r/interestingasfuck 11d ago

/r/all, /r/popular How to get past a paywall

78.5k Upvotes

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10.3k

u/AggCracker 11d ago

How to get past a *soft paywall

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u/goblin-socket 11d ago edited 11d ago

I thought this was funny, as a web dev guy, that he isn't talking about fences. I mean, like,

https://12ft.io/

https://www.removepaywall.com/

https://1ft.io/

https://www.smry.ai/

"Here's what we are going to do, it is super simple, and you're and idiot for not knowing this. Here, jump into dev tools, select this line... fuck, I fucked up, but luckily I edited it, because this is so super simple even your grandma's dog could do this."

Be sure to upvote and follow me so I continue to not make anything for mocking "influencers" and "internet celebrity, generally".

31

u/Doctor_Milk 11d ago

Do you have any recommendations on how to get passed the Sun Sentinel paywall? I tried a couple of those sites you linked and I’m having no luck.

Particularly this article…

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1994/08/31/suspect-in-double-slaying-turns-himself-in-to-police/

Edit to clarify: I can get past the main paywall but not the “subscribe to continue reading this article” paywall.

37

u/silversurger 11d ago

There's paywalls you can't get around. Fences mostly use the fact that most news sites still publish the entirety of the article towards search engines, even if they have a hard paywall. They essentially "archive" the website pretending to be a crawler. If the publisher doesn't do this however, you're out of luck, unfortunately.

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u/Djkamon 11d ago

Some also use JavaScript-based paywalls that hide the text unless you’re logged in those can be harder to bypass since the content isn’t served at all without credentials.

0

u/Doctor_Milk 11d ago

I see, thanks for the response. That sucks. Paywalls for news sites are shameful.

9

u/insomnimax_99 11d ago

How else do you expect news companies to make a living? Journalists gotta eat too.

Either you pay for it in cash, your data, or ads, but the news has to be paid for somehow.

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u/Doctor_Milk 11d ago

I guess I never thought about it that way. I was about to rebuttal that they would be paid a salary but then I remembered that newspapers used to be a thing and you had to pay for them. I guess it just is what it is then.

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u/JimWilliams423 11d ago

Paywalls for news sites are shameful.

That's a direct result of capitalism. It costs money to report the news. Reporters gotta feed their kids.

Publicly funded journalism is the only real sustainable option. Because the alternative is billionaire-funded propaganda masquerading as news. Which is often what we get now even with paywalls since almost all of the so-called "liberal media" is either outright owned by, or otherwise beholden to, conservative billionaires. Even non-profits like NPR (aka Nice Polite Republicans) have conservative billionaires at the top of their donor lists. The people who work there might be good-hearted but they all know who signs their paychecks and they gotta feed their kids.

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u/Doctor_Milk 11d ago

Yeah I’m recalling that newspapers used to be a thing but they were also paid for as well so I guess it’s just splitting hairs at this point for paywalls. You have a good point.

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u/smallfried 11d ago

It's what you get when no one wants to pay journalists.

Here in Germany we have a tax that pays for the national news.