How to Get Past Newspaper Paywalls in 2021
We all know the annoyance of not being able to access an article because of a paywall demanding you spend your hard-earned money to do so. Fortunately, there are many ways to get around paywalls, and there are many articles online going over these methods. Unfortunately, despite the current year placed in the title, many of the techniques these articles recommend are hopelessly outdated, blocked off by papers years ago. Thankfully for all of us stingy readers, there are plenty of methods that do still work. Here they are.
- Turn Off the Internet Before the Paywall Loads
By far the simplest method on this list, this one might take a few tries to get the timing right. If you are short on reflexes (or temper) you might want to use a different strategy. Here’s how it works. First, use the reload shortcut (Command+R on Mac, F5 on Windows). Then, as quickly as possible, click on the wifi icon at the top of your screen and press “Turn Wi-Fi Off”. It’s best to have your cursor hovering over the wifi icon when you refresh. If you do this right, the internet will load the article but won’t have enough time to load the paywall, letting you read in peace. Just remember to turn the internet back on when you’re done. This method works on most papers, but not on all of them. For example it won’t work on WaPo or WSJ.
2. The Outline+ Method
All these “bypass paywall” articles always recommend you use outline.com to get around paywalls. And if it was 2018, that would work great. However, most newspapers have blocked outline.com from accessing their url, making it unusable. Unless… You see, they have blocked their url from being used by outline. But they haven’t blocked urls that re-direct to their article from being used by outline. That is exactly what the Outline+ method does. Step 1: copy the url of the article. Step 2: copy+paste that url into https://free-url-shortener.rb.gy/ . Step 3: copy+paste the shortened url into outline. Step 4: enjoy your free articles! This method works on nearly all newspapers, with the notable exception of WaPo.
3. Various Extensions
I don’t tend to use these myself, but plenty of them seem to be still up and running. Use this, this or this for Chrome. If you use FireFox, try this, this or this. If you’re using Safari, what’s wrong with you? Here’s the download for Google Chrome.
4. Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a service provided by the Internet Archive that allows for people to find versions of webpages from long ago. However, it is also useful for bypassing paywalls. You see, when a page is archived, it is done so by someone who has already bought a subscription to whatever newspaper it is. So essentially, you’re just using their subscription to read. This loophole only works for some papers, and unfortunately does not for the typical tough nut to crack — the Washington Post. Don’t you have enough money already, Bezos?
5. Just for Medium.com
Since you’re reading this on Medium, I assume you’re familiar with the site. If you have ever been annoyed by paywalls popping up, bypassing them is easy. Just copy the title, paste it into your search browser, and click on the first result. Yes, it’s that simple.
Conclusion
Hopefully this helps someone who is frustrated by being locked out of an interesting article by a paywall. If you are such a person, why not follow me? I’ve already put out another article on this account, and I’ll be doing more. If you’re someone working at a newspaper finding the latest paywall bypass methods in order to block them — fuck you, we’ll never pay for your shitty articles. Just use ads, assholes.
Happy reading!
