Comment by tomhow

We know it's an imperfect solution but it's the least-worst solution. We'd lose far more than we'd gain if we banned all paywalled content, as it's such a huge share of the total body of content (esp. when weighted by masthead prominence and traffic) on the web. But it's also a policy that it doesn't belong on HN if there's no easy way around the paywall. We don't want to list anything that's not freely accessible for everyone, reasonably easily.