict on the public.
Janky is 50MB of Javascript that doesn't load all at once so things jump around ocnstantly at the start, only to display 1/3 of the text of an article before you insert 3 ads but I won't know that until I click past the cookie warning and the "Please subscribe" popup that happens when I scroll more than 100 pixels.