Title: This userscript adds archive URLs to the metadata section of HN submissions without breaking the immersion. Here are 2 screenshots: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;PdUu6oG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;PdUu6oG</a><p>GreasyFork: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;greasyfork.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;scripts&#x2F;452024-hacker-news-anti-paywall" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;greasyfork.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;scripts&#x2F;452024-hacker-news-anti-pa...</a><p>Source code: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MostlyEmre&#x2F;hn-anti-paywall" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MostlyEmre&#x2F;hn-anti-paywall</a><p>Now let me overexplain.<p>-Why?-<p>I never liked paywalled articles. I understand where they come from, but I don&#x27;t like where we cross our paths.<p>This is why I don&#x27;t use major news aggregators anymore. Instead, I spend my &quot;catching-up-with-the-world-time&quot; on Hacker News. However, Hacker News (HN) also has its fair-share of paywalled articles. (<i>Around 11.6%</i> according to my short-lived, half-assed attempt at measuring it. See my super old data <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpa.emre.ca&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpa.emre.ca&#x2F;</a> I tell the story below.)<p>-First try-<p>Around a year ago, when I ran the above experiment, my goal wasn&#x27;t to run that experiment. It was during my self-teaching &amp; career-changing process, I decided to build a React HN clone. To make it stand-out from the bunch, I added a paywall feature. It would detect paywalled articles and would add an archive URL into the metadata.<p>The issue with archiving is unless someone archived the link before on the {archiving-project} then the link is most likely not archived. So me sending people to those projects meant nothing. It kinda meant something for me from an ideological standpoint but I assume you are not me.<p>This rubbed me the wrong way. I decided to build a backend (See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MostlyEmre&#x2F;HN-Paywall-Archiver" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MostlyEmre&#x2F;HN-Paywall-Archiver</a>) that would scan the links and automatically to detect paywalls close to real-time and submit paywalled ones to archive.is for archival. I used Nodejs, Firebase, and React. I was -still am- really proud because I believed it was doing public good in terms of digital preservation. Only 1 person needed to run this script to benefit everyone. As an extra, I was curious on how many paywalled articles were being shared, by whom, at what time. So I also created some analytics functionality to gather the data. And later created a UI to present it.<p>HN-Paywall-Archiver was great but I stopped running the backend at some point. Because at that point couldn&#x27;t find a way to continuously run my backend code on some platform for cheap or didn&#x27;t try hard enough.<p>P.S. Recently I&#x27;ve been thinking of remaking this version with Cloudflare Workers.<p>-Hacker News Paywall Archiver Userscript-<p>After almost a year, I got into userscripts. Super great super awesome concept. People seem to hate javascript unless it is presented as a userscript. So I decided to get my hands dirty to create a simple solution that solves the paywall issue on HN without breaking any hearts.<p>My solution is not perfect as it had to be simple. But here&#x27;s the rundown.<p>Pros:<p>- Does not beg for attention.<p>- Simple code, simple concept.<p>- Unintentionally, indicates which submissions are paywalled without you interacting with anything.<p>- Not-yet-archived archive links can make you feel like you are contributing to the society after you click on the &quot;archive this URL&quot; button on project page.<p>- Uses HN html defaults, so I hope it plays well with the HN skins&#x2F;plugins&#x2F;userscripts you use.<p>Cons:<p>- It doesn&#x27;t automatically archive the links.<p>- It uses clone of a static list of paywalled websites sourced from a popular Chrome extension. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;iamadamdev&#x2F;bypass-paywalls-chrome&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;src&#x2F;js&#x2F;sites.js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;iamadamdev&#x2F;bypass-paywalls-chrome&#x2F;blob&#x2F;ma...</a>) So changing the paywall list is slow and manual.<p>- No guarantees of archived links actually having the archive readily available for reading. Though there are currently 3 projects added, so it should be enough for most links.<p>So, there you go. I hope you enjoy it. It can break occasionally due to changes in news.ycombinator code, if you let me know on Twitter, I can fix it ASAP. Otherwise you have to wait until I notice that the script is broken, which can take quite a while as I browse HN on mobile.
Upvote: