I don't know if that's really fair. It's much more rare for HN link posts to have bodies and this one is a single line of the gift link. Yes, that gift link works today but it's also completely reasonable to post the archive link.

It's the same article without the pay wall

The article is already posted without the paywall in the submission description itself.

The actual submission link isn’t using the gift link. And “reading” the submission doesn’t reveal the end of the URL with the gift access token.

WSJ 'gift links' often do not actually work. I don't know whether they have a "usage count" or a 'good for x time' expiration, but more often than not they don't work (beyond "gifting" a paywall).