The upvote system should naturally solve this problem. Articles that people can't read won't get updoots. Because nobody would vote on something before at least reading the article, right? Right?

Because? I subscribe to WSJ - so I can read this just fine. I don’t see why you can’t as well if you find the content interesting. It’s the same with academic journals, people are just sharing what’s interesting and that just so happens to be behind a paywall.

If you remove all paid content you would just have blogs left eventually… And all they’re doing is just paying for the content and regurgitating it.