Yeah 12ft doenst seem to work on any sites anymore. Does anyone have any alternatives that work? I’m already familiar with the airplane mode trick but that’s not always fit for purpose.
Ah, navigating those paywalls can be tricky, especially when 12ft isn’t cutting it. Have you tried using extensions like Unpaywall? They can be quite effective for accessing articles. Speaking of easy access, if you want to streamline how you manage your health expenses, don’t forget you can register for MyWakeHealth to manage health bills. It’s a straightforward way to keep your healthcare finances in check!
I use this on Firefox Mobile and desktop and it works great
This is the way. They also have adblock lists you can add directly to ublock/adguard
Time to dig out that 14ft ladder
I just copy the link to archive.org and read the archived page
So this doesn’t work for wallstreet Journal pages unfortunately but does work for Natgeo! Thank you!
is there a difference between .ph and .is?
Yes.
Edit: I answered the question. You guys have no chill.
ok cool thank you for clearing that up
what is it? (other than “ph” or “is” in the url)
Clearly you already know the difference /s
I have no idea, I just use and remember the one I linked above.
That’s one short ladder.
Bump for justice, ty
Try turning off JavaScript when ur faced with an overlaying paywall
Yeah, I haven’t seen a paywall in years with javascript disabled by default.
Some websites circumvent this by only having one paragraph of the story loaded if you turn off JavaScript.
Try the serious properties, like Economist or FT. Their paywalls are hard.
The economist is a bad example lol.
Their site loads the content before it locks it down. So you can just reload the side and press reading mode before it removes it again.
If true, it’s all but impossible to actually do this on a normal-speed connection. I had the impression they stopped this method a while ago.
Worked fine on a 200 Mbit/s connection yesterday at least.
I can try a gigabit or even 2 gigabit connection next week.
The developer tab in browsers also has a way to throttle the connection if you want.
I use Firefox btw.
I’m going to get fired at for saying this, but websites like that are why I keep Brave around as a last resort news backup. Its reader mode didn’t get past FT, but easily did so for the Economist.
(I don’t need education about Brave, but readers can lodge their complaints and do the token rants right here 👇)
Thanks, I’m aware, but afaik that is not an option on iOS mobile.
edit: just looked again and saw the brief blurb for iOS/iPadOS, will look into it further
Lots of sites just dont load anything w JS disabled. Nytimes for example
Yeah…that happens, but from my experience it works a lot of times
Add this to your custom filter list.
Bypass Paywalls Clean filter. Works for me with local papers and others like NYTimes etc.
Do I add this to my Pi-hole?
Eh, no… I meant in the settings in uBlock Origin, which you would already have installed as an addon in your browser of choice. Choose open dashboard, it opens at filter lists and down the bottom is ‘Import’, just below ‘Custom’. Add the url to import, it’ll do its thing and you’ll have a new entry in ‘Custom’. Sorry, don’t know much about Pi-Holes.
Oh right! Already use Ublock will give this a go.
No prob! Coupled with zero ads, it’s like it used to be back in the day, just… well, an article with some images. Good luck!
The archive sites work great, even for WSJ articles. I just checked after I saw your comment saying archive.ph doesn’t work for WSJ articles, and it works fine for archiving WSJ articles.
It’s cuts off the particular article I want to read, so seems like there is a word limit! Drat!
Have you tried a different browser but still using the archive pages?
Which article? That is interesting, I haven’t had that issue yet, but I just started using these archived pages a couple weeks ago so I’m curious about their limits
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Okay, thanks. I tested a bunch of articles in duckduckgo and haven’t come across that yet, but I’ll test a cross browsers and see what happens. I’ll pay attention to the fading text.
Simple filterlists, by definition, only work for a short time. Maybe a specific userscript can help. There are also Extensions, which redirect to articles about the same content to sites without paywall, like Unpaywall do, which is maybe the best option.
In Firefox, to use userscripts, you need to install first an Userscript Manage, like Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey, etc. which you find in the Mozilla Store. In Vivaldi it isn’t needed, simply download the script to a folder (don’t delete it) and drag it to the Extension Page in Developer mode in the Browser, to install it directly as an extension.
What is 12ft?
12ft.io is a website that allows you to bypass paywalls on websites. Specifically for articles/news. The idea being “show me a 10ft wall and I’ll build a 12ft ladder.” It worked well against a lot of article and news outlet paywalls originally, but as time has gone on more and more sites are starting to show up on it as unable to bypass.
So what you’re saying is that we need 13ft.io
Go as small as possible so that our ladder only has to get slightly longer. Plus I’m petty.
Everyone besides US Americans won’t understand imperial measurements
Since there’s approximately 17,000 Subway Sandwich locations across 100 countries outside the United States I’m gonna say that most people can just imagine 12 (maybe 13 if we assume the 11in subway lawsuit) full size Subway Sandwiches stacked on top of each other.
More than 400000 of us for each of those locations then, and how many of us have then bothered to wander in, I wonder?
Anyway, would you really trust an American company to actually make their sandwiches 1ft tall?
How would you even start to eat such a thing?
(Also most standardized feet are around 30 cm, so 12ft is ~ 3.6 m)
I just went to 12ft.io and got the following message:
This Deployment has been disabled.
Your connection is working correctly.
Vercel is working correctly.
So I’m guessing the site is gone?
Ah got it, thanks.
The great enshittification continues.
How is it enshittification to stop people from pirating your stuff?
On the one hand, you’re absolutely right.
On the other hand “The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free.”
These websites generally only work due to poor website coding. If they properly implemented a paywall, sites like Archive and 12ft would never work because you would actually need to pay for access.
Sites like Archive still seem to work, while 12ft returns empty pages.
I wouldn’t really consider improving their website coding so that people can’t pirate it enshittification.
Enshittification is based around a platform first creating something good for users and then making it good for suppliers and then when they are locked in, reduce quality. You aren’t locked into a news website that you aren’t even paying for, and you aren’t entitled to their products either.
That’s not the issue I am describing. Instead of improving their website code so people cannot pirate it, it seems like they are specifically blocking 12ft. Other workarounds still work.
How is specifically blocking 12ft enshittification then.
I saw this advice on an IG post (https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxBpKwrSblD/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==).
This is for a desktop computer. I’m adding in the brackets what I believe are the actions they are taking in the IG video if you don’t want to click the link:
“If you’re on a website that’s forcing you to log in, [right click over the article and select] Inspect Elements, highlight over [the page and select] Delete [and then select] Node.”
I have not tried this myself. If you have clearer directions please reply to this comment!
This works for some sites, but honestly it’s easier using the Firefox reading mode on those sites, it basically does the same thing. It only works if the page loads the full articles text behind the pay wall popup which unfortunately not many do.
This extension works pretty well https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
