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Comment by pmontra

15 hours ago

Reader mode bypasses it. It's only a JS layer on top of content that's already inside the HTML doc.

Disabling first party JS works too, using umatrix or similar tools. The site works perfectly without JS.

Edit: because of all of that, of course view source bypasses the paywall too and reveals tons of inlined CSS.

6 comments

pmontra

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sam1r  12 hours ago

This. Comment. ^ is going to change my life.

Thank you!! I had no idea, and this is such an elegant fix.

  • pmontra  8 hours ago

    There are many paywalls that send all the content in the html and then hide it with a script.

    However there are many more properly implemented paywalls that send only a few lines of content and you don't find the content even on the archive sites.

    There are several variations of those schemes. Sometimes there is text but not images. Sometimes the first party js is fine and you have to block some of the third party js.

    Sometimes the content is in a JSON blob.

    Sometimes the reader mode trick works but only for a short while before the js paywall removes it (the sibling comment hints about it.)

    You have to experiment with each site.

  • sam1r  12 hours ago

    “Refresh, and quickly just click the reader button as the page loads slow on mobile, anyways”

    • kalleboo  3 hours ago

      In Safari (on iOS and macOS), you can go into site settings and choose "use reader mode when available" and it automatically opens straight into it. After doing that for a while, you'll have it on for the most common news sites you get linked to.