I frustrate when I clicked to a title or entry and when I go to the tab I see that I need to pay for a subscription to see the content. I think this creates a great struggle in an open community like HN.
This topic gets questioned/debated weekly, including most times a paywalled article gets on the front page.<p>It is answered in the FAQ [1] and re-iterated frequently by dang.<p>Paywalled pages are OK if a bypass is available. If there is one, usually someone will post it in the comments.<p>If nobody has yet, you could try viewing the article in <a href="http://archive.is/" rel="nofollow">http://archive.is/</a> or <a href="https://outline.com/" rel="nofollow">https://outline.com/</a>, and if it works, share the link here.<p>If no paywall bypass is available, the item should not be on HN, so you should flag it.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html</a>
Because some valuable content may cost money to access. FWIW, at least many/most U.S. library systems let you access such paywalled content for free, so I recommend getting yourself a library card if you're in the U.S. :).
Don't have an answer for why but usually when I find a paywall, I paste the link on either archive.org or archive.is and find the article without paywall. archive.org often works better.