I have to admit, when I open a link on social media and hit a paywall, it redounds a bit upon the person who posted the link. Sometimes it's accidental sure, and I've done it too. If you're a subscriber it can be hard to even know if a link will send readers careening face-first into a paywall.

But it still hurts everyone who follows the link a little bit, to be promised information, interest or just some fun, and then the site says to them NUH-UH-UH, PAY FOR OUR WHOLE SITE BEFORE YOU SEE THAT! Basically tricking you into advertising for them.

I REALLY hate that web browsers enable this by obeying a site's directive to load the whole content but not letting the user see it with a blocking overlay, and Google now lets sites get away with providing their indexer the full content but not readers.