I would call pasting-the-URL-into-Google-Search less of a intentional workaround and more of a trick to take advantage of the websites' compliance with Google rules.
Not every HN reader would know to do that, or look in the comments for that "workaround."
That's right, so it's ok for people to ask and share how to read an article in the comments. There shouldn't need to be more than one or two comments about this, and it helps everyone focus on the content.
What's off-topic is the generic tangent of paywall complaining.
Since almost all paywalled articles are from the WSJ, the Economist, or the NYT, this shouldn't happen to you very often.
The links are just huge wastes of time. A prominent tag attached to the article would be ok, but in the absence of any other feature to avoid these time sinks, it makes sense to flag the articles to save others from additional wastage.
The news sites have made the economic calculation that allowing access to traffic from content aggregators like Google (which is the price of being discoverable by Google) is worthwhile.
The idea that only sufficiently large aggregators/traffic sources should get a special pass seems preposterous; anyone trying to enforce would be engaged in downright anticompetitive behavior.
The cat is already dead, can we please open the box & acknowledge the source of the foul smell?
- Just don't read the article.
- Subscribe. If you can't/won't afford it, then see above, or see below.
- Search for other sources of the information. And post them, it adds to the discussion. Most articles worth taking up space, particularly on paywalled sites, are worth that space in other venues. Almost nothing is exclusive, not after a day anyway.
In the WSJ case, I've noticed that yahoo often prints the article verbatim.
And many ads are paid per view, not per click.
edit: The auto-generated bypass instructions will get the top-sorted/top-comment favoritism that we normally try to avoid from users.
If sites don't want people to bypass paywalls, then they would not allow "special" ways to bypass paywalls. The fact that some paywalls have special referrer bypass rules reeks of financially motivated favoritism and entrenched interests preventing competition; the next search engine startup to be created is going to have a rough time of it.
Of the flood of links posted to /newest the paywalled links are nowhere near the most problematic.
Yes, over time you learn things.