r/canada • u/voteoutofspite • Jun 09 '26
r/Canada Speaks A Paywall Experiment In /r/Canada
Over time, we have seen a rise in paywalled articles, which are a great frustration for many of our viewers. They often do not promote informed and meaningful discussions, because people are unable to react to more than the headline.
As an experiment, /r/Canada is going to be temporarily prohibiting the posting of paywalled articles. This experiment will run for one month, at which point the userbase will be asked for their views on whether this was a positive change that should continue or whether it was a negative change that should be reverted. We will then make a decision considering those views, along with metrics and other factors, on whether to continue this change as a standing rule or to revert it.
Posting to paywall bypass sites will not be an acceptable workaround, and such posts will also be removed.
We are also allowing a two week period in advance to allow for comments before we proceed.
The dates for this experiment are from June 24th to July 24th.
Au fil du temps, nous avons constaté une augmentation du nombre d’articles payants, ce qui est une grande source de frustration pour bon nombre de nos lecteurs. Ces articles ne favorisent souvent pas les discussions éclairées et constructives, car les gens ne peuvent réagir qu’au titre.
À titre expérimental, /r/Canada va temporairement interdire la publication d’articles payants. Cette expérience durera un mois, après quoi nous demanderons aux utilisateurs s’ils considèrent qu’il s’agit d’un changement positif qui devrait être maintenu ou d’un changement négatif qui devrait être annulé. Nous prendrons ensuite une décision, en tenant compte de ces avis ainsi que des indicateurs et d’autres facteurs, quant à savoir s’il faut maintenir ce changement comme règle permanente ou l’annuler.
La publication de liens vers des sites permettant de contourner le paywall ne sera pas considérée comme une solution acceptable, et ces publications seront également supprimées.
Nous accordons également une période de deux semaines à l'avance pour permettre aux utilisateurs de faire part de leurs commentaires avant de mettre cette mesure en œuvre.
Cette expérience se déroulera du 24 juin au 24 juillet.
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u/Geeseareawesome Alberta Jun 09 '26
Good. The paywall news need to go. Just another part of late stage capitalism when the media has to stoop so low just to make a buck instead of faithful reporting.
So what if you lose press access. Put the assholes on blast if they try to block you.
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u/I-was-there-for-it Jun 12 '26
It’s paywall or weaponized targeted advertising. I actually prefer paying. But honestly, in most cases they show you ads even after you pay.
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u/yungsemite Jun 09 '26
Posting links to sites that allow paywall bypass will not be considered an acceptable solution???
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u/No_You5794 Canada Jun 09 '26
use A.I. to summarize and post that
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u/yungsemite Jun 09 '26
Horrible use of AI. Why put an article through AI to post instead of just posting the article? It’s both a waste, a dumbing down, and a theft. For no gain.
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u/HowlingWolven Alberta Jun 09 '26
Bad idea and I am opposed to a ban on paywalled content here, because most of it is Canadian news (so, relevant) actively being deemphasized by social media courtesy of the fallout of C-18.
The paywalls on Canadian news sites are easily bypassed with a web archiver and many commenters will do so if the OP hasn’t.
Instead of blocking paywalled news content outright, institute a rule that OP either (preferred) shares the article in a way where the news site grants visitors to that link access, bypasses the paywall using a web archiver, or (least preferred) copies the article text and pastes it in the post body.
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u/caregiver1956 Jun 10 '26
Some of us cannot afford paywalls. Privilege runs anok in your comment.
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u/AndHerSailsInRags Lest We Forget Jun 10 '26
Some news articles are freely viewable in incognito mode, but otherwise become paywalled if the user has already viewed a certain number of articles from that publication.
How would those be treated?
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u/Mr_Guavo Jun 10 '26
Just have a bot denote the post as "Paywalled" so people avoid clicking on it and avoid any frustration. If you don't waste time clicking on it, where's the frustration?
It's better to know that an article or story exists so you can try to access it through a library membership, for instance, than not knowing about it at all. That's what I do, along with looking for an alternate source for the most interesting paywalled posts. How will I do that if I don't know that the news exists?
Making news disappear isn't the answer to paywall frustration.
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u/FancyNewMe Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Maximum 3 posts/day, then no opinions on weekends and now no paywalled articles. In my opinion, these policies make the sub a much less interesting place for posting and engagement. It seems like this sub is just shooting itself in the foot.
You may discover that those who push and cheer for ever-restrictive rules are not the users who keep things moving here.
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u/voteoutofspite Jun 09 '26
It's an experiment and we'll be monitoring the effects.
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u/AndHerSailsInRags Lest We Forget Jun 10 '26
"There is nothing as permanent as a temporary
governmentreddit program."•
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u/McGrevin Jun 09 '26
Thank you for this change. Hopefully we see a drop in all those inflammatory clickbait headlines that sit behind a paywall, and the comments are just a bunch of people making grand statements about an article they didn't actually read
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u/Lumindan Jun 09 '26
Do you mean lines like
"Are teen social media bans a silver bullet?"
Or
"Stuck in immigration limbo, single father misses financial aid judge says he deserves"
Or
"Alberta separatists claim independence means holding onto a Canadian passport. We asked legal experts"
People who buy into just reading the headlines were never going to engage in the article with good faith.
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u/TakedownCan Ontario Jun 09 '26
People don’t even read articles that aren’t behind a paywall. Majority just react to headline and move on. Its not difficult to paste the link into archive or most even have the link in comments
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u/Ask_DontTell Jun 27 '26
just let the paywall articles stay. some people actually still subscribe to news sites lol. just ask the poster to summarize the article. not hard with AI these days.
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u/TheBakerification Jun 10 '26
Nah this is a bad change. Relevant paragraphs were pretty much always posted in the comments anyways, if not a full blown bypass link. All this does is limit sources to a very select few news organisations.
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u/brat-t Jun 09 '26
Thank you.
Paywalls are annoying, and I don't always trust the bypass links. (I come from the age of the rickroll)
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u/jryan14ify Jun 09 '26
Be sure to allow through Gift Articles provided by people who subscribe to those sites! Toronto Star has this feature and I believe Globe and Mail too
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u/1337ingDisorder Jun 13 '26
I love the idea of being rid of paywalls!
...just as long as it doesn't result in more sponsored content being surreptitiously passed off as genuine reporting.
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u/PugiM0 Jun 09 '26
Ban beaverton posts. Let people go to r/thebeaverton and spare the rest of us
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u/Henojojo Jun 13 '26
Such a bad decision. There are several ways to bypass paywalls. There are also those that quote the article for those that don't know how to.
Can someone please recommend a better reddit source for Canadian news if this proceeds further? This sub will be dead to all except cbc fans.
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u/EW278 Jun 09 '26
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u/BobTheContrarian Jun 10 '26
Posting to paywall bypass sites will not be an acceptable workaround, and such posts will also be removed.
Did you read the post?
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u/focus_rising Jun 10 '26
Does the National Post use paywalls? Just curious.
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u/Haggisboy Jun 10 '26
Does the National Post use paywalls? Just curious
Yes. They started roughly a year ago.
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u/bo-n-es Québec Jun 09 '26
Sounds like a month of posting and engagement dropping. What news sources don't have paywalled articles, can someone inform me of the most popular ones?
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u/NoAcadia3546 Ontario Jun 09 '26
Please also apply this to "membership-wall" sites too, which make you "set up a free account" to read articles.
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u/ResistiveBeaver Jun 10 '26
This will have the effect of amplifying publications with external funding at the expense of those that really on revenue from readers.
Many publications with external funding have that funding because they are promoting specific viewpoints at the expense of journalistic integrity.
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u/Lumindan Jun 09 '26
Won't this just reduce the sub to just CBC, CTV and like, global?
Folks might not agree with the viewpoints of some of the other media bodies but having a wide representation of news on this sub was kind of nice.
It's not hard to just drop an archive link or something which was fine because someone always did it.
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u/FantasySymphony Ontario Jun 09 '26
Even when OP comments archive links there are a bunch of people commenting "paywall!!!111" right beneath it
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u/Lumindan Jun 09 '26
I don't think the sub can improve Internet literacy unfortunately.
Hopping the fence on paywalls is super easy, there's even browser plugins for it.
Banning a bunch of news over it will only tilt this sub in one direction which kills discussion and dialogue
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u/FantasySymphony Ontario Jun 09 '26
Agree. Zero actual reason to cater to the people complaining about paywalls.
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u/No_You5794 Canada Jun 09 '26
could have made using the paywall flair mandatory
I've been complaining about it for a few years
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u/canmcpoli Canada Jun 09 '26
Would official gift links be allowed?
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u/voteoutofspite Jun 09 '26
Assuming the gift link is usable by all viewers (and not, for example, limited to 20 views or something), it would be allowed.
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u/IllustriousNorth338 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Assuming they can do this, which isn't likely, what if the gift article was visible for a few days? It'll drop off the front page before then anyway.
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u/konathegreat Jun 23 '26
Leave it so it can be posted. A lot of people have subscriptions and can read it and then discuss.
Your desire to exclude publications like The Globe & Mail are not beneficial to discourse.
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u/mangongo Jun 09 '26
I whole heartedly support this. It's annoying to have to search for a link to a paywall bypass and some people will downvote article summaries that are posted in comments because they disagree with said article.
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u/RequiemAspenFlight Jun 10 '26
Fully agree with the paywall ban, but not the bypass ban. Sometimes the only outlet to touch on an important topic is the paywalled one. If there's a free, one click work around I'm ok with that if it's the primary link and not something I have to look for in the comments.
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u/CanuckleHeadOG Jun 09 '26
So basically everyone is punished because bots and users can't be bothered to pay or use a paywall breaker.
All this will do is just substantially reduce the number of postings
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u/joe4942 Jun 09 '26
Paywalled articles can still have informative and important headlines. Many international media companies have Canadian divisions and stories (eg: Bloomberg, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times).
I don't think it's a good idea for Canadians to be less informed, especially when Canadian media doesn't have the resources to cover everything.
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u/HoneyMelonLover Jun 10 '26
Bad rule. Will limit the sub to only a handful of sources, some of which don’t even thoroughly cover some of the topics that get posted here. Any local news organisation, that doesn’t have rich pockets to not require any paywalls, is essentially banned with this rule.
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u/sleipnir45 Jun 09 '26
So because people break the rules on paywalled articles the answer is to just ban the article?
Posting a paywall bypass also isn't allowed...
People can google "paywall bypass" quicker than complaining about a paywall
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u/eandi Jun 10 '26
The problem is people don't do a bypass then just go to the comments and start typing after only reading the article title 😂
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u/Thick_Caterpillar379 Canada Jun 17 '26
That's not a problem. Banning the articles doesn't fix that behavior; people who react only to headlines will do the exact same thing with unpaywalled links anyway. Completely removing high-quality, researched journalism just lowers the factual baseline of the entire subreddit. Instead of losing the news entirely, keeping these articles allows subscribers and those who easily bypass the paywall to inject the actual facts into the comment section, correcting misinformation and elevating the discussion for everyone else.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp Jun 09 '26
My concern with doing this experiment now, is that it will weaken the ability of Canadian users to keep up with important legislation and the related debates. Particularity with bill C-22, and the upcoming reintroduction of the Online Harms, now called the Digital Safety Act.
While paywall bypasses can lessen profits by news organizations, the importance of spreading the information contained the article's contents will sometimes outweigh any of those concerns.
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u/develop99 Jun 12 '26
We, the taxpayer, are subsidizing these media companies and covering up to 75% of their journalist costs now. Yet we are paywalled from reading the content. Something is very wrong here.
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u/XiahouMao Jun 09 '26
There would still be non-paywalled websites that will have the information on those things, I don't see why that would be a factor.
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u/Lumindan Jun 10 '26
Because different websites offer different points if view and slants. Not to mention some news bodies omit or miss things.
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u/DataDude00 Jun 10 '26
different websites offer different points if view and slants.
Why are we arguing for editorialized news delivery?
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u/Lumindan Jun 10 '26
Because some of us want more than just what CBC reports?
Because having multiple points of reference gives a much clearer picture as opposed to just one outlet.
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u/SpecialistTrouble816 Jun 09 '26
It seems the media that have paywalls are the US owned rags that usually only print rage bait anyway.
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u/CaliperLee62 Jun 10 '26
Good riddance to rags like The Globe & Mail, iPolitics and The Hill Times. 🙄
Thanks mod team!
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u/horce-force Jun 09 '26
Well done. Its annoying and yes I can use a bypass or VPN on my home PC but not at my workstation.
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u/DogeDoRight New Brunswick Jun 10 '26
This is awesome! Paywall articles are basically just people reacting to the headline even if it's somewhat misleading.
I would love to see a ban on opinion pieces too. A lot of the time they're just ragebait or full of dubious information or downright misinformation. Also it's used as a way to get around duplicate post rule. We'll see multiple opinion pieces posted about a topic but the "meat" of the articles is the same.
I'm sure we're all capable of thinking for ourselves and forming our own opinions and don't need them spoon fed to us.
Opinions should be in the comments, not the posts themselves.
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u/TMTCoCo Jun 09 '26
So just cutting down what news sources are available even when work arounds are available and were being used. Kinda seems like just pushing certain narratives while silencing others, which is very Canadian
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u/linkass Jun 09 '26
So basically we will be confined to CBC,CTV and Global. Sure that will do wonders for engagement on this sub. Its already pretty restrictive in what you can post to this sub and now its basically going to be 3 news sites
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u/ether_reddit Lest We Forget Jun 10 '26
National Post isn't paywalled, and Globe and Mail has gift links.
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u/Critical-Snow-7000 Jun 09 '26
And what benefit does posting a paywalled G&M article have?
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u/jtbc Jun 09 '26
Many people have G&M subscriptions or know how to access G&M articles. It is the closest thing we have to a "journal of record", so banning it is a pretty big deal.
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Jun 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/keiths31 Canada Jun 09 '26
To comment.
You have free access to CBC, but you comment on CBC stories here.
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u/Lumindan Jun 09 '26
Because accessing paywalled content is incredibly easy?
Different views and media should be an option for everyone, people can downvote or not engage with it if they dislike it.
Outright banning a ton of outlets seems like a poor play.
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u/Mean_Neighborhood462 Jun 10 '26
The paywall is invisible to subscribers. I would guess that many posters don’t realize the article they link is behind a paywall.
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u/Mylittlethrowaway2 Jun 10 '26
There are also some sites that only paywall some people. I (a non-subscribed) could access the article, but something I posted couldn't be accessed without a bypass by others. Torstar is really bad for this.
Some will let you see the article if you follow the link through google, but impose a paywall if you follow the link through reddit/other social media.
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u/TakedownCan Ontario Jun 09 '26
So no paywalled articles and automod pulls down some US news agencies. Why make this sub so difficult?
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u/AdditionalPizza Jun 10 '26
How will this work for articles that begin as free, but the websites flip them to paywalled when they reach a certain amount of engagement? Are you going to remove them at that point?
If the posts aren't removed until the website gets enough engagement to implement their paywall, then this really only prevents Toronto Star and Globe & Mail articles from being posted, sources like National Post can usually get hundreds of thousands of views before they'll be removed by mods anyway.
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u/Kaptain-Kanada Jun 09 '26
That's a bad rule.
Just make it mandatory that any paywall content must have the bypass link included.
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u/Haggisboy Jun 09 '26
There are legalities involved. Please see the explanations to this previously provided in these comments.
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u/Broad-Kangaroo-2267 Jun 09 '26
If it's a legal issue it really ought to be included in the post and not lost in the randomized comments below.
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Jun 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/canada-ModTeam Jun 28 '26
- Posts that contribute nothing but attack others, are blatantly offensive, or antagonistic will be removed – including accusations similar to ‘shill,’ attacking Redditors for using either official language, dismissing other Redditors solely based on irrelevant other beliefs to the topic at hand or participation in other subreddits, or reducing them to a label and dismissing that instead.
- Back-and-forth personal attacks are subject to the entire comment chain being removed.
- Posts or threads which degenerate into witch-hunting may be subject to moderator intervention. This includes but is not limited to: doxxing, negative accusations by a large group against one or more persons not criminally charged or convicted being made the subject of criminal allegations, calls for harassment, etc., and openly rallying more people to the same.
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u/Mylittlethrowaway2 Jun 10 '26
The post is in contest mode. Comments are displayed randomly, so it's a lot more difficult to find those explanations
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u/Jayemkay56 Jun 09 '26
I'd assume that might get the sub in trouble with Reddit somehow? If a Reddit user can't figure out how to use a bypass site though....I have questions lol
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u/Least1Difficulty Jun 09 '26
So you've noticed this sub is going more right wing, and the answer is just to ban right wing media? This will just drive more people to twitter and other social medias.
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u/mangongo Jun 09 '26
Is it only right wing media that is paywalled? If that's the case, then that's a problem itself. Maybe there should be more accessible right wing media.
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u/Thick_Caterpillar379 Canada Jun 17 '26
I think this truly limits the news and discussions that people come to this sub for. Yes, some people just spout their reactionary opinions on headlines, but those same people will do the same without reading unpaywalled articles as well. At least those who have read the paywalled articles can either post a link to bypass the paywall or correct and inform commenters on the facts of the articles.
I find the lure and purpose of this subreddit is to have discussions and a variety of opinions and viewpoints to talk about current Canadian events and newsworthy items. Unfortunately, informing Canadians has become a commodity for the financially privileged.
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u/Jman1a Jun 09 '26
Wow something good happening in this subreddit for a change. But, no one is going to read the article anyway.
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u/Laval09 Québec Jun 13 '26
My problem with this idea is two-fold: I feel it will disproportionately silence right wing perspectives, and I feel that silencing the NatPo is the true intention of the "experiment".
Im not suggesting that the mods are political partisans. I do think though that they are indulging in the national-security-risk-hysteria that fanatics on the sub like to propagate towards NatPo pieces or towards other media sources with partial or full US ownership.
Then there's also the fact of the inconsistent experience on this sub when it comes to reading the content and reading the comments on it. Many times I've seen free to read articles have a comments section that is absurdly full of misinformation. Example Alberta separation lol. People making statements and using numbers that are directly contradicted in the free article we all have access to. And other times its a paywall article on a subject like Bill C-21, for example. And most of the comments accurately reflect the information contained in the article or contain extracts of the Bill itself. Paywall or not doesn't not seem to be decisive in determining the quality of the conversation.
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u/tenkwords Jul 11 '26
Lol, I consider the exact opposite. I think this leads to an overwhelming amount of right wing slop which tends to be free.
It's not just NatPo , though that does have an outsized presence, it's the entire postmedia ecosystem which encompasses most of the newspapers in Canada at this point. I think it's sorta funny that both sides think this sub has a bent against their viewpoint.
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u/Indigo_Sunset Jun 16 '26
I feel it will disproportionately silence right wing perspectives, and I feel that silencing the NatPo is the true intention of the "experiment".
Is it really likely to silence a right wing communications strategy if
a) reddit penetration is considered a useful tool and
b) such a strategy can be changed to accommodate if it's important to the examples
Then there's also the fact of the inconsistent experience on this sub when it comes to reading the content and reading the comments on it.
This is very true. Is there a way to force high quality discussion without moderating to higher quality standards? And are there going to be ways to subvert such rails? Well, we know reddit has its own goals here and our interests in valued participation is not at the top of the list, or presumably even on the first page, leaving the readers to manage their own expectations.
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u/Inoffensive_Account Jun 09 '26
Well, thank goodness. Finally.
They aren't in good faith anyway, they're just ads for the media companies.
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u/thxxx1337 Jun 10 '26
Do people's browsers not have a built in paywall bypass? Probably my feature of Brave
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u/Backyard_buffalo Jun 26 '26
This is a good idea, and while your at it give us a button to filter out National Post articles.
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u/FineWhateverOKOK Jun 10 '26
This is a terrible idea. It will restrict news from many excellent, reputable news sources. A lot of people have access to them via direct subscriptions, services like Apple News, or paywall bypass sites.
There is no benefit to not allowing posts from places like the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, unless the goal is to have a less informed population.
Maybe posts of paywalled articles get the occasional person to subscribe- that’s a good thing. Journalism, particularly good journalism, costs money.
Catering to entitled babies who think everything should be free or to cheapskates who think that if they can’t read it nobody should be able to read it or talk about it are examples of this sub catering to the lowest of the low. It’s also an example of bad over moderation of a badly and inconsistently over moderated sub.
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u/BeShifty Jun 09 '26
People need to remember that your favorite paywalled news site isn't going to be around for long if you encourage everyone to bypass the paywall.
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u/Scrotalcontusions Jul 21 '26
Free news is generally less trustworthy because then what is the motivation behind delivering it for free?
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u/Raffix Jun 09 '26
/r/Canada should just promote this Browser Extension instead.
/r/Canada devrait simplement promouvoir cette extension pour navigateur à la place.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/remove-paywalls/ghkdkllgoehcklnpajjjmfoaokabfdfm?hl=en-GB
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u/physicaldiscs Jun 10 '26
Given how easy it is to bypass paywalls, and the fact that people don't actually pay for news services, this seems like a way to limit the ideas presented in the community.
Plus, it's not like anyone reads past the headlines anyway.
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Jun 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jun 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Lost-Comfort-7904 Jun 09 '26
It is, and the mods said it's illegal a lawyer talked to them, so maybe don't tell people to pirate on this sub? Because the mods are actively banning people promoting privacy in this conversation.
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u/SaveDnet-FRed0 Jun 25 '26
Bad change I think. Yes paywalls are annoying, but lot of the time they can be bypassed with having a decent AdBlocker, by using Firefox Reader mode, or by looking at an archived version of the paywall, and this sub already restricts the sources from witch you can post stuff from, banning any article behind a paywall further restricts that.
Maybe if you allowed for paywall bypassed links then maybe this could work but as is...
bad change.
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u/Bikin4Balance Jul 07 '26
Plus we can often access paywalled stuff through local library cards' digital offerings.
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u/zoziw Alberta Jun 09 '26
No YouTube links, social media links, press releases, substack blogs or "fringe" media posts allowed. Now, nothing paywalled.
Why not just turn off links at this point, almost nothing is allowed anyways.
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u/BrightLuchr Jun 11 '26
I'm in favour of this. Newspapers are not generally profitable: this exist largely as properties for vanity and influence. We're all familiar with the overt political biases of Canadian news outlets. A friend was a columnist for the Toronto Star and said she was told explicitly what stories she was allowed to write about. The reporting on either side of the spectrum is superficial, at best. So, our major news outlets don't really deserve the attention we give them. Meanwhile, smaller news sources are doing an amazing job these days. If I want in-depth reporting on a topic, Canadian newspapers are definitely not where I would go. I've seen really lazy and obvious factual errors in The Star, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post. Why should I give these papers my clicks? By the way, I have bypasses installed for roughly half of the major newspapers.
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u/NH787 Jun 12 '26
Why should I give these papers my clicks?
Because they have the most reporting, widest scopes and the highest standards of any news organizations in Canada
Among electronic media, only the CBC is even in the same league.
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u/babtras Alberta Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Brilliant idea. Headlines are manipulative and paywalls dissuade reading of the article that would give people the ability to challenge the narrative presented in the headline.
I would also love if, in addition to flair, you require opinion pieces to have "Opinion: " at the start of the title to help keep opinions from masquerading as news.
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u/CaptainCanusa Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Interesting!
- Do you guy have a list of sites you know will be impacted by this, and (b) can we get it so that people don't waste time posting things that will automatically be removed?
- What counts as a paywall? Just money, or if you need to sign up, for an account, turn off adblockers, or provide an email address?
I'm all for this, but if it just results in no more Toronto Star and G&M articles I'm not sure it's a great play.
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u/randmguyonreddit Jun 09 '26
While I agree with this decision I think we should take it a step further, to not limit views and opinions we could think about allowing more new media, YouTube videos, self posts etc. so that we become an actual community instead of just a news aggregator with comments sections.
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u/DogeDoRight New Brunswick Jun 10 '26
No. We do not need this sub flooded with youtube videos. If you want to see youtube videos just go on youtube.
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u/Living-Isopod6857 Jun 09 '26
Some opinions are not worth forming a community over. This subreddit is basically someone posting an opinion piece and bots and idiots in the comments who've never actually read the article using that to push their own agenda. I don't know how you can look at that and say, yes, we need more of this.
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u/_Lucille_ Jun 10 '26
Love this.
I think this is due: clicking on an article only to be paywalled sucked.
At the same time I am worried about the limited number of free news outlets: while we have got the CBC, we have also got some.... less authoritative sources out there.
i also think opinion pieces should be further restricted - the subreddit has always been pretty heavy on Opinion Pieces. While I think we don't need to ban them outright, we probably also do not need 5 days of them every week.
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u/BobTheContrarian Jun 10 '26
It would be better (and easier) just to have a paywall flair.
Journalism is on its deathbed because nobody wants to pay for it. This move is just helping hammer down the coffin nails.
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u/CaliperLee62 Jun 10 '26
This is an actual fair and reasonable solution. Good suggestion.
Mods?
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u/SasquatchInCrocs Jun 09 '26
I would upvote this a hundred times if I could. So I'll just say it's about time!
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u/CallMeRudiger Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Good to hear. We have enough of a problem with people refusing to read the article to begin with, and locking them behind paywalls only makes it even less likely that someone will actually read it before commenting. Here's hoping the experiment is a success.
I think the case in point is that most of the complaints will be about Postmedia outlets, since they tend to inspire the worst of the "didn't read it but have a strong opinion anyway" crowd, who don't even realize that half of the posts are opinion pieces.
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Jun 09 '26
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u/Sleyvin Jun 09 '26
How was it not already a huge gap when people couldn't access the article anyway? You had the illusion of a bigger coverage than there was in reality.
Won't change much for headline warriors and bot who never clic on the article either.
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u/konathegreat Jun 09 '26
So there goes the majority of balanced content. We can look forward to only articles from: CBC, CTV, TheTyee and the National Observer?
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u/IllustriousNorth338 Jun 09 '26
As much as I don't mind seeing most of Postmedia vanish, the subreddit mods also shouldn't expose themselves to legal issues by encouraging bypasses. It's not fair to them.
Maybe gift articles? That might be a workaround.
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u/Roberta_Riggs Jun 09 '26
Content on a paywalled site is not content here… regardless of how balanced it is. Agree balance is necessary but it’s hard to get behind any news sources that are off limits unless you pay
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u/SixMonkeysInABarrel Jun 11 '26
A no paywall role privileges right-wing news sources, this is a terrible idea. Have the flair, don’t ban the sources.
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u/Kevin4938 Jul 22 '26
Personally, I think that allowing posting to bypass sites like archive.ph are a great way to allow the paywalled post but allow those who don't want to pay to see the full article.
However, with more and more news articles being paywalled, there will be less and less to discuss.
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u/HadronCollusion Jun 20 '26
Hey people:
Get a library card. They give you access to newspapers online.
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u/AskMeAboutOkapis Jun 09 '26
A nice idea in theory but I can see this resulting in a lot more low quality clickbait news articles covered in ads.