[turc1656]

This might be a dumb question as someone who isn't a pro on this topic but isn't it really simple to just log the IP of the request for the article and meter it based on IP instead of cookies, browser fingerprinting, or however they are doing it now? Won't that solve like 99.9% of the problem? I would imagine the amount of people that will rotate IPs just to read free articles is exceptionally small.

I suppose that might pose an issue with shared IPs at offices, for example. Also might cause a minor issue with people in the same household trying to read articles on the same site. But seems like a vast improvement over nothing at all, no?

[hn_throwaway_99]

No, mobile providers change your IP all the time, and these days most (or nearly most) news content is read on a mobile device.

[turc1656]

Ah, good point. Wasn't thinking of mobile because I'm in the minority on news consumption. I do pretty much all of it from a desktop/PC.