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The Free Internet Plugin β Removes paywalled stories from Google results
A free Internet is a better Internet. The Free Internet Plugin removes known paywalled sites from your Google search results. It is open-sourced on HackerNoon's GitHub. F*ck paywalls.
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Artem Smirnov
Yeah, fuck paywalls. Fuck the dying news industry that can't survive on displaying ads anymore and struggles to pay journalists. Fuck the creators who are trying to sell their content. We are C00L H4CK3RZ, we never pay.
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@artem_smirnov If you're a C00L H4CK3RZ, you'd bypass the paywalls themselves, not hide content from yourself.
for 3 years, I'm usually skipping paywalled articles. and I don't care about ...
this is my vote
HackerNoon is always looking for new ways to delight users. Check out their new Plugin!
*holds up a BIG sign "Improvise, adapt, overcome"*
Because heck yeah, we needed this <3
This is awesome! Thanks for this! The bigger challenge I run into is on mobile native. The Google and Google News apps on Android recommend paywalled articles all day.
@danny_bloomfield1 Mobile apps are a bit more controlling, but expanding to block paywalls in Google News via the mobile browser is fairly straightforward.
This is clever, and so useful! Congrats on the launch!
This actually got me thinking about something I was talking about the other day. I use Google News quite frequently on my phone and I hate it when they show spoilers of a show that I'm following. Anyone else who would love to have a plugin or something that lets you block certain types of content in Google news, e.g. based on certain keywords? Maybe it already exists!
@mieke_houbrechts2 Thanks! And re: spoilers - that's a bit of a different use case. You could try and 'hack' our app by making a custom block lists of URLs that provide spoilers. Overall, this discussion makes me think there's a lot of rooms for search engines to better serve user interest and intent.
I'm so excited about this launch π€© It really sucks clicking on a story and discovering (too late) it's paywalled. This extension totally solves that problem. Great job @davidsmooke and Guy Torbet! π
@lenni_leem hey - it's open sourced so we hope it's more transparent :) Lots of companies are doing same thing don't mean we have to stop the moment we see something similar.
@ldao90 @lenni_leem Hey that's a viable way too. From my experience, there's an annoying ebb and flow game of paywalls updating themselves to annoy extensions, or extensions just not being designed for all the more obscure paywalls, so if the goal is to avoid and not reward the 'hit the return button in utter disappointment π
'' it could be better to over block paywalled sources than underblock. That said, is there any github extensions you think I should look at for inspiration on how to build this?
when we made the decision to hire @torbet - do we think that he would basically launch Hacker Noon first ever's OPEN SOURCE project that also is a πππ to paywalls everywhere by building it in 6 hours at the ripe old age of 17??? Absolutely we do πππ!
Anyhow - here is why I think this would change so many lives: paywalls are not just annoying af and so disruptive to the UX of the people who need them the least, they actually only favor the well-offs aka a few rich bros in the West who can afford them! So - my hope is with this extension, a lot more people in areas where access and bandwidth are more limited, this would OPEN UP their access to content that 1. matter and 2. more importantly: FREE. Because the internet should be free and approachable and FOR the users, not against them. #freetheinternet !!!!
@vivekweb2013 Thanks Vivek! The project is also open source https://github.com/hackernoon/Fr... would be great to expand into social media newsfeeds and other search engines.
This was incredibly quick to download and simple to use. I tested it on sites with known paywalls and it worked flawlessly.
@davidsmooke Congratulations on the launch! This is the power I needed π€© I can save atleast an year of my life-time by not clicking on an article, and hit the return button in utter disappointment π
@adityavsc how many times does that happen per year? there's potential to save a lot of time.
Simple yet very useful. Our internet experience now can be decluttered with this extension.
For the curious mind, there is more free content available on the internet than ever, and yet as internet users, we run into paywalls more often than ever before. With The Free Internet Plugin, we are giving people the option to choose what type of content is allowed and not allowed in their search results.