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Comment by nickthegreek | Hacker News Reader

404media articles are no longer accessible to anyone not logged in. I don't believe this can be accessed using archive.org or any other way either. This makes me question their value on HN and make me inclined to flag. Is there something I am missing?

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Do you still have questions after reading the "Learn why we require this here" link? https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-addre...

This is the future, thanks to botnet-as-a-service scrapers as discussed in a different front page entry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39526797

I understand 404media's reason. And I also really enjoyed their work and have submitted them here in the past. It is really cool what this small team is accomplishing and I hear they are already profitable. But HN Guidelines do not like Hardwalled articles[1]. I was wondering if there was a workaround as to lessen likelihood of flagging in the future.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38259246

Requiring an email address to read their content is not going to stop people from AI-cloning it. If all you need to do is provide an email address, then a cloner can do so and then take all their articles and clone them. How will they know which “reader” is the cloner?

Content is dead. The cost to produce it has collapsed to zero. Only novel insights and reporting are worth anything, but as soon as those are released as content they will be reproduced endlessly at near-zero cost.

Good journalism.

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