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Browser Extension to Bypass Media Sites Paywalls
- janandonly 4y agoBrilliant. I will be testing this, starting now....
- polyterative 4y agoIf prices had been better, I would've been a subscriber for a long time
- a3w 4y agoFor me, the internet works like this: you find a link on social media. A cookie banner or paywall prevents me from reading the article. So I read the comments section. Nice shooting yourself in the foot, original content creator.
- brk 4y agoAgreed. Same goes for online streaming content. I'll pay up to $50/mo in total for media subscriptions (eg: Netflix). I won't pay $19.99 for 8 individual services that each have 1 or 2 things worth watching and then a bunch of filler (Netflix is continually heading this direction, IMO). I have no issues at all paying for content, but I really only want to pay for the things that interest me directly, not a bundle of shows that have no personal appeal. And there is a disincentive to have too many services in general.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y agoI like having a lot of choices. I don't want to be stuck with one conglomerate service that just absorbs everything else Disney style.
- sofixa 4y ago> Netflix is continually heading this direction It's not really their choice. Most of the content owners have their own competing service now, so Netflix need content. Small amounts of good quality content won't keep people subscribed for long, so they need quantity and quality.
- dawnerd 4y agoIf they all didn't end up being low effort press-release regurgitations I might subscribe to more as well.
- slowmotiony 4y agoI was a subscriber to NYT until I wanted to cancel and there was no option to do that, you had to call some number in the US and explain yourself to some guy about why you want to cancel your subscription. Learned my lesson there, never again.
- shp0ngle 4y agoMe too. This is why I just subscribe to Substack now. Yes they try to subtly pressure you in ux to “just pause”, but that’s nothing compared to NYT “please call this US line”.
- xdfgh1112 4y agoSame. Left a really bad impression. Their shitty pricing model too, charging people $100s/year until they try to cancel then reducing it down to like $30/year.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoWhenever they have an online help chat with a human and they tell me to call, I tell them I deaf. It's not true but they have always just done the cancellation for me. YMMV
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ledauphin 4y agosomebody please solve micropayments.
- brk 4y agoIt would be a real joy if there were a way to tip for good content. (for those that don't get the joke: https://techcrunch.com/2009/08/20/tipjoy-heads-to-the-deadpool/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/08/20/tipjoy-heads-to-the-deadpo...)
- ryandvm 4y agoI feel like Brave came pretty close with the Basic Attention Token, but not many web sites enrolled. Hell, last time I checked HN wasn't even set up on it (why not? what's the down side?).
- pedro2 4y agoNo idea. People don't really like to tip. It must be automatic. Maybe BAT & Coil are onto something.
- janandonly 4y agoEver heard of Alby [1] to pay from the browser? Now, if you must have a paywall[2], that extension makes it possible to pay. [1] https://getalby.com https://getalby.com [2] https://lnpay.co https://lnpay.co
- tootie 4y agoNo publication would survive on micropayments per article. If they built a perfect UX flow, nobody would adopt it.
- ryandvm 4y agoHN cracks me up. We are largely a demographic of people that make money from selling our IP and yet for some reason many of us are pretty brazen about our efforts to circumvent payment for others' IP. I'll admit that I incognito my way around a paywall from time to time, but I at least have the decency to feel kinda salty about it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tablespoon 4y ago> HN cracks me up. We are largely a demographic of people that make money from selling our IP and yet for some reason many of us are pretty brazen about our efforts to circumvent payment for others' IP. Eh, that's not really correct. Most of us actually make money from creating IP for others to own, so it's not nearly as hypocritical as you imply. IMHO, the brazenness is cultural momentum from the expectations formed during the heady 90s "information wants to be free" period and the resulting long period where paywalls were rare. Honestly, it probably would have been better for everyone if everything had been pay-walled from the beginning.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago> Most of us actually make money from creating IP for others to own, so it's not nearly as hypocritical as you imply. Actually, I think most of us provide services, and it is a big mix. > many of us are pretty brazen about our efforts to circumvent payment for others' IP. Let me start with a link on Elsevier https://openatcuny.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2015/05/20/elsevier-ever-more-evil/ https://openatcuny.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2015/05/20/elsevier-e... Much of what is said about Elsevier, the worst offender, is true to a lesser extent in other paywalls. I don't believe that paywalls are Moral, Ethical, or Fair. I also believe that paywalls can be discrimatory, and deceptive. This goes along with a general critique I have of IP. Paywalls regularly use others' content, without compensating them. In many cases, content thieves likes Elsevier take content that is funded by our tax dollars, and hide it behind paywalls, or expensive subscriptions. I paid for that. This is stealing from me. IP is really a fake term that conflates a number of things, some of which are just ideas or math. It also regularly cheats basic things like "Right of First Sale" through BS such as licensing/bundling/etc Paywalls regularly permit search engines to index their content, but when you go to see the content that was openly indexed, they block you, and hit you up for funding. This is a bait & switch. Some paywalls vacillate between business models intentionally to get your personal data, sell it, while using ads, then go full paywall after the sale has already been made of info. I think there is a social contract underpinning communications, that we were always free to redistribute them. But the "Communication thieves" Paywalls don't want that through the cottage industry that grew to exploit these gaps. If we think of the negative impacts of all these paywalls to the 3rd world and increasing digitization, talk about a horrible digital divide emerging? Signed, Militant Anti-Paywall Revolutionary
- sciguy77 4y agoFYI, I was still blocked by WaPo's paywall after the first article, even though this extension is showing itself as on in Chrome (tried restart to no avail).
- mint2 4y agoChrome > dev tools > network > article payload. Interestingly NYT has a hiring add in the console
- DawsonBruce 4y agoReader View on my phone usually does the trick, however, sites seem to be catching onto that.
- jcranberry 4y agoAd-driven churnalist/click-bait journalism, here we come.
- ig-88ms 4y agoWe've been there for years.
- tootie 4y agoNah, this would just be death. Paywalls arose from the decline in ad revenue and I doubt much of that is coming from ad blockers. Ads just aren't worth as much. Paywall/subscriber model is the only want to be and a huge swath of publications already can't generate enough subs to survive. Others are getting swallowed up by private equity. If you evade paywalls too, then they'll just cease publication.
- trevcanhuman 4y agoThe iOS Safari Reader view does - most of the time- the trick for me. Disabling javascript altogether (in Safari) works like a charm, at least for NYT articles.
- InvaderFizz 4y agoI have an iOS shortcut[0] to clear the cookies and then uses google to get a referral link back to the page. Works for a lot of sites, doesn't work for others. Someone else created it, I just added a check for medium.com headers(even on non-medium domains) to then search on Twitter for that URL, as Twitter referrals usually bypasses medium paywalls. 0: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/5870106a5a8b4f15b937f40b731f5945 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/5870106a5a8b4f15b937f40b731...
- con 4y agoCool! Good chance that was mine which I posted on HN and Reddit! Great that you further improved it! Thanks for sharing!
- InvaderFizz 4y agoLooks like it was, thanks!
- newfonewhodis 4y agoI'll probably get downvoted into oblivion but I gotta put this out here: I understand adblocking because of how absolutely garbage ad networks are for privacy (and to some extent device performance). But I can't help and compare mass bypassing paywalls of news sites to jumping the pike on a transit network. Some people should probably do it (who really can't afford subscriptions) but generally HN audience is well paid and can afford to support their sources of news. I know people here will come up with ~~reasons~~ excuses for justifying this theft, but it just reinforces the entitled nature of well-paid tech workers in my mind. Go pay for your news.
- xenocratus 4y agoThat's not a legitimate comparison of the situation, because if you can bypass the paywall to be able to read it usually means the data is already on your device for you to read in the first place, it's just "hidden" in some shitty way. I would compare it with a physical newspaper company sending you the newspaper covered in some tamper-resistant material that lets you read the first rows only. I see no reason why you shouldn't try to tamper with that cover given that you effectively own it now. Go full "log in to read this" (by which I mean only sending the data you intend EVERYONE to read even when the user is not logged in) and then it's a fair comparison. EDIT: > I know people here will come up with ~~reasons~~ excuses for justifying this theft, but it just reinforces the entitled nature of well-paid tech workers in my mind. I think the industry that has given rise to shitty paywallish implementations should justify themselves as well, then. NB: I pay/have paid for news sources, including ones that I appreciated but had literally no time to read. However, this sort of approach to "protecting IP" is particularly stupid, so I feel no remorse bypassing it (I do it manually, though, it's more satisfying).
- wetpaws 4y agoI'm fine with idea paying for news, but I'm not fine when 99% of links I click are paywalled.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- boplicity 4y ago
- acd 4y agoWho pays for journalism writing news if you bypass the paywall?
- chihuahua 4y agoJeff Bezos, at least in the case of the Washington Post.
- AussieWog93 4y agoAdvertisers.
- latchkey 4y agoPlease note that this version got replaced by another version [1]. Apparently there was some drama [2] around Google Analytics tracking in the first one. [1] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean [2] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean/-/issues/1 https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean...
- justanorherhack 4y agoHuh I was annoyed when I went to open a ticket rexently and the original repo was locked..
- markovbot 4y agoWow, sneaking Google Analytics into an extension like this? Some people really have no morals
- strongpigeon 4y agoThat's rather uncharitable. They most likely just want to get some usage data. It's ignoring the privacy concerns that come with GA, which isn't great, but saying they have no morals is more than a stretch.
- moffkalast 4y agoThen they should read comments on the extension page lol, not spy on people.
- sofixa 4y agoGoogle Analytics is not spyware, it just counts users, OSes, browsers, page views. It doesn't identify users personally ( you could if you knew the only person with a Chromebook in a city, but that's about as granular as it could get). As can be seen by any statistic - be it the download/rate/comment ratios on any of the mobile app stores, or the Chrome extension stores, the vast majority of users will stay silent. Wanting to know a tiny bit about them is understandable.
- martingxx 4y agoAlthough I am fortunate enough to be able to afford to subscribe to almost anything I might want to read, I don't like the idea of paywalls in general. I believe they exclude the less fortunate from access to important resources, so I refuse to give my money to companies that use paywalls, because I see that as rewarding bad behaviour. Instead, I always pay for sites I find valuable that don't have paywalls (e.g., guardian.co.uk) I realise this isn't the same view that everyone has, which is fine. Vote with your money.
- ziffusion 4y ago
- xdfgh1112 4y agoPaywalls seem to work but at the cost of restricting access to a large group of people. It is evident from sites like Eurogamer, Wikipedia and The Guardian that a more patreon-like "supporter" model can work just as well without annoying people.
- rat9988 4y agoBefore paywalls newspapers tried free access for all and it didn't work. People always find a reason to justify why they don't want to pay.
- martingxx 4y agoFor some newspapers it _is_ working, so clearly it can work. If some newspapers haven't figured out how to make open access work, but that's a problem with those newspapers, not with open access.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago> I believe they exclude the less fortunate from access to important resources, so I refuse to give my money to companies that use paywalls, because I see that as rewarding bad behaviour. I agree with what you wrote but I think it is an understatement. The good fortune of spending an amount of years in a great coastal community with an excellent library system; those primarily physical assets I used as a child are now mainly digitized. Where does that leave much of the world that cannot afford these exploitative paywalls? This is truly a diversity & inclusion issue about providing the same 100 steps forward many of us were fortunate to receive, to everyone. Our tax dollars already funded much of it anyways. We cannot permit the unjust enrichment of paywall tyranny!
- janandonly 4y agoThis is why we can not have nice things online.... Why not implement a paywall that lets you pay for an article? The tech already exists, see [1] and [2]. And if you feel bad about leaving your credit card details somewhere, you could use a plugin like Alby [3]. [1] https://lnpay.co https://lnpay.co [2] https://coil.com https://coil.com [3] https://getalby.com https://getalby.com
- godmode2019 4y agoBecause a very small amount of the articles are worth paying for, so they bundle the product together to with all the low quality articles that no one will pay for.
- Cypher 4y ago
- culi 4y agoAnd how will I know if an article was worth paying for until I've already read it? This might work with a site I frequent and have grown to trust but most of the views on most articles aren't regulars of the publication itself but probably got there because it was shared or came up as a search result
- dclusin 4y agoDue to interchange fees on the major processing networks it is not practical to charge less then $1. Fees per charge are something like 30 cents plus percentage of transaction.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- strongpigeon 4y agoIt is a tricky situation. On the one hand, subscription models are great as they don't incentivize flashy click-bait as much and reward steady, high-quality content. On the other hand, you don't know whether a publication is worth subscribing to until you've sampled some of their content. The "free-articles-then-paywall" model seems to be working for a lot of publications to tackle this and get people to pay, but when your limit is 1 article a month, you can't be too shocked if people go around it. I like the idea of TechCrunch free + paid content, but I wonder how it's working for them.
- mvexel 4y agoWorth noting that at least in the United States, your public library likely provides free access to some paywalled / subscription sites. Mine has NYT, WSJ, Consumer Reports and a bunch of others.
- gnicholas 4y agoThis used to be a good option for me (in Silicon Valley), but when I last checked this option was much less attractive. Previously you could sign up for a 1-year pass; now it's something like a week.
- mvexel 4y agoThey definitely don't make it super convenient. With NYT I have to jump through the same hoop every day, with WSJ about once a week. On the plus side, it helps make the decision to read an article (or the news at all) more deliberate.
- CrazyCatDog 4y agoIt’s usually a limited number of passes, so when customer k+1 requests access, customer 1 gets dropped. I don’t tell anyone about my library’s resources—they’re great, and so are the ones 2 counties up ;)
- googlryas 4y agoHow is that provided? Do they get their IP address whitelisted or something? I imagine it isn't just a library account logged into those sites.
- mvexel 4y agoTypically, you log in to your library web site, they will give you a magic link to the paywalled web site which then gives you a 'subscription' that is good for the day.
- rickreynoldssf 4y agoWhy isn't this in the Chrome store? There's other extensions that integrate with 12ft.io in the Chrome store (e.g. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/12ft-free/ljgfopbnjccdcbmaanglicbcbhndoofa https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/12ft-free/ljgfopbn...) so there's no rules against this kind of thing. So I wonder what this extension in particular is doing that Google wouldn't approve of. ...also 12ft.io already does this for almost every paywalled site.
- gnicholas 4y agoI believe 12ft.io's extension has an opt-out, so many popular sites are blocked from its functionality.
- greymalik 4y ago12ft.io has a very low success rate for anything I’ve tried.
- moffkalast 4y agoYeah it's a bit of a one trick pony as the dev explains on the home page, and that trick has long been patched by most sites.
- nijave 4y agoAfaik there's issues on GitHub talking about both Chrome and Mozilla addon stores. I think the add-ons used to be split by browser so might be in an older repo issues Edit: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/issues/25 https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/issues/...
- Cypher 4y agoI find the main media sites hardly worth bothering with anymore
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sk8terboi 4y agoThat's pretty cool but I don't ever go to those sites. I guess that's a +1 for me!
- moneywoes 4y agoAny idea for mobile?
- NoGravitas 4y agoI have this one (https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean) installed in Firefox for Android. You do have to jump through a few hoops because it's not on the recommended list.
- vasili111 4y agoCould you please give information about "few hooks"? I need to install add9n that is not on recommended list.
- hoppyhoppy2 4y agoThese instructions work on either Firefox Nightly for Android (through Google Play Store) or Fennec F-Droid (through the F-Droid store). They won't work on regular Firefox for Android. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
- gnicholas 4y agoInsight Browser (a YC company!) has an iOS browser that supports extensions. I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for someone to take this extension and port it to their platform.
- jaimehrubiks 4y agoFor Android, use Kiwi browser (basically chrome) and install it. It works great
- tinytuna 4y agoOrion Browser on iOS supports Chrome and Firefox extensions
- jimbob456 4y agoAnother one: https://txtify.it/ https://txtify.it/ Remember, these paywalled sites are inviting in the Google Webcrawler to add to the index EVERYBODY searches; they are purposely poisoning Google's results with paid for content. Any bypasser that either present fake credentials [ie as the google bot] or returns the contents of the Google cache is fair game.
- N3mor 4y agoUsing uBlock Origin - Advanced Settings, I have been blocking inline scripts and bypassing Paywalls.
- AussieWog93 4y agoA couple of comments here talking about how this is piracy, none discussing the fact that paywalls are a completely broken business model in an era where sharing information with your friends/online communities is so important. Back in the day, with physical paper, if you wanted to discuss an article with someone you'd simply hand them the paper and point. Now, people simply don't share paywalled articles, or if they do someone will comment an archived link immediately. As Gabe Newell once said, "piracy is almost always a service problem". If the media companies started delivering the product in a way that people actually want the problem of piracy would disappear overnight. Just shooting the shit, but $x a month to read the paper, with a button to generate un-paywalled links to share with friends and family, and $y a month for a "thought leader" version that lets you generate un-paywalled links with unlimited circulation would let people consume and share news the way they actually want to while still being monetisable. Trying to charge everyone who looks at your article in an era where success is defined by virality is just dumb.
- pmontra 4y agoMaybe this is what people want but maybe it isn't. I'm not paying a subscription because I find the news I want to read for free anyway. There are a zillion sites reporting exactly the same things.
- pxc 4y agoI think that kind of thing works better for magazines or journals, where coverage arrives more slowly but the analyses and writing are less redundant between publications (and sometimes even meaningfully unique).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cronix 4y agowhenever I hit a paywall I just copy the url into archive.is.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoHow many of these "paywalls" are reliant on Javascript and/or cookies. From a quick glance I can attest that almost all of them show no "paywall" in a text-only browser that does not support Javascript. I would be very curious about any "paywalls", i.e, deliberate annoyances directed at non-subscribers viewing public, non-password protected content, that are not reliant on Javascript and/or cookies.
- known 4y ago[dead]