this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Why YSK: Information should be free and open for all

Copy and paste the article URL into https://archive.is/ and view an archived version, thus bypassing the paywall

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These are the ones I use -

  • archive.is/archive.ph the one mentioned in the main post and one that is most effective out of all the options

  • 12ft Ladder - What I like about 12ft.io is that once it gets rid of the paywall, it makes sure the website stays as the mobile site (if you're using your phone), whilst archive.ph uses the desktop form by default. However, 12ft.io does not work as well as archive.ph

  • Remove Paywall - Even more limited than 12ft.io, but it's another alternative. As the site says, make sure to add RemovePaywall.com/ ahead of the URL if you want to copy the unpaywalled link.

  • Chip - The most limited option out of all four, I think. Another disadvantage is that I don't think you can copy the unpaywalled version's link, unlike the others.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

+1 on archive.is/archive.ph

You copy the URL to the paywalled article, paste it in archive. In most cases, someone else has already archived it already and it's ready to view.

I also use Bypass Paywalls for Firefox in the browser, this takes care of less intrusive paywalls - for the big boys (big news orgs) the archive.is solution is the best.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is also https://12ft.io/ as well as the “Bypass Paywalls” extension in Firefox

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

12ft doens't always work for me for some reason, depends on the site. But I've never had archive not work. But yes there are many options

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

12ft had a few months of being great, but I think they ended up selling out or giving in to legal pressure, and doesn't do anything on several major news outlets anymore

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's my experience, as well. It worked great for a while but I have no luck with it anymore

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Archive.is is useful, for sure. Another option that I have used for a long time is BypassPaywalls. It works on Firefox, as well as Chromium based browsers. https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I am a fan of that extension as well. There is a fork, sometimes one works better than the other https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just as a side note (and I'm not advocating for anything, I just think it's good for people to think things through and have the full picture), the reason why many publications went to a subscription model is that so many people started using ad blockers. The publications have staff who want to be paid for the job they do, and other expenses like server infrastructure. They used to pay for all of that by selling ads on their sites, but then people found ways to avoid seeing ads, so the advertisers didn't want to pay for them anymore.

So the publications had a choice between shutting their doors or charging a subscription, and many chose the latter. Now people are using techniques like this to avoid the subscriptions. The publications will either have to figure out a more effective paywall, come up with a different business model, or go out of business.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, it's a weird one. We got used to the fact that everything is pretty much free on the internet. Unfortunately, nothing is free, we either pay with out personal data, watching and interacting with ads or through subscriptions and paywals.

There is just no incentive for people to provide good content on the internet unless they have other means of sustaining themselves or they charge for it.

For instance, there is so much free stuff thanks to developers making their hard work open source. However, they are only able to do it because even if they are not getting payed for this, either they have a job that pays for other work they do or they have access to other means of financial support like family for instance. And I am not saying that much of open source (not all) is not essentially people giving away their hard work for free but I am saying that if the choice was to make some program for free and go hungry or charge for it and have a meal then we all know what it would look like.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Almost makes it seem like a UBI would be a good way to support the people who do work that no one wants to actually pay for (usually because the people avoiding payment aren't getting paid enough in the first place)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I wish the micropayments model people were proposing twenty years ago had taken off. I don’t have any interest in subscribing to The New York Times, for example, because I just don’t read it very much, but I wouldn’t object to paying a few cents every time I happened to read one of their articles.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

On Firefox, usually reader mode ignores paywalls. It is also nice for showing pages in a standard format, ignoring the styles of the site, which is nice for sites with crap layouts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

+1. I accidentally stumbled upon that one day and it's been great since then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I stumbled into this the other day. It's awesome!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you please add a "Why YSK:"? It's rule #2. Thank you. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anyone else from Reddit feeling weird seeing this exchange?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m from Reddit; why is this weird?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because of how civil it is compared to reddit maybe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

oh yeah now I get it. I think my question would have just been downvoted there...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ll also add a real simple first step: view in incognito. So many sites will show full article if viewed in incognito it’s always worth a try.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In my experience that loophole has largely been closed. It used to work all the time for me, but these days rarely does.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Also check out bypass paywalls clean for firefox. since installing, I haven't seen a single paywall.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The paywall blocker in Unlock Origin is also quite efficient.

Great advice on archive, really smart work around

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you use uBlock Origin there is an option to toggle JavaScript. This should be sufficient for most of the articles

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's another alternative, I save the article into Pocket and that usually works.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Or Wallabag, an open source alternative for those hearing about Pocket for the first time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of articles load all of the content before the paywall, so another easy (but kind of scuffed) option is to just stop the page from loading after the content has loaded but before the paywall has

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's some real quick draw skill for a lot of people with good computers/phones and gigabit speed internet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Hahaha you got me there! This little hack may be more feasible for those with shoddy xfinity internet like myself

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reader view in mobile Safari often works. As does switching to a private window. Failing that Google usually has a cache if archive.is doesn't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Same in Firefox. And if you only get the preview in reader mode, refresh after you are in reader mode.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A lot of paywalls disappear when you turn off javascript. I use a plugin that adds a button to quickly toggle javascript for specific web pages. It works for a large percentage of paywalled articles. On the few paywalled sites where I actually use javascript, it is easy to just turn it back on again when needed. The plugin I use is JavaScript Switcher, but there are others out there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's nice to know. There's also "reader mode" built right into Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I did not know about reader mode. It seems that it is unavailable for some websites, so it can still be useful to switch off JavaScript in those cases.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Or you can also use google translate

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Share2Archive https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navasgroup.share2archive&hl=en_US&gl=US is a handy Android app which adds a Share target to open the site in archive.today. It saves some time from copying/pasting the URL on mobile.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's awesome! Sad it's not compatible with a pixel 6 pro for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There's also txtify.it, which bypasses paywalls and reduces the content down to plaintext. It looks like butt in Chrome (due to Chrome's poor handling of plaintext sites), but Firefox does a better job. Works like 12ft.io, just replace the https:// at the start of your URL with txtify.it/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Removepaywall.com is another option

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