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a lot of newspapers are no longer free - even to read one story

I have beaten a few newspaper paywalls, most importantly to me, the Washington Post, by doing this:

putting the title of the story into google along with Washington Post

then clicking on the story from the google link

it has worked most of the time


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“Beating the paywall” is a nice way of saying that you’re stealing their content. It’s their prerogative to charge readers.

Just because the back door of a movie theater is open doesn’t mean you’re allowed to walk in and watch movies for free.

^^^senior alert shaking fists on the porch and not returning errant balls in his yard

It’s not the same because he’s not doing anything illegal or against the rules. Certainly, the websites can block content even if accessed through a search engine but they aren’t doing that. They would rather have the clicks in the hopes people will want to read other articles and pay for them.

It’s more like if a movie theater offered one free movie in the hopes you’ll enjoy your experience enough to pay for an additional movie. Some will pay, others won’t. The movie theater knows this.

I read it first as 'best newspaper paywalls' and thought to myself, what an odd tip of the cap.

I can't remember if it's the NY times or the washington post, but one of em you can get by the paywall if hackernews is the referrer

there are also browser extensions that will work on lots of these sites, they auto log you in with dummy accounts since some of them let you read X free articles a month or whatever.

I started throwing money at some of these tho, because it's become increasingly clear that real journalists are something we desperately need and are becoming in shorter and shorter supply and will likely continue to do so.

A yearly subscription to the Washington post online is $39. Congratulations master thief.

Black Friday or Cyber Monday Thanksgiving seems like I get email offers for much cheaper.

I don't mind ad blocking too much, but dickheads on reddit who copy paste whole articles is definitely stealing and hurting the fourth estate.

WSJ has a top tier one.

I heard newspapers really make their money in concessions sales.

Sick upcharge on popcorn with the "fake" butter.

For a while anyway I think you got to read the WaPo free if you had Amazon Prime. Been a while since I've tried it tho.

You just realised this now - this has been a trick that has been around for half a dozen years or more. Anyway I believe Google has to pay for showing this content to the publisher.

I don't care how high they promote you. This level of posting is unacceptable!

It's not stealing, and neither is old people stealing batteries...

what's unfortunate is people have to pay to access the real journalists, yet the quantity of free opinion pieces pretending to be journalism are countless.
the people who aren't willing to pay for journalism are most likely the ones that should be reading it.

Have the newspapers tried a package deal where you get access to all of them for one price? I would probably go for 10 bucks a month for every newspaper.

The Athletic is generally well worth the cost. In a landscape of sports "journalists" competing to give the hottest takes to try to out shout stephen a smith, it's a very welcome oasis of actual journalism and stories.

I sure as **** am not paying $5for Sacremento Bee or whatever shithole city for one article. They need to figure this out.

Firefox reader thing still works for most of dumbass sites.

I like this idea

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I'm the OP



here's an update on my activities as a "thief" which one poster called me and another implied

after further playing around with it I realized it was the Post's intention to do this if you come from an outside link - it's a tease - and after reading 2 articles you get hit with the paywall again

if you want to further your criminal activity you can simply clear your history and cookies - then go back to a link and click and get 2 more stories for free - and continue the process until you've read everything you want to

but if for example you're doing this in the library - be careful - somebody might see you and call the cops

other criminal activities by yours truly - I'm a frequent jaywalker - I've jaywalked city streets for decades and I've never been apprehended -

when you live the criminal lifestyle as I do - it's fun to tell your story - I'm waiting to be offered a book deal which I think will be coming real soon

it feels really good to come clean after all these years -


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Jaywalking isn't the same thing.

Someone was paid to write this article, or is being compensated for it based on the number of subscriptions it sells. You are directly stealing their work to save yourself pennies.

Think about how you'd feel if every time you made fries for someone, someone posted "hey, you know what, you can just walk behind the counter and take them without paying when they're not looking". Once enough people start doing it, you're out of a job.

This. And it’s nice not being a 2021 news junkie clearing their cookies 50x a day. I’d have no cookies left.

If you care about people in the world like any part of them pay Rupert Murdoch $5 right now and read the Facebook Files series in the Wall Street journal. The combined information in those 5 articles, if you step back and think about it, is a truly terrifying situation that controls a large part of the world. I’m OK with paying the reporter who got their hands on those papers.

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on the subject of newspapers IMO the NYT is by far the country's best paper
and yes I do pay to subscribe to them
yes, they have a left wing bias - but so many of their stories are really not political

they have correspondents all over the world
tons of detail - stories about faraway places and people I never knew existed

they are, again IMO, one of the great things this country has to offer

I have no doubt many here will disagree - that's okay

not trying to convince anyone to stray from Fox and Rupert__________just sayin'

people change their opinions of things very seldom in the modern world
no matter how strong an opposing point of view might be


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