Even porous paywalls can have a marked effect on story performance on HN.
The New York Times tightened its paywall markedly in August 2019, with a net effect that appearances in the top-30 stories on HN's front-page archive (the "Past" links in the site header) fell to ~25% of their previous level.
I'd asked dang at the time if HN had changed any of its own processes at the time. Apparently not.
I suspect then that this reflects frustrations and/or inability to access posted articles behind the paywall.
The New York Times tightened its paywall markedly in August 2019, with a net effect that appearances in the top-30 stories on HN's front-page archive (the "Past" links in the site header) fell to ~25% of their previous level.
I'd asked dang at the time if HN had changed any of its own processes at the time. Apparently not.
I suspect then that this reflects frustrations and/or inability to access posted articles behind the paywall.
See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36918251> (July 2023)