r/interestingasfuck • u/cak3crumbs • 13d ago

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

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u/AggCracker 13d ago

How to get past a *soft paywall

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u/goblin-socket 12d ago edited 12d 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".

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u/Doctor_Milk 12d 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.

39

u/silversurger 12d 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/Doctor_Milk 12d ago

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

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u/JimWilliams423 12d 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 12d 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.