An aside:
Why bother submitting paywalled articles? Why bother upvoting paywalled articles? > 95% of readers probably don't have access.
Not being facetious, I genuinely want to know. Do people upvote without reading? Will almost everyone take the effort to throw the link into a paywall buster? Do many HN readers subscribe to paywalled sources?
Edit: if it doesn't work try again in a private/incognito tab to make sure it's all fresh cookies
So depending on the http-origin header the article is paywalled or not.
This is a trick I always use, it works for many newspapers.
It's not a big deal, I can use the archive link or just not read it, all those articles are merely of the "mildly interesting" category anyway. Not to mention that they are 90+% fluff and the core message could usually be summarized with a few sentences.
I am curious though, given that this is HN, does anyone know how they are doing that paywall tracking these days? It is not just NYT where the fresh incognito window no longer works to get around the restriction. Washington Post too, for example, at least for me.
Every time anyone complains you get the backlash of "if you want good journalism you have to pay for it", yet few can afford to subscribe to more than one or two publications and yet we have to suffer paywalled links from all of them. For me, the one UK publication I pay for is enough (and that one is, ironically, not even paywalled).
We solved it for music. We need the same for journalism.
Microtransactions never took off, so that leaves one option: journalism companies need to stop having their own websites and instead publish to an aggregator (or aggregators) that handle payment and monetization. Spotify or Netflix for news.
But perhaps that would turn them into an even lower margin business with no ownership of their own audience relationship. Doesn't seem like a fun business to be in.
Nevertheless, it's still a distribution and friction problem.
My cool idea would be an aggregator that charges people a subscription fee to participate and read stories. $100/month and extremely heavy (paid) moderation that forces people to engage with the articles. The price point helps get rid of anyone who is unwilling to participate constructively. Revenue-sharing for commenters as well.
Make it the place where real discussions happen. People are social creatures and want to join exclusive clubs.
They are explicitly permitted, as long as there are workarounds.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#:~:text=Are%20payw...
Though I wish submitters would provide the workaround (or gift link) too when submitting (I try to do so). It’s often someone else who does it. Though in fairness I guess someone may forget something is paywalled when they’re paying for it and have access.