We loved medium, for its simplicity. But no more. They have added a paywall to read their articles. Once you read few articles, they will ask you to upgrade.
We Only able to see the first paragraph, like this:
The Solution?
1. Log out from Medium.com and refresh the page.
Yes. Just logout from your medium account.
2. Delete Cache
Sometimes, it won't still work because they store the data. For that you can just delete their site cache by opening Inspect Element => Application => Clear Site Data
3. Incognito Mode
Sometimes its easier to open the URL in an incognito mode which makes sure there is no cache involved. Also you don't need to sign-out.
3. Outline to the Rescue
Outline is a simple service which converts normal webpages to a readable format. Since this website caches content before reaching browser, Medium doesn't know if it came from human or search engine. Hence they allow full article.
Example
Medium Article: https://medium.com/..../78a0797259a6
Outline Link: https://outline.com/Ce4fv6
Top comments (7)
Or you could read the article without logging in to your Medium account (ie. read the article in a private window).
No longer work as of August 2023.
Nice find :)
Use the free 12ft Chrome ext. The huge benefit over other methods: You can send anyone a link to the de-paywalled content. Eg:
12ft.io/proxy?q=https://medium.com...
Note the
12ft.iodomain it's hosted at. That link will survive forever. Really useful. I can't count the times I sent someone a Medium or NYT link, and they replied, "I can't see that content."That article was definitely paywalled for me. So Medium still hasn't wised up to the needs of a Free and Open web.
I think the Medium has caught up with all this trickery.
Having a more than one account (tied to Gmail) helps to get more than 3 articles though..
Also, opening the article in Opera, in Incognito, with a VPN on adds some more, but not by much: I'm not sure how they are catching it.
Regarding "Delete Cache", you can permanently block certain sites from settings cookies, bypassing the paywall seamlessly :)
I didn't know about outline. Thanks, Surjith :)