Seems a bit disingenuous to suggest a paywall when the first thing anyone does on this website with a paywalled article is attempt to bypass. Such a bad faith move to say "use a paywall" and then promptly follow it up with "and I'll try to bypass it to access the content".
If a site wishes to implement a paywall that is their right. If they wish to implement a bypass, that is also just fine. They choose to implement this bypass because they wish to be indexed by Google. So why shouldn't we make use of that intentionally implement bypass?
Do whatever you find ethical. I'm just here to ensure that people are well informed about the fact that paywall vs. ads is actually paywall with no search engine access vs. paywall which people won't pay for vs. ads.
I'm all right with the paywall idea succeeding or failing in a well informed marketplace of ideas.
Some people pay for the paywall. Especially when these people regularly consume your content. People stumbling in from social media (such as HN) are not regular consumers. Big difference, there.
I've got a subscription to LWN, I don't think they really care about being indexed by search engines.
The ability to send interesting articles to non-subscribers with a special link is pretty nice but I understand that it probably wouldn't work as a model for large websites.
If the paywall can't be bypassed a website won't get linked anywhere and will lose most of it's traffic. The biggest media sites in the world struggle to make this model work.
