This has come up a few times before, so in case you don't know

[conuly]

it is trivially easy to bypass most paywalls. Seriously, coders aren't exactly bringing their a-game when it comes to designing those.

I, personally, use Bypass Paywalls in my browser and that works pretty well and now I pretty much never think about paywalls ever. However, if it doesn't work, or if I'm using some other computer for some reason, I find that 99% of the time or more a paywall can be bypassed by doing one of two things: hitting esc the second the text loads or using the archive.today link. If those don't work, I still can probably bypass the paywall by turning off javascript, opening the page in a different browser or in a private window, or - if I'm really determined to see this article and they actually have a functioning paywall - paying the ransom. (I mean, I assume that last thing works, I've never actually tried it myself.)

Paywalls are a joke, just not a very good one.

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Comments

[ioplokon]

Also, changing your user agent to Googlebot almost always works.

[conuly]

One more option!

[elf]

It's not difficult to make Hard To Break Paywalls. It's just... if they're hard for the general public to bypass, they're more hassle for the paying subscribers, more hassle for the bits to show up on Google, and so on. So there's basically an awareness and decision that the paywalls are designed to keep out most people, especially the ones susceptible to a pitch of "Isn't this awesome? Don't you want to read the rest? SUBSCRIBE NOW!!!"

I also have a suspicion that there are plenty of paywall coders who are dutifully reporting to the higher-ups, "um, sorry, dude, this is the best we can do."

(They are either lying or mistaken. Netflix manages a very robust paywall. The way to see Netflix content without paying is "borrow a login," not "crack the script." But of course... Netflix doesn't want Google showing intro clips to all their content.)

[conuly]

I have your same suspicion....

[nancylebov]

htpps:/12ft.io/[url] also works.

[conuly]

You have to use HTML on Dreamwidth.

[thewayne]

I hadn't heard of that, thanks! Most of the time a private browser tab works, and I usually have at least two browsers on any given machine, so that's also a fallback for me.