7 ms·
Ban Pay to View Content on Hacker News?
Example: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207314211015806 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207314211015806
I am sure you are well aware of this. What's the point of hacker news if the pages for many of the links cannot be read without subscription.
I propose some sort of moderated domain blacklist for links.
News should be free.
- tyingq 5y agoThe current system seems to assume that we're all familiar with things like "pasting a doi link into scihub" and "pasting a url into archive.is". I'm not a fan of reg walls and pay walls either, but if we ban content from there, you lose a lot of sources. I suspect it doesn't really come to a decision point while reasonable workarounds exist.
- libeclipse 5y agoFor the URL you mention: https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/10.1177/00207314211015806 https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/10.1177/00207314211015806
- Miner49er 5y agoI think OP's point is that this should have been the link posted, instead of the paywalled link.
- nameisname 5y agoThis link doesn't work for me. Invalid certificate and then some cisco page.
- libeclipse 5y agoYour ISP or some intermediate router is blocking it Try visiting it using Tor
- jefftk 5y ago> News should be free How do you propose news be funded?
- ixtli 5y agoPublicly, for instance. I think this is bad faith because it’s clear OP means it should be free at point of use. I doubt they’re arguing the people who create it shouldn’t be compensated. There are many ways to do this.
- endisneigh 5y agoWhy would the government fund news criticizing it, unless you had a different definition of publicly in mind?
- throwaway277360 5y agoExactly. If the King paid for the newspaper, he would de-fund them if they reported news that went against the King. The fourth estate must remain independent.
- pietrovismara 5y agoThe same exact statement is true for private ownership. The difference is that with public funding you can legislate to prevent governments to interfere with the news outlets. When they are privately owned on the other hand, you have no control over it.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoThe public should not care why its government might not like to fund news criticizing it. Just governments tolerate and respond to criticism.
- tata71 5y agopropublica.org
- pietrovismara 5y agoThe "about us"[0] page is a bit hidden but explains well the concept. - [0]: https://www.propublica.org/about/ https://www.propublica.org/about/
- OneTimePetes 5y agoThe first post below is usually archive.linkname.is something.. Or you can just inspect the paywall away.
- parenthesis 5y agoIt can be interesting and useful to read the comments of those who have been able to read a paywalled article.
- junon 5y agoThis. Usually someone posts an archived link, somehow.
- EastOfTruth 5y agoThis is usually for the soft-paywalls (archival sites are not blocked from viewing the content, sometimes).
- 1cvmask 5y agoInstead of a blacklist there could be a optional paywall indicator when you post a link.
- irchans 5y agoAlternatively, the links to paid sites could be colored differently or marked with a dollar sign. Maybe users could have an option to filter out paywalled links.
- mrspence 5y agoBy act of community voting, paywall articles like that one don't perform as well on Hacker News and therefore get filtered out, correct?
- TimMeade 5y agoI think it should be annotated somewhere. I for one would not click on a link, giving it more exposure, if i knew it was paid. Unless i was already a subscriber of that particular service.
- neltnerb 5y agoYeah, annotation like we do for PDFs or videos seems like a good idea. I certainly don't subscribe to a news source linked just for one article. Though I don't really want to give clicks to the many many articles that are either a direct copy-paste or a trivial commentary about an actual source. Those are worse. At least the paywall is honest, giving ad revenue to a 3rd party presenting content they copy as their own is way worse.
- Ensorceled 5y agoI'm not sure why you are unwilling to provide "exposure" to content that is worthy of being on Hacker News?
- belorn 5y agoIs it worthy to be on hacker news if a majority can't access it? Every time I see this topic being discussed, the general answer is that there has always existed a method to bypassing payment. Top comment (or close to the top) there will be an outline or other bypass being posted. One could make an argument that HN should make a special link, next to the article, where the bypass link can be highlighted. The only risk is that by acknowledging this, HN could be sued for a practice that has so far been standard practice in the last several years.
- 0des 5y agoTagging the paid links is an easy compromise that doesnt result in banning anything. However, it does make me wonder, if the publisher effectively banned me from their content, why should there not be a quid pro quo on behalf of the drivers of clicks. Does anybody know of any instances where a publisher acknowledges that HN sends a fair bit of traffic their way, and when a link is referred via HN it bypasses the wall entirely? That would be smart, and respectful.
- fsloth 5y agoI don't understand why high quality journalism should be free. Free journalism needs to pay for itself, which results mostly in click-bating. I'm sure HN has a large segment of relatively affluent people who are at least curious about high quality content available. And usually some helpful soul has archived the result, and papers with doi are trivial to find from sci-hub (bless her!).
- Maledictus 5y agoI filter links on HN to known paywall sites using uBlock origin.
- scottndecker 5y agoYes, and the people who went out and did the research, took the photos, wrote the stories, and performed the studies should all work for free too. (sarcasm) The example you gave is a study from a journal. Quite a difference from "news" as most would think of it (CNN, Fox, etc) which are free.
- sc90 5y agoDomain blacklisting is a bit harsh, it'd be better to mark a link as paid/free.
- brightball 5y agoNah, don't ban it. I've learned more ways to bypass paywalls from paid stuff being posted here than anywhere else. Keep it coming.
- samizdis 5y agoYour point is a good one, but there are often workarounds for content that is otherwise paywalled. For instance, ft.com content is (mostly) paywalled on its own site, but a fair bit is syndicated elsewhere (sometimes in ArsTechnica, for instance) and searching for a headline often provides an alternative source with no paywall. Other workarounds involve archive services, or, in the case of your example, things like this: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/00207314211015806 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/00207314211015806 Elsewhere, HN readers sometimes provide relevant extracts of paywalled articles in comments. Anyhow, those are my thoughts. I don't like being excluded from content, but there are often ways to read it anyway.
- Miner49er 5y agoI think OP's point is why not just post the sci-hub link in the first place? Instead of having users have to go find it themselves.
- detaro 5y ago> What's the point of hacker news if the pages for many of the links cannot be read without subscription. Which is why the site rules explicitly allow paywalled content as long as a paywall workaround exists.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y agoGood idea. I do not agree that all news should be free, but am fine with only posting free links on HN.
- throwawayswede 5y agoI'd agree, but only for journals funded with public money. Otherwise, no, news shouldn't necessarily be free. And this is not "news" exactly. Analysis articles cost money to produce and write, their authors should be allowed to ask for as much money as they see fair (just like how a webdesigner asks for as much as they see fit) then competition takes over and the free market does its thing. Ban those journals that cut both ways in money making, but don't ban paywalled websites. Could possibly be a filter but then that's out of HN's scope. Your best option is to block them yourself (which I already do.)
- ysavir 5y agoThe funny thing is, most of those HN threads have a top comment with a link to an archived/visible copy of the article, making it easier to access that link than if found in other places. Other than that, HN articles are upvoted to the front page, not there naturally, and if enough people are commenting/upvoting, I think that indicated it's worth sharing despite the paywall. And sometimes the best discussion derives from the subject in the headline without any actual relation to the article itself, and I'd hate to lose out on that discussion due to rules or automatic filtering. I know it's frustrating, and I'm been blocked out of reading those articles on HN a daily basis, but I still prefer the status quo to one where those subjects and deriving discussions never have a chance in the first place.
- 0des 5y agoIve chosen not to use archive links. If a publisher uses paywalls, the message is clear.
- sofixa 5y agoThat they prefer not to rely on clickbait, user data and intrusive ads?
- 0des 5y agoPardon me for asking; is this a question?
- sofixa 5y agoKind of. What's the clear message you deduce from a publisher having a paywall?
- 0des 5y ago"This is not content for the greater un-vetted public" in my opinion it squelches the voice of an otherwise informed outsider, and narrows the conversational possibilities to those who agree with the author ostensibly because they pay a subscription. Whether intentional or not, paywalls are ideological filters in outcome.
- ianai 5y agoIf you’re posting something you should have read it enough to give a synopsis for it. So head to the comments and give a breakdown of the key points. Ie the OP should have access to read whatever they post. Yes this is “optimistic” thinking for the internet. But HN can definitely do better.
- pxhb 5y agoI would prefer a paywall flag over an outright ban. News should be free, but we also shouldn’t be ignorant of what’s going on in the world. Ideally (for me) the system would be something like this: -Primary source is used with Paywall flag, and submissions under this flag decay off the front page faster unless there is engagement -HN culture that rewards users with finding alternative free reporting -HN culture that rewards users with providing a good high-level summary of paywalled material
- throaway6942 5y agoThis is a bad idea imo. If not anything the comments are valuable. More than once I subscribed to something based on a article I found on HN. (also usually someone posts a non-paywalled link)
- say_it_as_it_is 5y agoYou cut your nose to spite your face
- spacemanmatt 5y agoI regret that I have but one upboat to give for my country.
- 3pt14159 5y agoI disagree that news should be free, but the present situation is crazy. I'd pay a healthy (~$50?) amount of money per month if there was something that just worked in my browser and paid serious news orgs some percentage of my money without me having to download some stupid news app. I've signed up for various online news sources before, but the experience still sucks because only 0.5% of the news links on places like HN were covered by the subscription.
- neltnerb 5y agoI used to pay for news websites, but then they kept tracking me with cookies and 3rd party javascript anyway. They can have one or the other... I am not doing both and told them so. They're still doing it, but at least I'm not supporting it.
- sofixa 5y agoWeb monetization, the standard, is supposed to cover that precise use case. Sadly it's not exactly popular.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pmontra 5y agoIt should be marked as pay per view. In the case of news there are usually dozen of sources so it's not hard to search for a free one. The submitter should do it IMHO.
- nomilk 5y agoFor paywalled news articles, visit the same page via wayback machine, that solves 99% of the time. For academic articles, scihub gets the example article in about 2 seconds flat... I don't see the issue.
- tomhoward 5y agoHard-paywalled content is banned on HN. Paywalled pages are allowed if there is a workaround, which someone should post in the thread. Nothing should appear on HN that isn't readable by everybody. This has been dang's policy for at least 6 years; it's long been in the guidelines and is re-stated regularly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20workaround&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- notacoward 5y agoI don't think news should be free - making it so leaves publishers beholden to patrons and/or advertisers which is hardly healthy - but I do think it should be friction free. Whether through microtransactions or a common subscription, I should be able to have one account with one monthly payment across all online newspapers, magazines, etc. The current system of every publication having its very own walled garden, its own monthly bill, its own potential for my information to be leaked (meaning that across all of them leaks will be a regular occurrence) is ridiculous. They all shot themselves in the foot by not collaborating on such a system and I feel no pity for them.
- m-p-3 5y agoPersonally I'd be okay of the paywalled content was labelled and could be filtered if desired. Quality journalism deserves to be monetized, and it wouldn't be fair to outright forbid links to those, but a bit of transparency when encountering such a link would be appreciated
- tzs 5y ago1. I have found that 90% of the time the discussion on HN is valuable even if I do not read the linked article. Often this is the case even if the majority of commentators do not read the linked article. There are enough HN commentators who have subscriptions to for-pay sites such as the NYT, the WSJ, the Economist, etc., so that someone usually quotes the main points of the article in their to provide context for their comment here. And there are enough smart and knowledgable commentators on HN that the comment thread often goes off on related matters that were not even in the article. 2. In the case of most journal articles like the one you give as an example, they are usually available for free. They just aren't free on the web. You might have to visit a library that either gets the printed journal or has something like a JSTOR subscription. 3. I'd rather be well informed even if I have to spend a little money to be so than be ignorant for free. If I see that some particular paywalled source gets regularly submitted to HN, those submissions regularly generate interesting and useful discussion, and from the comments of the people in that discussion who have access to the article I can see that it was a high quality article, that provides me with valuable information as to what paywall sources might be worth paying for.
- GeekOTron 5y agoIn this example you can read the abstract for free as well as the references.
- rabboRubble 5y agoRetitled for clarity: Ban Pay-to-View Content...