I think moderators should mark articles behind paywalls as such, I already don't click on wapo or nytimes links but you never can tell with medium. I'm retired on a fixed income and I can't justify in my budget subscribing to these places. It makes me sad when I can't read an article that might otherwise fascinate me. One solution would be to never click on medium links, but then I'd miss the ones that are free.
Medium really botched the paywall approach and I couldn't possibly agree with you more. It is so inconsistently applied and quite honestly I can't justify spending 5 dollars a month on a "publisher" whose content is so variable. Some Medium articles are really good, others are baseless clickbait, it's hard to tell until you read the article and already sunk the time and the money.
I'm thinking of writing an extension that would go grab the first page of each link and tell me if they want me to pay. The extension would turn the link red if so. How consistently can I get this right though? I can't just go by domain name because sometimes I have free articles left, on New Yorker for example. I agree with you on Medium. I was more angry until I found out it is up to the individual authors to turn on the paywall for their article so they can get paid. 60 dollars a year for hit or miss medium content is a bit rich. They must think they are in the same league as NYT or WAPO
