“It’s only a gameshow”. Big Brother contestants sang it to themselves on one of the seasons back in the 00s. My colleagues and I did the same during a rough patch at a former company I worked for.
I like it because it’s a reminder that things can seem immovably important until you remove yourself from the context of that situation and assess it from the outside.
This is an oversimplification. Paywalls are generally designed to circumvent simplistic “remove popover” approaches. Sites like 12ft.io and paywalls removal extensions use myriad solutions across different site to circumvent both local and server side paywalls.
I don’t see how it could be given that they are loading a detection script in the client.
It has nothing to do with DNS. I suspect those saying that PiHole solves it simply haven’t been rolled out to yet (or are using adblockers but have forgotten)