Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Perhaps, but I’m not sure how different that would be in practice. I have no more idea how the NYT implemented their paywall than Cloudflare does.


The scope of the average paywall is quite different, letting only some specific crawlers pass for indexing but not meaning to let anyone read who isn't subscribed. I can see the similarity you mean and it's an interesting case to compare with, but "everyone should pay, but we want to be findable" seems different to me from "only things that look like bots to us should pay". Perhaps also because the implementation of the former is easy (look up guidance for the search engines you want to be in; plain allowlist-based) and the latter is nigh impossible (needs heuristics and the bot operators can try to not match them but an average person can't do anything)




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: