5 ms·

The '30% of rural Americans still not on broadband' point is, understatedly, one of the most important points of the article by far. It is so, so easy, to be l

The '30% of rural Americans still not on broadband' point is, understatedly, one of the most important points of the article by far. It is so, so easy, to be living and working in big cities like Toronto (me), SF (a bunch of you), NY, Chicago, et cetera, and truly forget the context of the absolutely awful experience a lot of people have online outside of these urban epicentres. I remember living on a farm in rural Illinois (Marengo), and the best internet we could get at the time was satellite. Which (or, worse, dial-up) is the only option for a lot of Americans, apparently. Satellite internet, in particular, causes these poorly-optimized web sites with hundreds of tiny JS files and images to take forever to load on this type of connection, because Satellite internet works by pinging the satellite for every connection, meaning downloading a large file can be fast, but opening Facebook can take up to 3-4 minutes. (My ex-partner who still lives on that farm confirmed this for me today.) The author, then, brings up the next, most important point: 'Your website had better be amazing for it to justify that length of download time.' For those making the audacious claim here that this isn't considering the dev's time put into it, I'd argue immediately back that the devs need to be considering the actual users. People living in the country aren't 'edge cases'. They're usually extremely hardworking people who simply don't have access to the luxury of broadband like we do. Just because we don't necessarily see these people, or travel to other countries with shitty connections, doesn't mean they don't exist, doesn't mean they're not actually a potentially significant number of people, and doesn't mean we should not be arsed to trim 1MB-2MB off our bloated image-and-video-wieldy sites, or even that it would necessarily take a lot of time in most instances. I agree. The web isn't about us. It's about who uses it.

mortivore 8y ago
With 30% having bad internet you'd think there would be a push in those communities to get better internet. Then again, the lack of internet usability may create an image of the internet as not being worth it. If you have no access to the better things on the internet, then you may think that there is nothing of real value on it so you won't push for better internet.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  "the lack of internet usability may create an image of the internet as not being worth it." People having slower internet speeds is a serious problem with the web (because of modern web design), not with most of the other things the internet is used for. Personally, as websites have become more dangerous and less usable, I've been finding the web to be a smaller and smaller space as the years go by. For the first time in my life, I can see that it's entirely possible that I will largely stop using the web. However, that in no way means I'll stop using the internet.
  - mortivore 8y ago
    I get what you're saying, but for most people the internet, and the web are nearly synonymous.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      Yes, I know, which is why I push back on this every time it comes up. That people equate the web with the internet is a very bad thing for both the web and the internet.
d357r0y3r 8y ago
> It is so, so easy, to be living and working in big cities like Toronto (me), SF (a bunch of you), NY, Chicago, et cetera, and truly forget the context of the absolutely awful experience a lot of people have online outside of these urban epicentres. To be fair, many urban companies are designing for urban and suburban users. Your advanced analytics dashboard product is not for Cletus in rural Alabama. If 30% of your target users don't have broadband, then you should design with that in mind. If 0.01% of your users don't have broadband, then you should ignore them.
- tspike 8y ago
  If you make your site completely unusable for 30% of people, no matter how many try to use it, they'll end up making up a miniscule portion of your user base, which you'll then use as justification for ignoring them.
  - Jacqued 8y ago
    Which can be ok. There's no ethical duty to make websites for literally everyone. Accessibility is a different issue of course, but to illustrate my point: I have never translated my websites to Chinese, making them unusable for 1/7th of the world population. I don't think it's necessarily a failure on my part.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      Well, yes, you didn’t communicate it in Chinese. But did you make the text easily machine identifiable? Was the source language indicated? That would allow their browser to offer the ability to translate. You didn’t intend it for a blind audience, but they’re certainly capable of reading the text. Did you avoid making the text actively toxic to screen readers? Many of the whiz bang features on new sites, ostensibly because “users want features!”, hinder even this functionality. It’s fair to criticize this as a regression. I use a browser extension that lets me click links and buttons from the keyboard. The more bleeding edge they make the sites, the less I can use this feature. That’s not an improvement.
  - 8y ago
_zskd 8y ago
Do we actually care about these users? Are they going to buy the products we advertise on our websites? Are they going to subscribe to our platform? No. So why should we optimize for people who do not matter to our bottom like?
- mortivore 8y ago
  Well the answer could be yes. There is no reason to think they won't use those services if they had access to those services. If you have no way to access a service, then obviously you won't use a service. It's like an untapped/under-served market.
- falcolas 8y ago
  > Are they going to buy the products we advertise on our websites? Why wouldn't they? Physical location aside, they're not any different than you or I. They have purchasing power like everyone else. > Are they going to subscribe to our platform? Why wouldn't they? Because they can't load your page? Doesn't sound like their problem. > No. So why should we optimize for people who do not matter to our bottom like? Why don't they matter to your bottom line? Because you present them with tools and platforms they can't use, so they can't contribute to your bottom line? A self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  You have cause and effect mixed up. The answer to all those questions might very well be "yes" if you built a site that's actually conducive to them doing business with you.
sbov 8y ago
> The '30% of rural Americans still not on broadband' point is, understatedly, one of the most important points of the article by far. I didn't care for the metric. How many rural Americans are there? Is it 1% of the population? 50%? According to the 2010 census, roughly 20% of people in the US are classified as rural. So that means 6% of all Americans are not on broadband. That metric would be a lot more useful to most people.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Yeah the world rural population percentage has dropped steadily for the last 50 years, dropping below 50% in 2007. The rural population has actually been growing the entire time; but as a percentage its dropped.

mortivore 8y ago

With 30% having bad internet you'd think there would be a push in those communities to get better internet. Then again, the lack of internet usability may create an image of the internet as not being worth it. If you have no access to the better things on the internet, then you may think that there is nothing of real value on it so you won't push for better internet.

JohnFen 8y ago
"the lack of internet usability may create an image of the internet as not being worth it." People having slower internet speeds is a serious problem with the web (because of modern web design), not with most of the other things the internet is used for. Personally, as websites have become more dangerous and less usable, I've been finding the web to be a smaller and smaller space as the years go by. For the first time in my life, I can see that it's entirely possible that I will largely stop using the web. However, that in no way means I'll stop using the internet.
- mortivore 8y ago
  I get what you're saying, but for most people the internet, and the web are nearly synonymous.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    Yes, I know, which is why I push back on this every time it comes up. That people equate the web with the internet is a very bad thing for both the web and the internet.

d357r0y3r 8y ago

> It is so, so easy, to be living and working in big cities like Toronto (me), SF (a bunch of you), NY, Chicago, et cetera, and truly forget the context of the absolutely awful experience a lot of people have online outside of these urban epicentres. To be fair, many urban companies are designing for urban and suburban users. Your advanced analytics dashboard product is not for Cletus in rural Alabama. If 30% of your target users don't have broadband, then you should design with that in mind. If 0.01% of your users don't have broadband, then you should ignore them.

tspike 8y ago
If you make your site completely unusable for 30% of people, no matter how many try to use it, they'll end up making up a miniscule portion of your user base, which you'll then use as justification for ignoring them.
- Jacqued 8y ago
  Which can be ok. There's no ethical duty to make websites for literally everyone. Accessibility is a different issue of course, but to illustrate my point: I have never translated my websites to Chinese, making them unusable for 1/7th of the world population. I don't think it's necessarily a failure on my part.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Well, yes, you didn’t communicate it in Chinese. But did you make the text easily machine identifiable? Was the source language indicated? That would allow their browser to offer the ability to translate. You didn’t intend it for a blind audience, but they’re certainly capable of reading the text. Did you avoid making the text actively toxic to screen readers? Many of the whiz bang features on new sites, ostensibly because “users want features!”, hinder even this functionality. It’s fair to criticize this as a regression. I use a browser extension that lets me click links and buttons from the keyboard. The more bleeding edge they make the sites, the less I can use this feature. That’s not an improvement.
- 8y ago

_zskd 8y ago

Do we actually care about these users? Are they going to buy the products we advertise on our websites? Are they going to subscribe to our platform? No. So why should we optimize for people who do not matter to our bottom like?

mortivore 8y ago
Well the answer could be yes. There is no reason to think they won't use those services if they had access to those services. If you have no way to access a service, then obviously you won't use a service. It's like an untapped/under-served market.
falcolas 8y ago
> Are they going to buy the products we advertise on our websites? Why wouldn't they? Physical location aside, they're not any different than you or I. They have purchasing power like everyone else. > Are they going to subscribe to our platform? Why wouldn't they? Because they can't load your page? Doesn't sound like their problem. > No. So why should we optimize for people who do not matter to our bottom like? Why don't they matter to your bottom line? Because you present them with tools and platforms they can't use, so they can't contribute to your bottom line? A self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.
yellowapple 8y ago
You have cause and effect mixed up. The answer to all those questions might very well be "yes" if you built a site that's actually conducive to them doing business with you.

sbov 8y ago

> The '30% of rural Americans still not on broadband' point is, understatedly, one of the most important points of the article by far. I didn't care for the metric. How many rural Americans are there? Is it 1% of the population? 50%? According to the 2010 census, roughly 20% of people in the US are classified as rural. So that means 6% of all Americans are not on broadband. That metric would be a lot more useful to most people.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Yeah the world rural population percentage has dropped steadily for the last 50 years, dropping below 50% in 2007. The rural population has actually been growing the entire time; but as a percentage its dropped.