JS-based Login Wall & Paywall Remover

28 Jan 2018

2-minute read

JS > CSS

I spent a bit of time building out CSS-based solutions for bypassing the LinkedIn login wall (see post here). But an extension that also blocks JavaScript-based login walls and paywalls would cover more bases.

wsjUnblock

Jinsong Li’s wsjUnblock is a good solution; see the blog post here. As of now, the extension helps with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, and Washington Post. I recently submitted a PR to incorporate LinkedIn.

I’d recommend using wsjUnblock since it’s a more holistic framework for removing obstructions on web pages. I’m planning to dig around LinkedIn to see if there are any JS-based solutions for handling the hard login wall.

The only downsides to the extension are that:

  1. As of January 2018, it only works for Chrome. There is, however, an active PR for Firefox and Edge. In the meantime, if you use another browser (or you don’t want to install an extension and also don’t mind clicking on a bookmark every time to remove the LinkedIn page obstructions, you can always install my amazing bookmarklet. But in the end, you should really get wsjUnblock instead if you’re a heavy Chrome user.
  2. Despite developing wsjUnblock, Jinsong is self-listed as a member of the “Hearst Digital Media” GitHub group. This isn’t a real issue as long as the extension works, just slightly ironic.

Thanks, Jinsong!