News publishers take paywall-blocker 12ft.io offline | The Verge

The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, announced that it has “successfully secured” the removal of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The trade association says 12ft.io’s webhost took down the site on July 14th “following the News/Media Alliance’s efforts.”

12ft.io — or 12 Foot Ladder — also allowed users to view webpages without ads, trackers, or pop-ups by disguising a user’s browser as a web crawler, giving them unfettered access to a webpage’s contents. Software engineer Thomas Millar says he created the site when he realized “8 of the top 10 links on Google were paywalled” when doing research during the pandemic.

Over the past decade, the online publishing business model has become increasingly unstable. For many years, websites gave readers free access because they were supported by advertising revenue, which is dependent on pageviews. But as traffic has fluctuated, in large part due to changes to Google’s Search algorithm and an increasing shift toward AI search, many magazines, including The Verge, have diversified their business to become more dependent on subscriptions and paywalls to support themselves. The attempts for publishers to become more sustainable have also led to an internet that is less open and accessible — a complaint that Millar’s project is responding to.

Still, in an ironic twist, Millar began asking users to pay for a subscription to 12ft.io to help cover the cost of the tool in 2022. “I’m making it my mission to clean the web,” Millar said at the time.

In its announcement, News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io “offered illegal circumvention technology” that allowed users to access copyrighted content without paying for it. The organization adds that it will take “similar actions” against other sites that let users get around paywalls. The News Media Alliance recently called Google’s AI Mode “theft.” (Like many chatbots, Google’s AI Mode eliminates the need to visit a website, starving publishers of the pageviews they need to be compensated for their work.)

“Publishers commit significant resources to creating the best and most informative content for consumers, and illegal tools like 12ft.io undermine their ability to financially support that work through subscriptions and ad revenue,” News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey said in the press release. “Taking down paywall bypassers is an essential part of ensuring we have a healthy and sustainable information ecosystem.”

Disclosure: The Verge’s parent company, Vox Media, is a member of the News/Media Alliance.