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I agree ads are bad but the current state of the web is disgusting, it's barely recognizable as a conduit for any real information. People hail the internet as

by wfo 11y ago

I agree ads are bad but the current state of the web is disgusting, it's barely recognizable as a conduit for any real information. People hail the internet as a great way to find information -- if you type anything into the google search bar you're curious about, you either get wikipedia, which is clean and usually pretty great if incomplete, or clickbait ad-filled trash that gives you one sentence of content before you click "next", repeated 10 times downloading megabytes of data, tracking your habits, and grinding your machine to a halt, possibly infecting you with drive-by malware. This feels to me like much needed incremental progress. Let's not give up on solving anything just because we can't fix everything we don't like all at once. I clicked the HN link about ISIS fighter's salaries. Constant flash video playing in the other tab, CPU usage at 50%, obnoxious sounds pouring out of it. This should not be allowed to happen, we don't need to tolerate this kind of bad behavior on the part of websites. And even 'respectable' sites like newspapers do it.

ashark 11y ago
Google either lost and surrendered or simply stopped caring about the war against crappy spam sites in search results sometime around '08/'09. Combining with a bunch of other things this led, IMO, to a reversal in what had been a steady increase in the quality of the web[1]. By around '11/'12 most of the web that wasn't crappy spam sites came to strongly resemble crappy spam sites. Anything like real, quality content not on a handful of major sites (e.g. Wikipedia) is either gone or impossible to find via search without knowing precisely what you're looking for. See also: all sites and news organizations everywhere embracing terrible clickbait titles over traditional, informative ones. [1] Like a massive jump in Javascript use and page sizes killing performance, and the expansion of Facebook/Twitter and the related death of the "no-one knows you're a dog" web.
petercooper 11y ago
if you type anything into the google search bar [..] you either get wikipedia [..] or clickbait ad-filled trash that gives you one sentence of content before you click "next", repeated 10 times downloading megabytes of data Hyperbolic to the extreme and rarely true.
callalex 11y ago
> People hail the internet as a great way to find information -- if you type anything into the google search bar you're curious about, you either get wikipedia, which is clean and usually pretty great if incomplete, or clickbait ad-filled trash A perfect example of this: I got a rash from poison oak exposure, and wanted to find out what the recommended treatment was. Seemingly a perfect use case for the internet. I was greeted with search results that are perfectly described by this sentence.
- ashark 11y ago
  Oh my god, searching for medical information. It's so bad. I just wanted to find out some stuff about strep throat a few weeks ago, and everything aside from Wikipedia was at best a short bit of information on ~20-30% of the page with navigation and ads taking up the rest. None of it was better than Wikipedia despite being on medicine-related domain names, a couple of which used to be semi-reputable. An excess of ad money is ruining the Web.

by wfo 11y ago

ashark 11y ago

Google either lost and surrendered or simply stopped caring about the war against crappy spam sites in search results sometime around '08/'09. Combining with a bunch of other things this led, IMO, to a reversal in what had been a steady increase in the quality of the web[1]. By around '11/'12 most of the web that wasn't crappy spam sites came to strongly resemble crappy spam sites. Anything like real, quality content not on a handful of major sites (e.g. Wikipedia) is either gone or impossible to find via search without knowing precisely what you're looking for. See also: all sites and news organizations everywhere embracing terrible clickbait titles over traditional, informative ones. [1] Like a massive jump in Javascript use and page sizes killing performance, and the expansion of Facebook/Twitter and the related death of the "no-one knows you're a dog" web.

petercooper 11y ago

if you type anything into the google search bar [..] you either get wikipedia [..] or clickbait ad-filled trash that gives you one sentence of content before you click "next", repeated 10 times downloading megabytes of data Hyperbolic to the extreme and rarely true.

callalex 11y ago

> People hail the internet as a great way to find information -- if you type anything into the google search bar you're curious about, you either get wikipedia, which is clean and usually pretty great if incomplete, or clickbait ad-filled trash A perfect example of this: I got a rash from poison oak exposure, and wanted to find out what the recommended treatment was. Seemingly a perfect use case for the internet. I was greeted with search results that are perfectly described by this sentence.

ashark 11y ago
Oh my god, searching for medical information. It's so bad. I just wanted to find out some stuff about strep throat a few weeks ago, and everything aside from Wikipedia was at best a short bit of information on ~20-30% of the page with navigation and ads taking up the rest. None of it was better than Wikipedia despite being on medicine-related domain names, a couple of which used to be semi-reputable. An excess of ad money is ruining the Web.