We all know that many news sites have paywalls. It is, after all, some or a big part of how they've chosen to fund their news gathering. There are lots of ways around paywalls or to access individual stories behind one: e.g., archive.is or archive.today lets you search a news article link to see if it's already been saved, and frequently you can read the full story that way.

I mention this because I post a lot of links to stories that are behind paywalls, and a common reply is "paywall," as if a) that wasn't obvious and b) the link was somehow discovered to be serving malware or something. Sometimes I will post an archive.today link to a story if it's urgent and paywalled, but it's definitely not my job to do that and I've started muting the "paywall" whiners.

@briankrebs the people who scream about paywalls also scream about ads.

@bedirthan @briankrebs Just how many news sites do you expect the average person to subscribe to? I have a couple through work but they will end soon because I got laid off. I pay for 6 sites: 2 national, one local where I grew up, and 3 local where I live now. With my income drying up I’ll probably drop the nationals first, then the remote local, hoping to keep funding the 3 local ones as long as I can.

I’m not against paywalled content. I’m against people assuming that we all can pay for all of it. Just have the courtesy to tell me what to expect so I can choose not to waste my time if it’s something I can’t afford.