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Not really, that fact supports the premise of the article.

But then fewer people can read it and the author's arguments reach a smaller audience, which does seem like a major disadvantage.

They should put open it up for free to reach the maximum audience, but to compensate for the lost revenue they could get a company to fund the article in exchange for prominently placing an image or text about said company ...

Also disabling JS works.

And if that is a hassle my little hack to selectively view pages with js disabled works great here https://noscript.it/?p=0#https://www.economist.com/business/...

"Social networks are not the only medium allowing the group that advertisers most covet—the better-off with money to splurge—to wriggle beyond their reach"

I wonder what the median disposable income of people who use archive links to circumvent paywalls is?