12ft.io Paywall Bypassing Service (2024)

A popular January 19 2022post alerted readers to the existence of 12ft.io, a site that purportedly bypasses paywalls on news sites:

12ft.io Paywall Bypassing Service (1)

The Facebook Post

An attached image featured a graphic of hands and a broken chain. Text on the image read:

Fact Check

Claim: 12ft.io removes paywalls on major news sites, enabling readers to access higher quality news content.

Description: The claim asserts that 12ft.io, a website, bypasses paywalls on major news websites, providing users free access to normally restricted content. Paywalls are means for online publishers to restrict access to content, requiring users to pay a subscription or one-time fee to view articles, reports, etc.

Rating: Decontextualized

Rating Explanation: The fact-checking process involved testing the 12ft.io service on four major websites known for their paywall use. While access was denied on one general outlet and another financial site, 12ft.io successfully bypassed the paywalls on the other two sites. Although the service didn’t claim to universally remove paywalls, some limitations exist in its functionality. Because of these constraints, the claim is rated as decontextualized.

Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.

What?

Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page, and we’ll try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article.

“Show me a [ten foot] paywall …” appeared to be a reference to a variation of a quote about walls, one which often appears in discussions about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of border walls:

Paywalls, News Literacy, and Partisan Content

Broadly, paywalls are a contentious issue in journalism; one school of thought holds that they are integral to funding newsrooms, while addresses concerns about the effects they can have on general news literacy. That debate was illustrated in a viral 2019 tweet from a since-deleted account detailing where paywalls tend to appear:

That February 2019 tweet described how typically neutral sources were obscured by even “soft” paywalls (enabling a number of free views per month), whereas heavily partisan sites are ad-supported and often seem to be extremely accessible:

It’s infuriating how often I google a story to verify it, and the results are:

  1. NYT [the New York Times] (no free articles left)
  2. Fox News (always free)
  3. WaPo [the Washington Post](no free articles left)
  4. Brietbart (always free)
  5. Daily Caller (always free)

Guess what people end up reading when this happens?

Paywalls (and their tendency to depress the spread of credible sources on social media, in turn creating an information landscape tailor-made to amplify less credible sources) became a large topic of discussion during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when disinformation was moving at breakneck speeds. A year into the pandemic, Columbia Journalism Review’s “What the pandemic means for paywalls” examined the state of access to credible news:

A year [before March 2021], major publications across the United States partially or completely lowered their paywalls. The idea was that information about the outbreak of covid-19 had life-saving potential, and so it should be available to everyone, not just to subscribers—a fraction of news readers who tend to be the wealthiest and most highly-educated. Lowering paywalls was ethically sound. But it now raises important questions for media outlets: How long can they afford to keep their journalism free? And how will they determine which reporting is “essential” to the public?

[…]

That seemed to happen for The Atlantic, which received early praise for removing its paywall on coronavirus stories …as the months went by, the coronavirus proved not to have been the only subject requiring intense service-journalism: police brutality, Black Lives Matter protests, and the presidential election all carried life-or-death stakes … recently, even pandemic stories have been paywalled; a recent visit to The Atlantic showed that some articles were free, others not.

Like the 2019 tweet, CJR observed that access to news was often skewed to favor partisan outlets and sources:

The willingness to remove barriers may cast doubt on the common presumption that paywalls are an unfortunate necessity in journalism, an essential public good that is expensive to produce. And paywalls do not affect all readers the same way. As Current Affairs pointed out last August [2020], “The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free”; many left-leaning publications that thoroughly research and fact-check their articles paywall their journalism, while right-wing media disseminates conspiracies and racism to anyone who’ll click. Only about sixteen percent of news-readers in the United States pay for subscriptions, which means that everyone else is locked out of knowledge, and likely to encounter a disproportionate amount of far-right fodder, often strewn with misinformation.

Does 12ft.io Remove Paywalls?

In the graphic above, the meme stated 12ft.io would “try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article.”

Two of the frequently paywalled outlets mentioned in the 2019 tweet (the New York Times and the Washington Post) maintain “soft paywalls.” Those allow readers a set number of free views per month (typically three to five) before cutting off access to the site.

First we attempted to access a paywalled New York Times article about U.S. President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, and received the following message — indicating the Times blocked 12ft.io from un-paywalling its content:

12ft has been disabled for this site

Next we used the site to open aWashington Post article about a Long Island, New York grandmother who outwitted scammers. 12ft.io removed the paywall, enabling access to the content — but the image remained blurred, a minor vestige of the paywall.

Third, we attempted to access an article on Rolling Stone, reporting on a January 2022 disinformation controversy involving Spotify and Joe Rogan. We hit a paywall opening the link directly, but 12ft.io removed it and enabled access to the piece.

A fourth attempt to access Wall Street Journal content failed.

Summary

A January 2022 Facebook post promoted 12ft.io, a website designed to bypass paywalled news. The existence of paywalls have long been part of a discussion about access to credible news, one that picked up during the events of 2020 and 2021. Of the four sites we attempted to access, only one major, general outlet blocked 12ft.io’s service (another financial site wasn’t accessible either). The site worked for the other two, and seemed to be a useful tool for news readers stymied by lack of access to credible news sources. 12ft.io didn’t claim to universally remove paywalls, so we rated the post Decontextualized, due to some limits in its ability to enable access to news.

12ft.io Paywall Bypassing Service (2024)

FAQs

12ft.io Paywall Bypassing Service? ›

12ft.io is a website that allows to selectively browse any site with JavaScript disabled. It also allows some online paywalls to be bypassed. It is currently owned by its creator Thomas Millar.

What can a 12ft.io bypass? ›

12ft Ladder

As I mentioned at the start, you can use the 12ft website to bypass paywalls on most sites but you will find that some sites don't allow it to be used, like The Economist.

What happened to the 12ft Ladder? ›

Why has 12ft Ladder gone down? Visitors to 12ft Ladder's website started noticing that it was offline late last week. It appears that it was taken down after its website-hosting provider received complaints from disgruntled businesses.

Can you get in trouble for bypassing a paywall? ›

As paywalls proliferate to protect digital media, methods for circumventing those paywalls develop and propagate just as quickly. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing an effective technological means of control that restricts access to a copyrighted work.

How does 12 ft io work? ›

12ft.io Proxy Helper is a simple, lightweight Chrome extension designed to enhance your online reading experience. With just a single click, the extension redirects your current page through the 12ft.io proxy, enabling seamless access to articles behind paywalls or subscription models.

Does 12ft.io not work anymore? ›

12ft.io is a website that allows to selectively browse any site with JavaScript disabled. It also allows some online paywalls to be bypassed. It is currently owned by its creator Thomas Millar. In November 2023, its hosting platform Vercel took the website offline.

How to read premium articles for free? ›

How to Get Past a Paywall to Read an Article for Free
  1. Paste the headline into Google. The simplest ways are often the best. ...
  2. Try a Facebook redirect.
  3. Open the link in an incognito window. ...
  4. Disable JavaScript in your browser. ...
  5. Enable "reader mode" ...
  6. Use a VPN. ...
  7. Use Bypass Paywalls from GitHub. ...
  8. Try another browser add-on.
Jun 21, 2024

What site is similar to 12 ft ladder? ›

The best alternatives to 12 Foot Ladder are Incoggo, Bypass Paywalls, and L402.org. If these 3 options don't work for you, we've listed a few more alternatives below. What do you think of 12 Foot Ladder?

How to get behind paywall articles? ›

16 ways to bypass paywalls for free
  1. Use a virtual private network (VPN) ...
  2. Open an Incognito window. ...
  3. Turn on Reader Mode in your browser. ...
  4. Delete your browser cookies. ...
  5. Use the Wayback Machine. ...
  6. Get access through your library. ...
  7. Use 12ft Ladder. ...
  8. Try the Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension.
May 31, 2024

What is similar to remove paywall? ›

The best alternatives to Bypass Paywalls are Incoggo, 12 Foot Ladder, and RemovePaywall.

Is spaywall legal? ›

Legally read news and research papers for free, on any device. Spaywall News & Research is the original browser extension that helps you LEGALLY avoid paywalls by searching online archives and redirecting you to a paywall-free version.

How do I access papers behind a paywall? ›

Here are some ways you can access paywalled research papers that will help you nurture your professional network:
  1. Contacting the author(s). All papers, including paywalled papers, display the contact information for the corresponding author on the page. ...
  2. Obtaining alumni access. ...
  3. Getting a courtesy appointment.

What is a paywall blocker? ›

PayWall Blocker: PayWall Blocker is a Chrome extension that hides web articles behind a paywall on the overview pages. Wayback Machine: The Wayback Machine provides access to archived versions of websites, whether or not they were originally behind paywalls.

What is PaywallReader? ›

What is the Paywall Reader? The Paywall Reader is a user-friendly application crafted to break through the barriers of digital paywalls, granting users unrestricted access to premium content across the web.

What is smry ai? ›

SMRY AI is an AI tool designed to deliver efficient summaries for quick comprehension of lengthy texts. It goes beyond the basic summarizing capabilities by offering a solution to bypass paywalls, enabling users to access restricted content rapidly.

How do I view something behind a paywall? ›

  1. Use a virtual private network (VPN)
  2. Open an Incognito window.
  3. Turn on Reader Mode.
  4. Delete your browser cookies.
  5. Use the Wayback Machine.
  6. Get access through your library.
  7. 12ft Ladder.
  8. Bypass Paywalls Clean app.
May 31, 2024

Is removepaywall.com safe? ›

We adopt appropriate data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures to protect against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information, username, password, transaction information and data stored on our website.

What is a paywall website? ›

The term paywall is quite self-explanatory. It is a practice that creates a restriction on access to certain content, requiring visitors interested in accessing it to make a payment. In general, paywall works on a subscription model — the user pays a fixed monthly fee to access the content, either fully or in parts.

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