not sure what has changed, but i have unlimited public SA articles since ~2017 w/ basic free signup, and never paid a dime. including bn article above.

I'm not sure what changed either, but it sure changed for me as well, I would guess three to five years ago. I can very rarely read any SA articles, even the stinking little notices of dividend declarations that get emailed to me. I have heard other people, like you, say they still get unlimited free articles. I used to, but not any more.

One of life's mysteries. I'm not sure what makes the difference. For a while I had a work-around through a website that used to magically make the articles readable, but somebody wised up and now even that doesn't work for me any more. Maybe it's whether you contribute comments on articles? I can remember a time when TMF became a paid site, but people who were frequent commenters on the boards would get the membership fee waived.