Take payment for your articles, but don't go after anyone who doesn't pay. Effectively, honor system. Let the piracy market world exist, and have faith that it won't completely override the people who want to pay.

If millions of people read your stuff without any of them converting to payers, fuck 'em. Pearls before swine. They can pay for their content unconsciously, through ads, and enjoy the kind of writing that gets them.

If I wanted to make a living publishing my writing, I think this is the model I'd use. I write enough as a hobby. I'd only want to let that turn into a source of income, if it didn't come with the necessity of meeting with lawyers regularly to go after my readers. "Suggested donation: $1", and I wouldn't quit my day job until those suggested donations were piling up huge.

But that's me. My chosen career isn't writing, and I'm just a hobbyist. Maybe it's more of a life or death feeling to them.

Yet these companies do allow Google et al to index their stuff, otherwise the paywall bypass addons, archive.ph etc wouldn't work. They want their cake and eat it. It's super annoying to find something on Google and then be hit with a paywall. Totally bait and switch.

If there weren't such great paywall-bypassing plugins I'd want a plugin that removes paywall sites from Google results, Lemmy submissions etc.

Also you really can't expect a user to subscribe to a full subscription to read a handful articles a month.

At least offer a once off small payment but almost nobody does that.

And I'll bet you use adblock too (I sure do) making it even more impossible.

Yes though the tracking is the most important reason there. If they just used untargeted ads it wouldn't be such a problem.