What are people using to bypass paywalls now that 12ft doesn't work?

December 11, 2023 1:58 PM

exactly what it says on the tin
posted by wheatlets to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Mmmm. Here's me over here, going 12ft never worked reliably for me, but I use archive.ph regularly... so unless something has changed in the last few days...
posted by stormyteal at 2:00 PM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]

I've been pleased with the Bypass Paywalls Clean plugin available for Firefox and Chrome.
posted by toxic at 2:02 PM on December 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

found out recently that googling the headline and clicking on the first link still works (for the Financial Times at least)
also archive.is (although it goes down from time to time)
posted by wowenthusiast at 2:31 PM on December 11, 2023

The Firefox extension Unpaywall has helped me on occasion, but I'm not sure what the batting average is.
posted by forthright at 2:41 PM on December 11, 2023

Bypass Paywalls Clean is great and works for almost everything I throw at it. Note you have to install it manually which seems a little scary, but AFAICT it's safe to do this. (Some extensions are malware but this one is legit.)

Your other options are archive.today, also mentioned above, or the Wayback Machine. You might also be able to use your town library or academic institution to get access to some things.

For certain specialty sites there are extensive unlicensed copies of things. sci-hub is essential for scientific papers, for instance.
posted by Nelson at 2:54 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Seconding Pass Paywalls Clean. If this does not work, try a bookmarklet

javascript:location.href='https://archive.is/?run=1&url=%27+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)
posted by maloqueiro at 3:44 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

1ft.io is the new 12ft.io. I use a bookmarklet for it: [javascript:(function() { var url = window.location.href; var newUrl = url.replace('https://', 'https://1ft.io/'); window.location.href = newUrl; })();]

When I run into a paywall, I click on the bookmarklet above from that page.
posted by QuakerMel at 5:12 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I use a browser called Brave. If you disable scripts on a site, oftentimes the paywall disappears. Doesn't work for all websites, but it works for a lot of the ones that interest me. Note that by default, scripting is turned on, so you have to turn it off inside Brave.
posted by alex1965 at 6:22 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

https://1ft.io/
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:06 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I use a browser called Brave. If you disable scripts on a site, oftentimes the paywall disappears. Doesn't work for all websites, but it works for a lot of the ones that interest me. Note that by default, scripting is turned on, so you have to turn it off inside Brave.

Brave is sketchy and problematic in various ways (unless it's cleaned up its act recently, I haven't been keeping track). You can get the same effect less sketchily using the NoScript extension* on Firefox (*or other extensions, like ublock origin).
posted by trig at 9:39 PM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]

I like archive.today / archive.ph
posted by ellieBOA at 10:21 PM on December 11, 2023

Another rec for Bypass Paywalls Clean.

Its only downside is that its bypass lists have now become so comprehensive that the frequency of updates can get a little annoying. On the other hand, I've never seen one of those updates break anything, and it was nice to dig through the options and find that you can make them happen automatically with only the most minimal explicit consent, and that that feature ships off by default. Dev has their head screwed on straight.

I tend to let the update notifications just pile up until some paywall I'm interested in bypassing fails to do so, then apply them all at once.
posted by flabdablet at 11:58 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

sci-hub is essential for scientific papers,

For SciHub I have this Bookmarklet

javascript: Qr = window.getSelection ? window.getSelection().toString() : document.selection.createRange().text; if (Qr) { void(window.open('https://sci-hub.wf/' + String(Qr).replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, ''))); } else { void(Qr = prompt('Enter URL/DOI to sci-hub it', '')); location.href = 'https://sci-hub.wf/' + String(Qr).replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, ''); }
posted by maloqueiro at 1:13 AM on December 12, 2023

I've never heard of "12ft" but that might just be because having my janky userscript that redirects links to various sites to the archive.ph equivalent has made me mostly not need to pay attention to these kinds of things.
posted by majick at 5:38 AM on December 12, 2023

On Firefox I use a combination of the plugins Bypass Paywalls Clean, and Web Archives. Web Archives lets you choose from a number of archive sites, I usually use archive.is, for the "X free articles" sites.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:45 AM on December 12, 2023