[wolco]

Calling someone a scrooge or cheap for finding a hole in a technical limitation device that is sloppy in its implementation as it is click-bait in it's dark patterns of pretending the page is an open page/free page so it can compete in the search engines but in reality it presents a paid-gate that only appears after leading content is very unhackernews like.

NYT one of the largest most profitable companies pretends to show you an article baits you and demands money and you are a scrooge for not paying? In that context they are the rich entity and should give the content away (the way Scrooge should have). No where in the story does it mention Tiny Tim finding coal in Scroogle's garbage and someone stopping him and calling him cheap for not paying full price because Scrooge employes so many people.

[baddox]

> it is click-bait in it's dark patterns of pretending the page is an open page/free page so it can compete in the search engines but in reality it presents a paid-gate that only appears after leading content

This is the most important point here. If your content is not actually public, you really shouldn't get the benefits of search engine exposure, HN exposure, or even the distribution from sharing what appears to be a URL to a hypertext document.