[HN Gopher] How I Experience Web Today
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How I Experience Web Today
        
       Author : mrestko
       Score  : 424 points
       Date   : 2021-08-23 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (how-i-experience-web-today.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (how-i-experience-web-today.com)
        
       | wibblewobble123 wrote:
       | You should also add blank text until the pointless web font
       | loads.
        
       | jrochkind1 wrote:
       | Inaccurate, loads far too fast.
        
       | Yeri wrote:
       | "I don't care about cookies" [1] on Firefox breaks the website
       | (ie nothing happens).
       | 
       | [1] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
        
       | dormento wrote:
       | Could not proceed after the article, which is somehow actually
       | really dang realistic.
        
         | maccolgan wrote:
         | Do you have uBlock Origin enabled by any chance?
        
       | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
       | I had to turn ublock off to keep going after the first click,
       | which is in fact an accurate depiction of the web experience.
        
         | untoxicness wrote:
         | Indeed. We can only hope this is an intentional self-
         | referential joke.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | I allowed scripts from cdn.jsdeliver.net and that was enough to
         | get it going. Way less painful than getting an embedded third
         | party video widget working.
        
       | gdsdfe wrote:
       | It really is so freaking frustrating, browsing the web these days
        
       | max1cc wrote:
       | The last part was a very nice touch
        
       | jason0597 wrote:
       | I _literally_ laughed out loud when I heard my Thinkpad 's fan
       | start spinning up! This is just too accurate :(
        
       | jl6 wrote:
       | This is what happens when you use an application framework
       | (HTML+CSS+JS) as a document format.
       | 
       | All those dynamic moving fancy interactive elements are great for
       | actual applications. But as a solution for transmitting plain old
       | information, web technology is now a raging garbage fire. I've
       | stopped publishing my site in HTML at all.
       | 
       | The web needs to rediscover document formats.
        
       | gfodor wrote:
       | The very last thing that I saw on this site got me to laugh out
       | loud. I'll leave it at that to not ruin it. Genius.
        
         | zem wrote:
         | same :) came here to see if anyone else had commented on it
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | Go ahead and ruin it for me. I got as far as a fake article
         | with two giant text boxes that couldn't be closed and had non-
         | working send/submit buttons. If anything exists past this, it
         | isn't loading for me.
        
         | beprogrammed wrote:
         | Same, literally laughed out loud.
        
       | danuker wrote:
       | This pushes my buttons indeed.
       | 
       | But I also ran across some sites messing with the history, so
       | they take you to a different site when you click "back".
       | 
       | I am especially worried about pushState and replaceState.
       | 
       | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API...
        
         | titzer wrote:
         | Is it just me or has Youtube screwed something up here? About
         | 1/3rd chance that the back button doesn't do anything on the
         | last Youtube page in Safari.
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | Wait, can any webdevs explain a legitimate use for these
         | features? Because my (admittedly uninformed) mind can only
         | think of bad uses...
        
           | throwthere wrote:
           | Routing in single-page applications relies heavily on the
           | history API I think.
        
       | tester756 wrote:
       | not realistic
       | 
       | lacks of giant pop-up on google search page about cookies,
       | privacy or something that appears whenever you open google in new
       | instance of porno mode
        
       | yetanother-1 wrote:
       | Lovely and accurate
        
       | juliend2 wrote:
       | Please put some open graph data so it's more enticing to click on
       | when shared in social networks. (which I just did on linkedin)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
       | Idea: What if we had a search engine that would search only web
       | sites without ads...
       | 
       | It could have some type of "readability / usability / user
       | friendliness rating" (score 0-10) ...
        
         | ksangeelee wrote:
         | I did something along those lines as a proof of concept, seeded
         | with links harvested from this site.
         | 
         | http://kakapo.susa.net:8080/cfs/
         | 
         | A similar (and in my opinion more viable) approach is
         | Marginalia Search. This down-scores pages with a large number
         | of scripts, among other heuristics.
         | 
         | https://search.marginalia.nu/
        
       | o2l wrote:
       | Couldn't see anything annoying on Brave browser except the
       | overlay on article page.
       | 
       | I have much more appreciation for Brave today and how it molds my
       | daily browsing experience.
        
       | Lammy wrote:
       | Needs more 100%-viewport-height ad blocks between the content
       | paragraphs.
        
       | rafaelturk wrote:
       | Kudos for the last part!
        
       | allenu wrote:
       | Since we're all commenting on what's missing, here's another
       | missing thing: you scroll down to the end of the article and a
       | totally unrelated article begins underneath it.
        
         | TeMPOraL wrote:
         | ... immediately overwriting the URL in your address bar, so at
         | the very moment you're most likely to share or bookmark the
         | article you've just read, you can't.
        
       | n4bz0r wrote:
       | These non-clickable "ads" have some weird therapeutic effect on
       | me. I tap on them, nothing happens, and I feel relief. Even share
       | buttons don't work. This site genuinely makes me happy! Things
       | you never knew you needed.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dsego wrote:
       | Had to turn off ublock origin to experience it.
        
       | handrous wrote:
       | This is less-bad than the real thing.
       | 
       | [EDIT] I think I figured out the main difference: this lets me
       | imagine that more than 10% of the "content" isn't also SEO
       | garbage, and has actual value.
       | 
       | [EDIT AGAIN] What it really needs is a _giant_ sticky header that
       | hides when scrolling down but pops up the second you scroll up
       | _at all_ , obscuring all the stuff you were scrolling up to see.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | Those giant dynamic headers are the worst. If you try to save
         | the page to PDF, those headers will block the content at the
         | top of the page.
         | 
         | I've taken to using the element zapper on Ublock Origin to
         | remove them. Sometimes I worry that it'll break the navigation,
         | but then again I rarely come back to sites like those.
        
         | TeMPOraL wrote:
         | > _[EDIT] I think I figured out the main difference: this lets
         | me imagine that more than 10% of the "content" isn't also SEO
         | garbage, and has actual value._
         | 
         | Yup. I think the author forgot to color the main article text,
         | and to label it "also an ad".
        
       | thatjoeoverthr wrote:
       | Almost. It needs an ad that fills entirely the upper half of the
       | screen, and stays with you while you scroll.
        
       | bruce343434 wrote:
       | Nice touch that you need to disable the ad blocker to get the
       | cookie privacy thing to show up.
        
       | cblconfederate wrote:
       | Porn sites used to be the worst offenders with popups etc,
       | ironically they are MUCH better than most newspapers now. No
       | wonder people are watching more porn.
        
       | westoncb wrote:
       | I love the concept here (nice implementation too)
       | 
       | Removing the 'content' and just showing the structure of these
       | annoying web elements in isolation has an interesting effect:
       | 
       | our minds typically do the exact opposite (to a certain
       | extent)--the showcased elements are repeated so often they get
       | partly filtered from experience: our minds know there's nothing
       | interesting to them; a stored and practiced routine can be put on
       | autoplay without conscious attention.
       | 
       | So the page serves to exactly invert that filter and highlight
       | these elements that increasingly vanish[1] from our experience in
       | response to repeated exposure.
       | 
       | [1] aside from a persistent low intensity feeling of
       | annoyance/frustration of course
        
       | nathias wrote:
       | try watching TV, I propose something like a law of technology:
       | 'every technology that can be used to squeeze profit out of
       | people is getting unusable in a very short amount of time'
        
       | chpmrc wrote:
       | That is not _at all_ how I experience the web today.
       | 
       | I also get annoyingly loud and flashy autoplaying videos...
        
       | pizzapim wrote:
       | Had to turn javascript on to read an article, very realistic.
        
       | 4e530344963049 wrote:
       | https://trimread.org/ helps with this.
        
         | floren wrote:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=4e530344963049 take a
         | break.
        
           | beprogrammed wrote:
           | Out of curiosity I took a look at his links, there actually
           | pretty good. Strips out all the crud from articles and gives
           | you some stats on how much smaller it made them.
           | 
           | https://trimread.org/
           | 
           | I don't know how you would shrink this article in particular,
           | but for your standard news site, seems to work quite well.
           | 
           | As an example I fed the mosquito article from earlier into it
           | and got this back. https://trimread.org/articles/437/info
           | 
           | Size went from 3.49 MB to 124 kB, the requests went from 210
           | to 6 and the load time went from 4.67 sec to 0.26 sec. Pretty
           | good.
        
       | pupdogg wrote:
       | How did we get here? Does any and everything ultimately get
       | absorbed by the marketing department?
        
         | G3rn0ti wrote:
         | Because maintaining web sites and services cost money. And
         | making money on the web is still non-trivial. That's because
         | the only way to make money is either by the subscription model
         | or by the add revenue model. Since nobody likes to pay for many
         | subscriptions in parallel, the add revenue model is the
         | dominating one.
         | 
         | If there was an easy micro-payment solution on the web this
         | could make it more accessible and enjoyable again. This what
         | the web3 movement is all about:
         | https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-web3.
         | 
         | With in-browser cryptographic wallets like Metamask, Ethereum's
         | proposed token economy and the current generation of ,,Dapps"
         | we got quite a bit closer to that vision. Web3 has the added
         | benefit to eradicate the need for password managers because
         | your public key becomes your identity.
        
         | cmorgan31 wrote:
         | At most companies? No. The vast majority of data siphoned isn't
         | being actioned upon by most systems. The more mature data
         | driven organizations will have multiple teams between data and
         | marketing to ensure it is business ready which is code for
         | getting rid of the shit data.
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | Money.
         | 
         | The web was great until someone said "I love this, but how do
         | we make money with it?"
        
           | throwawayswede wrote:
           | Not really imo.
           | 
           | It may make sense in the short term, but in the long term
           | these websites are losing customers, ie money. Online
           | advertising is a failed business model. All those companies
           | that started like this and succeeded quickly realized this
           | and are constantly trying to pivot or have done so already.
           | 
           | I'd say the main reason for the crap web we have nowadays is:
           | lazy people trying to get rich quick. There's nothing wrong
           | with wanting to make money online, like people selling books,
           | educational courses, retail in general.
           | 
           | What pisses me off are people who want it quick and with no
           | work. There are literally millions of people who think that
           | they can just throw together a website (read shopify
           | account), enable drop-shipping through some magic shitty
           | plugin they neither know or care anything about, and suddenly
           | bags of money will descend upon them while they're drinking
           | coffee, eating poached eggs at some hipster coffee shop, and
           | posting trash on any of the grams. This fails of course and
           | some give up while others resort to scams. This is where
           | scummy marketing people shine. They "run the numbers" and
           | decide to buy some bullshit fivver SEO service that litters
           | the shit out of some keywords or engage in some other so dark
           | of patterns that make those million-and-one cookie consent
           | boxes seem innocent. Now take this and multiply it by
           | hundreds of thousands of people over the last decade and a
           | half (probably even more) who are stuck in a loop of seeing
           | some bullshit "success story" on facebook of some random dude
           | who's now a millionaire from selling wallets from china,
           | wanting to do the same but are lazy and know nothing about
           | any of the fields involved, try to scam, mostly failing, and
           | repeat.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | dgudkov wrote:
           | Nothing on the internet is free and has never been. If it
           | appears free that's because somebody pays for it with time,
           | money, hardware, or lost opportunities.
        
             | karaterobot wrote:
             | Okay, but that's true of everything. The spirit of the
             | question is, why is the web especially egregious?
        
       | dredmorbius wrote:
       | An admirable attempt.
       | 
       | But nowhere near sufficient.
       | 
       | - Not _NEARLY_ enough link-litter (social links).
       | 
       | - No Taboola Chumbox. SAD! PATHETIC!!!
       | 
       | - Needs a CTA interruption about 15--30s after landing on the
       | payload page.
       | 
       | - Needs a useless hero image.
       | 
       | - Needs more interstitial nags within the article itself. In bold
       | and annoying context.
       | 
       | - Needs more social links after the byline.
       | 
       | Yes, today's web is an utter and complete clusterfuck.
        
         | cblconfederate wrote:
         | - No sounds
         | 
         | - The page wasn't jumping around enough
         | 
         | OK for the effort, 2/5
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | - Social Share buttons served by a third party script loaded
         | with trackers. Bonus points if they include the usually
         | pathetic number of likes and retweets.
        
         | wisethrowaway wrote:
         | - CAPTCHA
         | 
         | - cloudflare redirections
         | 
         | - Affiliate links to Amazon
         | 
         | ... to read a minimally informative article.
        
           | dredmorbius wrote:
           | Excellent! I really should have come up w/ both CAPTCHA and
           | Cloudflare, they're my banes.
           | 
           | - Carousel
           | 
           | - Pagination
           | 
           | - "Click for full article" link
           | 
           | - Autoplay video
           | 
           | - _Separate_ autoplay background audio.
        
       | titzer wrote:
       | They forgot search ads!
        
       | loloquwowndueo wrote:
       | Lol a few years ago I did a full-page capture of a web article.
       | 60% of space is just ads, with actual content sprinkled among the
       | minefield. The rate has only worsened since then.
        
         | dredmorbius wrote:
         | That's about the traditional ratio of the adverts-to-newshole
         | in newspapers.
         | 
         | In the past few years, the (very much suffering) principle
         | local daily began falling far below this level. During the
         | first wave of COVID-19, there were days with virtually no
         | advertising at all.
         | 
         | On the one hand, that made for less distraction. But knowing
         | that ad revenue is the mainstay of newspaper revenues, it was
         | terrifying. The bleeding has continued, and the household
         | eventually cancelled its subscription (something I'd long
         | advocated for).
        
         | rtcoms wrote:
         | As per new trend even the content is advertisement
        
       | frompdx wrote:
       | I thought the popup with _Changes you made may not be saved._
       | when hitting the back button was a nice tough. All of this is
       | 100% true. I rarely make it all the way through the soft content
       | barriers sites that really do this. I agree with others, this
       | works too well and isn 't nearly as bad as the real thing.
        
       | fogof wrote:
       | I opened the link, saw the article, and was trying to figure out
       | what point was trying to be made.
       | 
       | Then I opened it in incognito mode and it was making a point
       | about the commoditization of the web.
       | 
       | Just use browser extensions, folks.
        
         | alanbernstein wrote:
         | Would you care to share some useful extensions for these
         | problems?
        
       | shakezula wrote:
       | _Every day we stray further from the light_
        
       | nrvn wrote:
       | Does it git?
       | 
       | Based on the comments here this website badly needs contributions
       | from people who are eager to reflect the real UX of the modern
       | web.
        
       | evanfarrar wrote:
       | They forgot to include the thing where you scroll down to fit as
       | much of the article on one screen and then an ad loads in bumping
       | the article off screen and then the ad disappears again if you
       | scroll up.
        
       | eveningsteps wrote:
       | Very bitter and to the point. I regularly wonder, do the people
       | who want features like these installed -- feedback form, "support
       | chat" windows of various degrees of fakeness, subscription offer
       | popups jumping in your face, and other absolutely baffling
       | obstacles -- really use their own web sites? Have they ever had
       | to?
        
         | pjerem wrote:
         | As someone who used to work for one of those companies selling
         | a << support chat >> platform, no, they don't.
         | 
         | The marketing and sales departments never targeted the
         | editorial/dev team of a website/company but directly the sales
         | department or an upper management department of the potential
         | new customer.
         | 
         | Chances are that the developers of those websites have to
         | suffer those bullshit integrations as much as you do. And they
         | also are asked to integrate them.
        
           | ratww wrote:
           | Those things are often added using Google Tag Manager, so
           | developers (and anyone else seeing non-production pages)
           | normally don't see them.
           | 
           | Funny story: at my previous job the widgets were disabled
           | "forever" from the site (via a cookie) once you logged with
           | your company email. Marketing and marketing devs had emails
           | in another domain to test their widgets.
        
         | eitland wrote:
         | As long as there is an actual live person who can help me
         | behind that chat I actually appreciate it.
         | 
         | I used the chat solution of my broadband provider just a couple
         | of weeks ago and it was a really good experience.
         | 
         | Also, as a former support technician I far prefer text from
         | both sides of the table.
        
         | Minor49er wrote:
         | Very often, they do not, especially if the site creators are
         | not a part of their own target demographic
        
         | krono wrote:
         | A website is a tool, a means to an end. The purpose of chat
         | popups or feedback forms is to further a business goal, not to
         | increase the website's usability.
        
           | thatjoeoverthr wrote:
           | Is the business goal to get you to click the back button?
        
             | krono wrote:
             | I myself am blocking these annoyances with an adblocker so
             | I'm in the same boat as you.
             | 
             | That being said, the value that these patterns are gaining
             | the businesses that employ them, must outweigh the value
             | lost from people who are so annoyed that they take their
             | business elsewhere.
             | 
             | It is how it is, unfortunately.
        
             | TeMPOraL wrote:
             | No, the business goal is to lie, trick, cheat and steal, to
             | fuck a potential customer over so they part with their
             | money.
             | 
             | That the customer may not be satisfied afterwards doesn't
             | matter - there are plenty of mitigation strategies, such as
             | lock-in effects, playing off sunk cost fallacy, or drowning
             | negative feedback on third-party sites with bought ratings,
             | reviews and social media likes.
             | 
             | Seeing a site like this should light an immediate warning
             | site in your head, telling you that you don't want to be on
             | the business end of their business goals.
        
               | diordiderot wrote:
               | You clearly don't understand capitalism.
               | 
               | The business just provided the most value(tm) to the
               | customer at that moment in time
        
               | TchoBeer wrote:
               | Their customers being ad companies
        
       | ivanovb wrote:
       | The content should be just the title repeated a few times, but
       | phrased differently.
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | Actual content was above the fold, it's already better than
         | many websites.
        
       | coffeecat wrote:
       | Where's the auto-playing video that you can't get rid of, and
       | which jumps into the sidebar and moves down along with you when
       | you try to scroll past it?
        
         | allenu wrote:
         | Yup, and it has a close button that conveniently appears right
         | beneath the scrollbar.
        
           | pbourke wrote:
           | The close button is a convenient 10x10 square consisting of a
           | light blue X on a light gray background. It moves when you
           | zoom in on mobile to click it.
        
         | ub99 wrote:
         | The auto playing videos that are not related to the content of
         | the article are, perhaps, the most baffling thing for me. I
         | open an article and watch a video for a minute trying to
         | understand the point - to only then realize that the video is
         | unrelated. What's the point of this? In most cases I close the
         | website and add it to my blocklist.
        
       | shwoopdiwoop wrote:
       | Missed the step where the search result takes you to the google
       | hosted AMP version of the page and it takes forever to figure out
       | how to escape that hell.
        
       | culebron21 wrote:
       | One part is missing: the IM window will make sound and show a
       | respectable or attractive person in avatar.
        
       | herodotus wrote:
       | Brilliant! Thank you for doing this! I wish I could send the link
       | to almost every organization whose web sites I have had to
       | endure. If you had offered me a rating pop-up, you would have
       | been the first one I ever use (and gave 5 stars to).
       | 
       | Now do one for those horrible CRM messages "Thank you for XXXX.
       | You are very important to us at YYY. Please click here to give us
       | important feedback on your experience."
       | 
       | After I bought a new VW from a local dealer, I was getting so
       | many of these "requests" that I called the dealer and told them
       | that I would never buy another car from them again if I got one
       | more of these emails. They stopped.
        
         | TeMPOraL wrote:
         | > _If you had offered me a rating pop-up, you would have been
         | the first one I ever use (and gave 5 stars to)._
         | 
         | I've recently started to. For example, just last week, my
         | telco's app (that I use because it's the least-hassle way to
         | pay my phone/Internet bills) got 2 stars on Google Play Store,
         | with a comment explaining that the app is fine, except slowish,
         | and constantly nags about rating it on the Play Store.
        
           | heroprotagonist wrote:
           | I usually get the "Bad? Rate on our own feedback page" "Good?
           | Rate on the store" scam.
        
       | vallas wrote:
       | At the beginning you forgot the Google data disclaimer, and the
       | Google results ad.
       | 
       | Otherwise, I just go on Twitter, HN or Reddit to read an article
       | and open it with a viewer like archive.is
        
       | LegitGandalf wrote:
       | Way to much written content implied, needs more twitter embeds
        
       | mod50ack wrote:
       | This is why I only browse, both on desktop and mobile, with a
       | bunch of extensions to make the nonsense (mostly) stop.
        
       | wisethrowaway wrote:
       | It's been terrible in the last year.
       | 
       | uBlock is not detecting Youtube ads,
       | 
       | Twitter is blocking anonymous navigation
       | 
       | And the examples of OP are all too accurate (Business Insider,
       | Bloomberg, Forbes, Medium, virtually any platform).
        
         | ratww wrote:
         | I'm honestly liking it.
         | 
         | When Youtube started showing ads for me I just stopped binge-
         | watching videos on the site, and started using YouTube-dl and
         | watching everything offline.
         | 
         | I added those paywall sites to my hosts file block, I just
         | don't care anymore. I already block everything from
         | Facebook/Instagram, and I'm about to do the same with Twitter.
         | My whole family and friend circle only really use
         | WhatsApp/Telegram anyway, so it doesn't matter.
         | 
         | Those things reduced my screen time a lot and I honestly find
         | it healthy.
        
           | wisethrowaway wrote:
           | Some websites go past the point of no return (for me Twitter,
           | Reddit, I don't bother anymore)
           | 
           | But some websites were usable and now I am frustrated (in
           | Bloomberg, newspapers the reader mode used to work but not
           | anymore). Medium, Towardsdatascience have nice ML articles
           | now often behind registration wall.
        
         | mod50ack wrote:
         | uBO and sponsorblock work for me. Have you updated your lists?
         | On my phone I use NewPipe+SB. I use privacy redirect to go to
         | nitter.
        
           | rchaud wrote:
           | I think he means the ad thumbnails, not the in-video ads
           | themselves. Ublock hasn't been able to hide them for a while
           | now.
        
         | SubiculumCode wrote:
         | reddit req
        
       | jollybean wrote:
       | Bravo thanks for this.
       | 
       | It's a slippery slope tragedy of the commons that small actors
       | can do nothing about really.
       | 
       | If Google were to start rating on this basis, or some 3rd party
       | were able to (and then get enough noise and traction) it might
       | help.
       | 
       | But it rather seems like there are a bunch of things that need to
       | be done, not just one, including the controversial 'cookie issue'
       | which I don't believe actually resolves the intended issue and
       | creates a 'mini headache'.
        
       | tus89 wrote:
       | You would be amazed how much improved things are with Javascript
       | switched off (which Chrome allows you to easily do, with
       | exceptions). Give it a try.
        
         | beprogrammed wrote:
         | Agreed, I'm especially fond of uMatrix lately for firefox.
        
       | tommica wrote:
       | In a completely different direction - I've been getting a bit
       | into cooking lately, and found a website called
       | https://based.cooking and aside of the silly name, the content is
       | great - just recipes and nothing else! Wish there was a search
       | engine that was able to give sites like that as result, and not
       | the current SEO junk that is being made, although they have good
       | recipes hidden in their walls of text
        
       | croes wrote:
       | Web development and it's tools are often a top topic on HN.
       | Better tools, new languages, new frameworks, improved frameworks
       | etc. So now someone tell me why we get such sites? Why should I
       | care about developers if they don't seem to care about me? And
       | that's only the design and UX not to mention the whole tracking
       | and spying.
        
         | austincummings wrote:
         | It's the business that doesn't care about you, not the
         | developers.
        
           | ratww wrote:
           | Considering that lots of developer blogs these days also
           | employ some of those tricks, I wouldn't be so sure.
        
       | jstummbillig wrote:
       | Did not even break the back button. What a joke joke.
        
       | lazyfanatic wrote:
       | I miss stumbleupon too my friend.
        
       | beprogrammed wrote:
       | Love it, that basically sums it up.
       | 
       | I especially love that my browser asked if I really wanted to
       | leave the page, got me with my own setup.
        
       | lesinski wrote:
       | This is what SEO has become. Free audience comes from Google as
       | long as you make "free," targeted content. The authors are trying
       | to extract every ounce of value they can from making that free
       | content. I'm hesitant to suggest Google interfere even more with
       | publishers' autonomy but they're the only ones who can
       | incentivize them en masse to change how they collect information
       | after the clickthrough.
        
       | kinnth wrote:
       | DuckDuckGo should add an ad / popup score to every article so
       | that in the search results you could preview just how much crap
       | you're expecting to see if you click. If there are no ads it
       | could be a gold result or something :)
        
       | peanut_worm wrote:
       | You forgot the broken AMP page that only loads ads! Needs another
       | step to click the top left, then click the page url, then wait
       | for another page load.
        
       | cutler wrote:
       | In the early 2000s there was a site usability movement centred
       | around the work of Jakob Nielsen and http://useit.com. Fortune
       | 500s were paying him huge sums to have extraneous crap removed
       | from their home pages and just for a while sanity and minimalism
       | ruled. Then Web 2.0 arrived.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | Web 2.0 included cool stuff like Flash. The real culprit here
         | is Google AdSense. A few sites made a ton of money, and then it
         | became the entire business model for "new media" companies that
         | in turn loaded up search results with SEO-optimized listicle
         | garbage.
        
       | mro_name wrote:
       | another google honeypot. So ironic. haha.
        
       | webmaven wrote:
       | Advertising crams itself into every nook and cranny unless some
       | external factor keeps it out. if you're old enough, you remember
       | the inserts (usually advertising cigarettes) in pulp paperbacks:
       | 
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.ht...
        
       | sdevonoes wrote:
       | IMHO, I think everyone here is missing the big point: all these
       | "features" are being pushed to the web because A/B tests say so.
       | The usual way things go is:
       | 
       | - option 1: don't add feature X
       | 
       | - option 2: add feature X
       | 
       | - option 3: add feature X slightly modified
       | 
       | So, since option 1 is not an option at all (businesses want to
       | grow; they don't want "stable software", they want to push
       | features live every sprint), then lean product managers say
       | "let's do an A/B test and see what our customers like more:
       | either option 1 or option 2!". The A/B test is done and it
       | appears that option 2 increases conversion slightly more than
       | option 1. The team pushes the feature live and everyone call it a
       | day.
       | 
       | The next sprint: the same story. So, the net result is that
       | applications and websites get "features" on of top of each other
       | without any order or purpose, but everyone is happy because
       | metrics look good. I know it's very counterintuitive, but that's
       | how things work these days: no one wants to hear your "common
       | sense" opinion, they only want to listen to what the data says;
       | and data says the more ads the more revenue, the more newsletter
       | pop ups the more user emails store in the db, etc.
       | 
       | I know this because I have worked for such companies, and they
       | are not precisely going bankrupt.
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | So you're basically telling us they do it to make money, and
         | they're not wrong, it works to make money? I don't think that
         | actually comes as a shock to anyone!
         | 
         | My favorite scene in the movie Sorry To Bother You:
         | 
         | - See? It's all just a big misunderstanding.
         | 
         | - This ain't no fucking misunderstanding, man! So, you making
         | half-human, half-horse fucking things so you can make more
         | money?
         | 
         | - Yeah, basically. I just didn't want you to think I was crazy.
         | That I was doing this for no reason. Because this isn't
         | irrational.
         | 
         | - Oh. Cool. Alright. Cool. No, I understand. I just I just got
         | to leave now, man. So, please get the fuck out of my way.
        
       | aspectmin wrote:
       | This... I absolutely Abhor what the web has become. Somehow, we
       | need a new web (maybe out of the blockchain related
       | work/distributed internet endeavors?) The current state is sooo
       | bad.
        
         | pjerem wrote:
         | Check Gemini network. Far from being the network that will
         | replace the web (and that's not even a goal), it's really...
         | interesting.
        
           | mod wrote:
           | Can you provide a link? A quick google just returned a bunch
           | of links to what looked like an alt-coin. There's an app
           | called "Gemini Network", but the screenshot looked like a
           | crypto marketplace.
        
             | pjerem wrote:
             | Of course :) There it is :
             | https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
        
       | leandot wrote:
       | Awesome, but not complete. It's missing the GDPR popup and the
       | "better experience in app" one.
        
       | zwieback wrote:
       | In real life every other website for the next week would have ads
       | for "how-I-experience-web-today.com", Instagram and Facebook
       | would have ads for other "experiences" as well
        
       | tick_tock_tick wrote:
       | Honestly the site is way too performant to be realistic. All
       | those buttons worked nearly instantly. I'm assuming you're
       | missing the awaited tracking networking calls.
        
         | naravara wrote:
         | I was about to say it needs about 7 or 8 additional ads
         | inserted into the text of the article. Ideally they would load
         | at random times and displace text out of the way as you're
         | trying to read so you keep losing your place.
         | 
         | Also, the article itself is clickbaity garbage that you resent
         | yourself for clicking into in the first place.
        
         | ksec wrote:
         | And my Laptop fan wasn't spinning up with all those Ads. And
         | web page scrolling started to jank.
        
         | llimos wrote:
         | Especially the 'More options' on the cookie popup. Needs to
         | take at least 20 seconds and reload the page
        
         | pphysch wrote:
         | Needs more `await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, t));`
        
           | adverbly wrote:
           | LGTM
           | 
           | *Merges "changes to apiPromiseFactory.js"
        
         | croes wrote:
         | And ads should load later so if you try to click a link the
         | whole page content jumps down when you click and you click the
         | ad instead of the link.
        
           | fossuser wrote:
           | Maybe you can make it so the ad always loads under the
           | cursor?
        
         | mathnmusic wrote:
         | After all the popups, it needs a last one saying "this site
         | works best in our mobile app".
        
           | notquitehuman wrote:
           | IMHO, it should be there as soon as you arrive on the site
           | and then reappear on every page load.
        
             | function_seven wrote:
             | And if you click past it to remain on the web version,
             | you're presented with truncated lists ("Download App to
             | read the rest!") or a slew of missing features.
             | 
             | I have an old Instagram account that I created over 10
             | years ago. At the time, I used it for the photo filters.
             | Never cared about the social networking aspect. Just a
             | month ago I logged into it for the first time in forever,
             | and realized I wanted to delete those old posts. Guess what
             | you _can 't_ do from the website? Yeah, delete posts. Need
             | the app for that!
        
               | ratww wrote:
               | Not surprising. Facebook has very strict rate-limiting
               | for deletion of posts, unfollowing of friends, leaving
               | communities, and anything else that can potentially
               | reduce your "engagement". Disabling it on some platforms
               | was just the next step.
        
           | G3rn0ti wrote:
           | I really hate that about Reddit. I liked browsing discussions
           | on my phone occasionally but the web page kept nagging me
           | into using the app instead. So finally I installed it. But
           | now when googling for information and finding Reddit boards
           | about my topic of interest clicking on ,,use app" does not
           | open Reddit app but instead directs me to the stupid App
           | store. Useless! But maybe it's Apple's fault here?
        
             | phist_mcgee wrote:
             | Nope. Deep linking to apps is a solved area. Reddit
             | completely drops the ball on this, and has for years. Their
             | engineering is a complete shambles. The only reason they
             | survive is their market share, not for any reason of 'good
             | experience'
        
               | ptudan wrote:
               | haha clone of my comment at the same time
        
               | phist_mcgee wrote:
               | Great minds think alike ;)
        
             | ptudan wrote:
             | Nope. Decent programmers know how to deeplink into apps,
             | it's completely possible.
        
               | rchaud wrote:
               | That includes the vendor of my third-party Reddit app
               | (Now for Reddit).
               | 
               | If I tap a Reddit link from a page of search results, the
               | link opens in the app.
               | 
               | It's shocking that the devs of the official app don't
               | even bother to do even this bare minimum.
        
         | dc3k wrote:
         | I am not seeing any autoplaying videos unrelated to the article
         | that pop into a PIP window in the bottom of the screen as you
         | scroll causing the amount that you've scrolled to jump so you
         | lose your place
        
           | rchaud wrote:
           | We will be paying the price for Facebook's 2017-era "Pivot to
           | video" advice for years to come.
        
           | coldpie wrote:
           | I have no idea how anyone browses the web without NoScript.
        
       | SevenSigs wrote:
       | You need to make the close buttons a lot harder to find... this
       | looks like science fiction.
        
       | chestervonwinch wrote:
       | Needs to prefix the tab's title with a blinking "(1)" or "*" when
       | the chat pops up. And have that paired with a loud chat
       | notification sound. Edit: also should mention that this is both
       | sad and awesome.
        
       | junon wrote:
       | Little details - making it to the article and the click out gives
       | you the browser "Are you sure you want to leave?" prompt.
       | 
       | Scary accurate. I hate the web.
        
       | leavenotracks wrote:
       | So true, so sad.
       | 
       | These days, when even a few hurdles of crap present themselves, I
       | often just leave. I don't care what the site has to say or sell
       | me.
       | 
       | Whenever I come across a site that just displays content
       | immediately, it fills me with joy. Usually it's some obscure
       | personal or academic site, but for a moment I feel like I've
       | found a gem in the desert and I browse happily for a while...then
       | I promptly add to a list of non-crap-peddling sites. I long for a
       | curated list of such sites.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | I keep a list of personal/small websites as well. Sites that
         | don't have this endless amount of marketing and tracking cruft.
         | 
         | Unfortunately it makes for pretty boring reading. So many sites
         | out there have like 4 or 5 blog posts, and that's it.
        
         | tpoacher wrote:
         | This is why I love the gemini space. It feels ... unadulterated
         | somehow.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | Gemini is awesome, but it's lack of ambition is what really
           | kills it for me. I appreciate their minimalist take on the
           | web, but if their implementation is _less robust_ than what
           | we currently have, I have very little incentive to host a
           | site there.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | > I long for a curated list of such sites.
         | 
         | I don't know if this is good news but I started doing this a
         | while back and found so many sites that it was futile to keep
         | them in one list. These days I tend to keep them in contextual
         | notes or databases.
         | 
         | Also many of them fail to pass one or two annoyance tests, but
         | I find that they're worth it anyway. For example they are not
         | mobile friendly in some minor way, like the touch target for
         | their menu is annoyingly small, or they are a little bit
         | cluttered, or use more CPU than I'd like (specific mapping
         | sites).
         | 
         | So it's not easy to fit a perfect list, but it's impressive to
         | me just how deep the less-discovered, high quality web really
         | is.
         | 
         | (Also I try to make my own obscure personal sites all the time
         | as my contribution to this mess...)
        
           | leavenotracks wrote:
           | > ...but it's impressive to me just how deep the less-
           | discovered, high quality web really is.
           | 
           | Would that there were a search engine out there that
           | prioritised the indexing of these high quality 'well behaved'
           | sites.
        
             | simonmales wrote:
             | That would be a joy to have.
        
             | fouc wrote:
             | Interesting it occurs to me that google search could do
             | this, but they have a conflict of interest - adsense.
        
               | abhinavsharma wrote:
               | Million short sort of does this
        
         | danuker wrote:
         | Here's mine: https://danuker.go.ro/
         | 
         | Tip: add your site to your HN profile, and look at others'
         | profile.
        
           | leavenotracks wrote:
           | Thank you - great tip, and great site! I like that you also
           | mix in articles in, what I presume, is your native Romanian.
        
           | SilasX wrote:
           | It has a fixed floating header though.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-23 23:00 UTC)