Learn about the concept of paywalls, their significance in sustaining quality journalism in the digital age, and legal methods for accessing paywalled content.

What is a paywall

Various online content providers, particularly publishers, use paywalls to monetize their digital assets. Paywalls restrict free access to a website's content by requiring users to subscribe or pay a fee. Even though paywalls may seem counterintuitive in the vast, free-access world of the internet, they serve a vital purpose for publishers. As a result of the digital revolution, traditional print media and advertising have significantly decreased in revenue, making it difficult for publishers to sustain quality journalism and content creation. Content creators are adequately compensated for their work through paywalls, enabling them to continue producing high-quality content to meet readers' expectations.

Using the Archive Technique

A previous blog post, "Access paywalled content legally for free" describes a trick for obtaining the full article using an archiving website.

Using a Chrome extension

The Bypass Paywalls extension for Chrome and Firefox allows users to bypass paywalls on selected sites. Download the repository as a ZIP file from GitHub, unzip it, and import the resulting folder into the browser's extensions page while in developer mode to install.

Using Bing Chat

Consider the following article in the New York Times that is behind a paywall: Bipartisan proposals would hit e-commerce like fast fashion. With the above Archive technique, you can easily access the full article on any platform and in any browser.

You probably are not interested in reading the entire article; you want to know what it is about and the most important points.

Go to Bing.com/chat
Sign up for the free service (if you haven’t already)
Then enter this string in the chat window “Summarize this article including all salient points: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/business/ecommerce-shein-us-china-trade.html”

Bing Chat should be instructed to add more content to the above summary if the output is a little too summarized.

In my experience, this technique has been successful 50% of the time (your mileage may vary). You may find the Archive technique or the Chrome plug-in more reliable, but this is yet another tool at your disposal.

Occasionally, Bing AI will say it cannot summarize the content or cannot locate the article, but if you wait 5-10 minutes and try again, it will create the summary.Here is another issue with the Globe and mail

You may also view the summary based on what the publisher allows you to view. For this article, I will use the following example

Perplexity.ai

If so, you may consider using another AI search tool. First, I signed up for Perplexity.AI's free service and used its advanced Co-Pilot mode to summarize the article. In this case, Perplexity provided a better answer.

OpenAI GPT-4

If you have the OpenAI GPT-4 subscription, you may turn on the experimental (beta) web browsing feature and ask it for the summary; in some cases, it will provide an overview where Bing Chat could not provide one.

Conclusion

Despite declining revenues from traditional print media and advertising, paywalls are an important tool for content providers to monetize their digital assets. Even though they may initially appear to be a barrier to the Internet's vast free access culture, they ensure that content creators are compensated fairly, thus maintaining the standard of quality journalism and content creation. Several techniques are available to bypass paywalls, including the Archive Technique, Chrome extensions, and AI services such as Bing Chat, Perplexity.AI, and OpenAI GPT-4. Each method has its strengths and limitations, and their effectiveness may vary. It is therefore recommended that users explore these options and choose the one that best suits their needs. Supporting content creators by paying for high-quality content contributes to high-quality journalism and content sustainability.

Keywords: #Paywalls #DigitalMonetization #ContentCreation #QualityJournalism #OnlinePublishing #BypassPaywalls #InternetAccess #FreeContent #PaidContent #ArchiveTechnique #ChromeExtension #BingChat #PerplexityAI #OpenAIGPT4 #AIAssistance #WebBrowsing #NewsAccess #OnlineSubscription #SupportJournalism #DigitalEconomy #TechSolutions #ContentAccess #DigitalContent #MediaRevenue #OnlineMedia #DigitalJournalism #ContentSubscription #DigitalPublishing #InternetJournalism #AIinJournalism

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The information shared in this blog post is intended purely for educational purposes. The author does not endorse or condone any form of misuse, or any actions that may contravene local laws in your jurisdiction. It is imperative that you consult with a competent professional to verify the legality of any actions you intend to undertake based on the information provided here. It's your responsibility to adhere to all local laws and regulations. The author of this blog post disclaims any liability for any actions taken by readers based on the content of this post.

How to search the web while protecting your privacy

October 16, 2019GeneralEdward Kiledjian

They want to know everything about you

It is no secret that every advertising-funded site (Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Bing, etc) works very hard to build a complete profile about you. They want to know as much as possible so they can sell expensive highly targeted advertisements.

Every search you perform, every site you visit, every link you click is recorded and analyzed.

You live in a filter bubble

The profile we talked about above is also used to return information the site believes you will like most (therefore making themselves more sticky). this is the filter bubble problem.

The site (e.g. Google) will return results that it believes are aligned with your view and this is what we call the filter bubble. At some point, you will stop seeing other opinions or points of view. In the most extreme examples, it can reinforce certain questionable points of view such as the earth is flat or other similar prejudices.

How do I search the web privately

There are many search engines that promise private searches but the problem with most is that they crawl the web themselves and their index of the web just isn’t as good as Google. This is where startpage.com comes in. It allows you to search using the Google web index without giving up your privacy.

Startpage.com does not log user activity and does not perform any type of user tracking or profiling
Startpage.com allows you to browse any of the pages returned in a search query anonymously
Startpage.com is based in the Netherlands which has better privacy protection than the US

Ok but are the search results good?

Search results use the Google index so they are as good as can be without profiling you to customize the response
The results layout page is clean and uncluttered
You can search the web, images or videos

You have all of the advanced search options you could need (including words contained, avoiding certain words, dates, domains, language, file type, etc)
Some searches won’t contain ads and those that do clearly mark them with the word Ad
You can browse any search result link using their free anonymous browsing option (called Anonymous View)

When you browse using the Anonymous View, the webpage is surrounded by a blue frame

How it makes money

Startpagecom generates its revenue from clearly marked search ads and affiliate links.

These ads are not targeted (since they do not profile visitors).

The ads are segregated from the actual search results so as not to confuse the visitor.

Tell me more about Startpage.com’s privacy

Since most of its users originate from the US, Startpage.com has search servers located in the US to speed up searches. These servers are said to be hardened and properly secured.

This should be perfectly acceptable to most users but if you are extra paranoid, Startpage.com does offer users the option of choosing non-USA servers.

Their privacy claims have been independently verified (read this).

They have never showed up on any blacklist (that I can find)

They have an A+ rating from the Qualys SSL Labs site

Use AI to read paywalled content