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I signed, but let’s be honest.

A pie chart showing the times I used the wayback machine to read an old NYT article vs the times I visited it due to a highly upvoted top HN comment linking to a relatively new article so we all can bypass the paywall is a solid circle.

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Would you have paid NYT to view the article if there weren't an archived copy? I doubt it.

I would pay a small amount to read one article but I’m not going to subscribe. Who offers that?

Blendle, Scroll, Flattr and several others have attempted this. It turns out no consumer actually wants to do this, it’s primarily an idea that’s invoked on HackerNews to defend not subscribing to journalism while using ad blockers, it’s not a real business model.

How much do they charge per article? If it's above 10 cents or so, I can't imagine it being a reasonable price.

> Would you have paid NYT to view the article if there weren't an archived copy?

That’s how I signed up to The Atlantic. I wanted to read the Signalgate reporting. There are other publications which get upvoted here frequently that have the paywall workarounds. I generally click around their paywall.

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