Like Archimedes never said, “Give me a Javascript Bookmarklet short enough and a browser bar on which to place it, and I shall jump over the web world’s paywalls.”
I blabbed recently about the extraordinary story and service (archive.today) created by an elusive figure that lets you easily jump the paywall. It includes what i think is easy, just, inserting a few bits of url in the browser bar.
To make it easier, in the time it took to brew coffee this morning and without one molecule of “vibe coding needed”, I reworked another similar tool to create the Jump the Paywall! browser bookmarklet tool.
Jump the paywalls and also spread the jumps by sharing openly free reading links.
Okay, I know some will chime in that this is potentially hurting paid writers. But this is more a failure of the news business to create a viable business, given the abandonment by most of print, and sucking up to the google teat for advertising clicks. But looks, the guy that owns the Washington Post has enough spare change in his couch to make the newspaper available for free to the world. Why does he not? The greed eaters cannot change their appetite.
And besides, no one really buys or even reads my personal theory
Also, as a bonus tip for the 11 or so people in the world who actually might still use browser bookmarklets – it can even work on a mobile! Or at least on my iOS device in Chrome. When viewing a paywalled site, simple go to that browser bar, and start typing the “Jump” (the title of the browser bookmarklet). Select the link that is in your bookmarks bar, and it works!
Happy Jumping (this was my first look for a featured image, but I went with one previously created!
Featured Image: Background image for the Jump the Paywall site made my moi– Album Cover Jump! flickr photo by gomattolson shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license modified by Alan Levine to include the a screen shot of the paywall shared also under a Creative Commons (BY) license
Will try it out, and I did in past use a now abandoned bookmarklet that WordPress provided to allow you to pull-quote a blog and pull in all kinds of other bits and pieces (like related blog entries in your own site or others). That went EOL years and years back. Anyways, Jumping the pay wall, count me in! Got the bookmarklet now. And I’m willing to use it.