https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41690454 remains pinned to the top of the thread, so people have the opportunity to read both.
(Actually we usually prefer the best third-party article to press releases, but nothing's perfectly consistent.)
I'm repeatedly seeing A.T. links posted which read "you have been blocked" or similar. Sometimes those resolve later, sometimes not.
HN's policy is that paywalls are permissible where workarounds exist. WSJ is getting close to disabling those workarounds.
The NYTimes similarly tightened its paywall policy a few years ago. A consequence was that its prevalence on the HN front page fell to ~25% of its prior value, with no change in HN policies (as reported by dang), just member voting patterns.
Given the difficulty in encouraging people to read articles before posting shallow-take comments, this is a significant problem for HN, and the increased reliance of media sites on paywalls is taking its toll on general discussion.
There are literally hundreds of news sites, and many thousands if individual sites, submitted to HN and making the front page annually. It would cost a fortune, not merely a small one, to subscribe to all of these.
No one has the time to read all of them, so it doesn't really matter if it would also be unaffordable.
HN takes pride in being both a single community and discussing a wide range of sources. Wider adoption of subscriber paywalls online would be inimical to both aspects.