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I was going to screenshot that page. A small auto play video in bottom left corner, a top bar pop up to get the "latest updates from Forbes", an email sign up

by giarc 7y ago

I was going to screenshot that page. A small auto play video in bottom left corner, a top bar pop up to get the "latest updates from Forbes", an email sign up for the Forbes Daily Dozen and in the background, blurred out is the article.

JudgeWapner 7y ago
I envision a distributed system that simply renders pages, clicks "agree" or whatever, and uploads just the content to "archive" servers automatically. After a critical mass is reached, then instead of going to the URL, you plug the URL into archive server to see if it already has a copy and render that version. From there, you could go even further and daily download 100mb or so of pre-sanitized internet from the most likely pages you currently visit. Not only would you elide ads, but your page render times would drop to milliseconds and save money on mobile bandwith. This system could be powered by kind volunteers who manually click away the ads and publish their renderings either as images or HTML-1.0 with all shit-ware removed. They could also be paid through micropayments to workers in developing nations. If everyone "tipped" a buck or two per month into a pool that paid work-at-home scavengers to curtail content for us, we would be supporting a real business model while not being harassed and tracked. Alternatively, you could have AI-powered crawlers that are trained to close videos, identify article text and relevant pictures, and ignore ad banners.
- sp332 7y ago
  If you have Firefox, Edge, or Safari, you can use Readability Mode to strip just the article text and read it. For something more complex like what you described, check out Brave. It blocks ads from tracking ad networks and either replaces them with non-tracking ads or lets you pay the site author directly.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The one thing that approach would guarantee is that archive servers would end up getting the business end of the stick.

by giarc 7y ago

JudgeWapner 7y ago

I envision a distributed system that simply renders pages, clicks "agree" or whatever, and uploads just the content to "archive" servers automatically. After a critical mass is reached, then instead of going to the URL, you plug the URL into archive server to see if it already has a copy and render that version. From there, you could go even further and daily download 100mb or so of pre-sanitized internet from the most likely pages you currently visit. Not only would you elide ads, but your page render times would drop to milliseconds and save money on mobile bandwith. This system could be powered by kind volunteers who manually click away the ads and publish their renderings either as images or HTML-1.0 with all shit-ware removed. They could also be paid through micropayments to workers in developing nations. If everyone "tipped" a buck or two per month into a pool that paid work-at-home scavengers to curtail content for us, we would be supporting a real business model while not being harassed and tracked. Alternatively, you could have AI-powered crawlers that are trained to close videos, identify article text and relevant pictures, and ignore ad banners.

sp332 7y ago
If you have Firefox, Edge, or Safari, you can use Readability Mode to strip just the article text and read it. For something more complex like what you described, check out Brave. It blocks ads from tracking ad networks and either replaces them with non-tracking ads or lets you pay the site author directly.
jacquesm 7y ago
The one thing that approach would guarantee is that archive servers would end up getting the business end of the stick.