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Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

by 2cpu1container on 11/6/23, 12:04 PM with 150 comments

Hey there

I made a opensource alternative for these services. Although these worked very well, I was not so confident what they do. So I made my own and opensourced it.

It is written in Golang and is fully customizable.

  • by ktpsns on 11/6/23, 12:59 PM

    I got the feeling that these features should be part of a browser extension the same way as there are AdBlock extensions. I guess the reason it is not is "personal preference" of the author, or is there some technical reason?

  • by nfriedly on 11/7/23, 3:11 AM

    The docker image, and on the upside is fairly easy to get running. But I'm downside, I'm zero for two actually using it.

    I tried a Bloomberg article which gave me a "suspicious activity from your IP, please fill out this captcha" page, only the captcha was broken and didn't load.

    Then I tried a WSJ article which loaded basically the same couple of paragraphs that I could get for free, but did not load any of the rest of the content.

  • by fyzix on 11/6/23, 2:01 PM

    I'm very new to this kind of service, but do you have to write your own rulesets for each site you want to bypass? The repo doesn't seem to include much...

  • by KoftaBob on 11/6/23, 3:15 PM

    Create a browser book mark and set this as the URL of the bookmark:

    javascript:window.location.href="https://archive.is/latest/"+location.href

    It will usually open up the archived version of article without the paywall.

  • by SigmundurM on 11/6/23, 12:48 PM

    You mention 13ft as another open source inspiration. How is Ladder improving on what 13ft does?

  • by pacifika on 11/6/23, 1:53 PM

    Open source makes it easy for the cat in the cat mouse game, right?

  • by gumby on 11/6/23, 3:27 PM

    The README says "The author does not endorse or encourage any unethical or illegal activity."

    Is it actually illegal anywhere to bypass a paywall?

  • by janejeon on 11/6/23, 1:51 PM

    Really dummy question: how do services like this work? As in, how do they bypass these paywalls?

    The obvious thing is to mock Googlebot, but site owners can check that the request isn't coming from a Google-published IP and see that it's a fake, right?

  • by fader on 11/6/23, 12:54 PM

    For folks like me who have no idea what 12ft.io or 1ft.io are, they appear to be services for bypassing paywalls on websites.

  • by szaboat on 11/6/23, 2:12 PM

    Not relevant to the project but I usually check for earlier versions of the paywalled pages in the wayback machine (~75% success). I felt bad using these services (paywall removers), and just feeling a bit better checking in archive.org.

  • by arendtio on 11/6/23, 4:18 PM

    Sounds great, not just for paywalls, but for removing CORS as well:

    > Remove CORS headers from responses, assets, and images ...

  • by JustinGoldberg9 on 11/6/23, 3:34 PM

    I still miss outline.com

    I use txtify.it

  • by TanguyN on 11/6/23, 8:18 PM

    I have noticed that on a lot of websites, if you stop the page loading at just the right moment (you have to be quick), the whole content will display without the paywall. And that's without any external tools. These kinds of tools seem, of course, much more convenient.

  • by jwmoz on 11/6/23, 3:08 PM

    12ft was really good!

  • by cooper_ganglia on 11/6/23, 9:34 PM

    Really great and easy to use. I was trying to read an article that was on the front page of HN and couldn't due to paywall. Downloaded the binary and was reading it within 30 seconds. Awesome and very useful tool, thanks!

  • by rounakdatta on 11/6/23, 3:45 PM

    Given a very different paywall model for Substack, what exactly would work for bypassing their paywalls?

    Wouldn't we always require a paid account to cache the HTML through (the SciHub model)?

  • by zippytyro on 11/8/23, 3:38 PM

    damn, thanks man

  • by some1else on 11/6/23, 1:00 PM

    Relevant: 12ft.io was banned by Vercel, taking down the developer's entire account with multiple other hosted projects & domains: https://twitter.com/thmsmlr/status/1718663563353755982

    Edit: Access to other projects & domains was apparently restored some time after: https://twitter.com/thmsmlr/status/1719480558932148272

  • by serial_dev on 11/6/23, 9:14 PM

    First of all congrats on the project and thank you for open sourcing it.

    > Freedom of information is an essential pillar of democracy

    However, this reads like this tool saves democracy by letting you bypass a crappy pay wall on a site you visit once a year, and that whoever wants to get paid for their published content online is an enemy of democracy.

  • by karaterobot on 11/6/23, 9:33 PM

    It seemed to me like 12ft.io was useful for a couple of months, but then stopped being useful as they agreed to blacklist more and more URLs. I thought everybody switched to archive.is, which (so far) works 100% of the time, even if it is sometimes a pain in the butt.

  • by benatkin on 11/6/23, 7:57 PM

    This reminds me of the thread when 12ft was taken down.

    Does anyone have any insight into how it would take Vercel hundreds of hours of support time? https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1718680650067460138

  • by boplicity on 11/6/23, 5:58 PM

    Slightly edited "Why":

    Access to private property is an essential pillar of democracy and the safe proliferation of ideas. While property owners have legitimate financial interests, it is crucial to strike a balance between property and the public's right to access property. The proliferation of locks on doors raises concerns about the erosion of this fundamental freedom, and it is imperative for society to find innovative ways to preserve access to people's homes and workspaces without compromising the sustainability of property ownership.. In a world where property should be shared and not commodified, locks should be critically examined to ensure that they do not undermine the principles of an open and informed society.

  • by donohoe on 11/6/23, 3:38 PM

    I use services like this as I often skip news site paywalls because I just can't afford, nor is it practical, to have so many subscriptions.

    That said, I work in news media (and have been involved in building paywalls at different orgs - NYT and New Yorker). I know how money for these directly support journalism - salaries and the costs with associated with any story.

    If you are skipping paywalls a lot, I would encourage you to pay for a subscription to at least one or two news sites you respect - bonus points if its a small or medium local newsroom that benefits!

    For me that has been; NYTimes, New Yorker, Wired, Teen Vogue, and my wife's hometown paper in Illinois.

  • by roydivision on 11/6/23, 12:50 PM

    Is it just me or has 12ft become less and less effective? I rarely get through with it these days.

  • by j-a-a-p on 11/6/23, 4:27 PM

    In the README there is a WHY paragraph:

    > Freedom of information is an essential pillar of democracy and informed decision-making. While media organizations have legitimate financial interests, it is crucial to strike a balance between profitability and the public's right to access information. The proliferation of paywalls raises concerns about the erosion of this fundamental freedom, and it is imperative for society to find innovative ways to preserve access to vital information without compromising the sustainability of journalism.