Does this actually work? I just tried it on a story on The Atlantic website and I just got a print page that looks exactly like the locked paywall page (i.e. not the whole article).

I use the web archives extension for firefox to easily get the archive.is version of pages. Unfortunately, doesn't work when I'm using a vpn, but otherwise works like a charm.

EDIT: I found this comment on the previous thread:

https://lemmy.world/comment/13080227

"The idea is you quickly press print before the paywall loads, so you can read the full article"

That may work in some cases, but not all. Because not all paywall pages behave in a way where this is functional. The Atlantic is an example, it produces a partial page if you're not past the paywall, so ctrl-p doesn't work. The web archives extension still works though (I use it to easily access archive.is) and the extension is available on mobile firefox as well.

I have also used 12 foot ladder in the past, and it works well. In fact, testing it now, it seems to even work when I'm using Proton VPN. archive.is does not work for me through the vpn, so I may switch back to 12ft.io. 12ft.io just has you append the paywalled url to their url, so it should be easy enough to make a bookmarklet.