But hackernews links to free information sources. No free information sources => no hackernews...

Plenty of the information sources linked to are free of advertising and not behind paywalls. In fact, those are probably the better information sources.

That's how the web started, remember: no ads. Just free sources of information.

Not behind paywalls, I agree. Free of advertising... it would be interesting to have stats at hand, but I'm not so sure.

Anyway, thank you for reminding me I'm old enough to remember how the web started :D