22 ms·

How I Experience Web Today

985 points by mrestko 5y ago

Discovershizzle 5y ago
I'm relatively new here, but this post really caught my attention because I have faced the same problems most of you are mentioning. After reading the comments in this post I can see some of you want curated content, others just want to explore random websites that work perfectly on all types of devices and popped into a search engine. I've created a site that some of you may like (I'm sure it isn't what all of you are looking for) but it might be what some of you are looking for? It by no means has all the bells and whistles of a search engine but it does offer cool lesser known websites that Google fails to show us. If you visit https://boredhoard.com/ https://boredhoard.com/ you can give it a go and please fell free to provide feedback so that maybe I can morph it into something you guys like/want. Will be very happy to listen
random_2 5y ago
Full of alerts.
random_2 5y ago
Now I'm enjoying to disable the cookies and tracking options.
raman162 5y ago
This is perfect! I laughed harder the further I progressed. Not even sure if I experienced everything. The attention to detail in this is superb!
nicktorba 5y ago
my experience is exactly like this, but wayyyyy slower
plinkplink 5y ago
You forgot the one where you get a popup for moving your mouse out of the window. For some reason I hate that one the most.
tus89 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Agreed, I'm especially fond of uMatrix lately for firefox.
beprogrammed 5y ago
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.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I had to turn ublock off to keep going after the first click, which is in fact an accurate depiction of the web experience.
- jandrese 5y ago
  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.
- untoxicness 5y ago
  Indeed. We can only hope this is an intentional self-referential joke.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
gfodor 5y ago
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.
- beprogrammed 5y ago
  Same, literally laughed out loud.
- autoexec 5y ago
  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.
  - timando 5y ago
    Switch tabs and then switch back.
- zem 5y ago
  same :) came here to see if anyone else had commented on it
tester756 5y ago
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 5y ago
Lovely and accurate
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Lammy 5y ago
Needs more 100%-viewport-height ad blocks between the content paragraphs.
rafaelturk 5y ago
Kudos for the last part!
n4bz0r 5y ago
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.
handrous 5y ago
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.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > [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".
- rchaud 5y ago
  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.
- aaron5 5y ago
  Those headers are a biscuit(<-euphemism).
- jb_s 5y ago
  In real life, the news article is actually a PR release written entirely by a PR company and fed to some low-level staffer (because actual journalism is expensive and nobody can even tell that this is happening)
  - Breza 5y ago
    If you're interested in this topic, I suggest the short book Ghosting The News.
- lordlic 5y ago
  How about a "Find everything you needed?" popover that appears near the top when you move your cursor up to the tab bar to close the tab?
pizzapim 5y ago
Had to turn javascript on to read an article, very realistic.
- mrspeaker 5y ago
  And I looked in the console messages, expecting to see a lil' easter egg or something, but instead I see `Loading failed for the <script> with source “https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-S8P17EH...” https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-S8P17EH...”.`. Extra realism!
4e530344963049 5y ago
https://trimread.org/ https://trimread.org/ helps with this.
- floren 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=4e530344963049 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=4e530344963049 take a break.
  - beprogrammed 5y ago
    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/ 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 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 5y ago
How did we get here? Does any and everything ultimately get absorbed by the marketing department?
- jandrese 5y ago
  Money. The web was great until someone said "I love this, but how do we make money with it?"
  - throwawayswede 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      [deleted]
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  As per new trend even the content is advertisement
shakezula 5y ago
_Every day we stray further from the light_
eveningsteps 5y ago
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?
- krono 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Is the business goal to get you to click the back button?
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        You clearly don't understand capitalism. The business just provided the most value™ to the customer at that moment in time
        RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
        It sure is a good thing that externalities don't exist.
ivanovb 5y ago
The content should be just the title repeated a few times, but phrased differently.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Actual content was above the fold, it's already better than many websites.
herodotus 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    I usually get the "Bad? Rate on our own feedback page" "Good? Rate on the store" scam.
    - Breza 5y ago
      One popular service took this to its logical extreme. They sent me an email with five different star options to click to rate them. Stars 1-4 took me to a private page to offer feedback about what I didn't like about the service. The 5th star took me to their TrustPilot page. I complained to TrustPilot since that's against their TOS. Not sure if anything came of it.
- SilasX 5y ago
  >Thank you for doing this! I wish I could send the link to almost every organization whose web sites I have had to endure. Yeah I almost wonder how many of the people responsible for the final UX actually experienced it themselves. Not some debug or dev mode, but what the end user actually deals with. Would they tolerate it? Then how does this stuff persist?
vallas 5y ago
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
jollybean 5y ago
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'.
lesinski 5y ago
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.
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
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.
- mathnmusic 5y ago
  After all the popups, it needs a last one saying "this site works best in our mobile app".
  - notquitehuman 5y ago
    IMHO, it should be there as soon as you arrive on the site and then reappear on every page load.
    - function_seven 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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.
        arp242 5y ago
        I think it was just never implemented. The web page is fairly basic compared to the app, and AFAIK always has been (although I never used it much and haven't had an account in quite a while). Quite a few products are actually app-only now, without even any sort of web or desktop version. A few years ago I had trouble using the Dutch thuisbezorgd food service, I think it didn't allow me to change my address or something and just kept erroring out. I contacted support and they told me to use the app. I told them I don't have a smartphone. They said I was out of luck.
dormento 5y ago
Could not proceed after the article, which is somehow actually really dang realistic.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Do you have uBlock Origin enabled by any chance?
gdsdfe 5y ago
It really is so freaking frustrating, browsing the web these days
max1cc 5y ago
The last part was a very nice touch
zwieback 5y ago
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
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I did something along those lines as a proof of concept, seeded with links harvested from this site. http://kakapo.susa.net:8080/cfs/ 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/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
  - NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
    I like your proof of concept. I guess, next step would be to take google result, and crawl all their result and convert it into scores, rejecting in the process those that are going outside defined limits. Additionally, a weekly list of most infamous sites would be interesting to see, in the sense what people visit the most (probably social ad driven) but has bad UX...
- pneto 5y ago
  wiby.me is an interesting one.
  - NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
    it seems that manual submission is necessary.
bruce343434 5y ago
Nice touch that you need to disable the ad blocker to get the cookie privacy thing to show up.
dredmorbius 5y ago
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.
- wisethrowaway 5y ago
  - CAPTCHA - cloudflare redirections - Affiliate links to Amazon ... to read a minimally informative article.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  - Needs a CTA interruption that triggers when you move your mouse upwards to navigate back or close the tab.
- rchaud 5y ago
  - 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.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    There are two of those (or at least, representations), for Twitter and Facebook. Could use another few dozen, just for luck. (A few years ago I started collecting screenshots of link litter. I think the max was about a dozen links, though most sites seem to keep it to 3--5.)
LegitGandalf 5y ago
Way to much written content implied, needs more twitter embeds
aspectmin 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Of course :) There it is : https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
- rchaud 5y ago
  The current state exists because the web can't be monetized without it. How is Gemini different? Who will make content for free?
leandot 5y ago
Awesome, but not complete. It's missing the GDPR popup and the "better experience in app" one.
thatjoeoverthr 5y ago
Almost. It needs an ad that fills entirely the upper half of the screen, and stays with you while you scroll.
coffeecat 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Yup, and it has a close button that conveniently appears right beneath the scrollbar.
  - pbourke 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  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.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    The videos usually have unskippable ads.
    - Breza 5y ago
      And video ads carry much higher per-user prices then display ads. Especially if the whole ad finishes playing or you accidentally click on the ad when trying to close it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ub99 5y ago
      Oh I see. My ad blocker seems to block all those video ads pretty effectively! Even then, why would they not just run video ads in that spot? What is the point of trying to distract the user from the content of the article? Just feels weird to me.
tommica 5y ago
In a completely different direction - I've been getting a bit into cooking lately, and found a website called https://based.cooking 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
- Breza 5y ago
  I feel like we're going full circle to having web rings again.
croes 5y ago
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 5y ago
  It's the business that doesn't care about you, not the developers.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Considering that lots of developer blogs these days also employ some of those tricks, I wouldn't be so sure.
- rchaud 5y ago
  > So now someone tell me why we get such sites? People posting on HN usually work on web applications. Those don't need to serve ads because somebody is already paying for the service provided (e.g. Netflix, Salesforce, JIRA). Similarly, they don't serve annoying email popups because every user is already logged in, and their email is already known. A random website you came across while searching for X, doesn't have that luxury. So they can afford to talk about bad UX elsewhere, because their websites don't have to compromise on UX to make money.
- danjac 5y ago
  Web developers get zero say in all this. I've been in the room when developers - and UX people - call out this crap. After all, regardless of the user experience, adding all the popups and analytics garbage and whatnot makes developers' jobs much harder. And every single time, they are overruled.
cutler 5y ago
In the early 2000s there was a site usability movement centred around the work of Jakob Nielsen and http://useit.com 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 5y ago
  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.
  - kirse 5y ago
    I'd argue the real culprit is the "maximize shareholder value" mantra. Nothing is off limits in the Excel-sheet optimization game and room for experimentation or creativity is often axed in favor of minimizing risk and extracting more pennies for the cash pile. We'll break out of it eventually though. People are tiring of their walled technology gardens.
chestervonwinch 5y ago
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.
jason0597 5y ago
I literally laughed out loud when I heard my Thinkpad's fan start spinning up! This is just too accurate :(
juliend2 5y ago
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)
shwoopdiwoop 5y ago
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 5y ago
One part is missing: the IM window will make sound and show a respectable or attractive person in avatar.
SevenSigs 5y ago
You need to make the close buttons a lot harder to find... this looks like science fiction.
allenu 5y ago
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 5y ago
  ... 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.
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  On Bloomberg Opinion, this extra article used to always count as one of my 10 free ones, too.
leavenotracks 5y ago
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.
- spikej 5y ago
  Sometimes you need the content and for that I use browser reader mode or if the content is really good, subscribe via rss. If they don't have rss, use a service to build one for the site
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    > …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 5y ago
      That would be a joy to have.
dsego 5y ago
Had to turn off ublock origin to experience it.
westoncb 5y ago
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 5y ago
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'
fogof 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Would you care to share some useful extensions for these problems?
  - fogof 5y ago
    A nice one is the "I Don't Care About Cookies" extension.
o2l 5y ago
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.
- psilo 5y ago
  I'm using Brave and the whole website is annoying.
wisethrowaway 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  reddit req
- mod50ack 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
mro_name 5y ago
another google honeypot. So ironic. haha.
sdevonoes 5y ago
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.
- gnramires 5y ago
  A/B testing seems very greedy in practice -- even in the purely economic sense (not in the user satisfaction sense). For example, say you "A/B tested" product pricing naively. I would expect demand to have a momentum component. If you set your prices to a large value abruptly, you will probably keep getting a similar sales rate for a while, until demand starts dropping over long term (could be years for all I know -- enough time for most opinions around information sources to have shifted, for example). Compare this to a strategy like Optimal Pricing[1] based on more refined methods. Overall, I can locate at least 3 large scale problems here: (1) Short term behavior of websites (maximizing ads, poor experience) (2) Poor industrial coordination: surely this practice brings the entire (web) industry down. If most of what you see is plagued by ads and infinite popups, you will seek alternatives. (3) Regulation failure. Sometimes even industrial coordination is insufficient, because joint efforts are still limited to a single domain, and not all of society. In this case usually regulation is necessary. Privacy is great and all, but clicking a cookie disclaimer for every website seems such unnecessary friction. Most inexperienced users I've met did not know what cookies meant and couldn't make the privacy-convenience decision effectively. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand#Optimal_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand#Opt...
jrochkind1 5y ago
Inaccurate, loads far too fast.
danuker 5y ago
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#browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API...
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Wait, can any webdevs explain a legitimate use for these features? Because my (admittedly uninformed) mind can only think of bad uses...
  - throwthere 5y ago
    Routing in single-page applications relies heavily on the history API I think.
    - devinmcafee 5y ago
      That's correct. When navigating around in a single page app, clicking on an in-app link won't trigger the browser to make a new HTTP GET to fetch an HTML response from the server. Instead, the routing system will use the pushState API to push a new entry into the history and update the DOM to match the new route. By using pushState, your client side JavaScript can replicate native browser behavior and preserve function of the back button to get to previous routes in the application.
- titzer 5y ago
  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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chpmrc 5y ago
That is not at all how I experience the web today. I also get annoyingly loud and flashy autoplaying videos...
webmaven 5y ago
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.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.ht...
- rchaud 5y ago
  A static ad wouldn't be nearly as bad as a "audience-targeted" ad that's dynamically served several seconds after the page loads, reflowing the entire layout and causing page jank. For example, I know that every issue of the Economist is going to have an ad for a luxury watch I will never buy on the inside cover. I have full-on banner blindness to that. That's impossible on display ads that are dynamically placed right in the middle of the article body.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > reflowing the entire layout and causing page jank. I'm starting to suspect that page jank that causes spurious clicks is actually being optimized for, by which I mean that changes that cause less jank will also lower CTR,and so fail to pass A/B testing.
wibblewobble123 5y ago
You should also add blank text until the pointless web font loads.
Yeri 5y ago
"I don't care about cookies" [1] on Firefox breaks the website (ie nothing happens). [1] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
- Narushia 5y ago
  Ah, I was wondering If I was supposed to see something else there… Really though, that extension (coupled with Privacy Badger) has made it so much less frustrating to browse the net.
jl6 5y ago
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.
cblconfederate 5y ago
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.
titzer 5y ago
They forgot search ads!
frompdx 5y ago
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.
lazyfanatic 5y ago
I miss stumbleupon too my friend.
kinnth 5y ago
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 :)
- eloisius 5y ago
  This sounds more like Brave's shtick, but I agree. I'd love to have a couple of symbols that warned of paywalls, ad/content ratio, cookie consent, etc.
junon 5y ago
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.
nrvn 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.
mod50ack 5y ago
This is why I only browse, both on desktop and mobile, with a bunch of extensions to make the nonsense (mostly) stop.
jstummbillig 5y ago
Did not even break the back button. What a joke joke.
peanut_worm 5y ago
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.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
I had to load it in safari because chrome + ublock was blocking all the crap and just showing a greyed out version of the article. Surprisingly fitting!
civilized 5y ago
It's like the front end industry has been working tirelessly for decades to serve the most beautiful fuck-you possible to each and every user.
nevster 5y ago
I love how it also asks the "Are you sure you want to leave?" Everything about this experience is so true.
every 5y ago
And this is why I do much of my browsing in lynx...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
russellbeattie 5y ago
The fact is that any web site that gets a majority of their traffic via search traffic tends to be trash: These sites don't care if they abuse their users as they know they're not coming back, so they play the numbers game and load the pages with any possible revenue generating feature possible, regardless of how user hostile it might be. Sadly, this represents most of the web. My personal pet peeves are recipe sites. They are the absolute worst!! The other day I went to look up the right proportions for lemonade - which has all of three ingredients, and a one word instruction: stir. You should try it yourself to really see how bad it is. (For future reference, 1 part sugar and lemon juice to 4 parts water. You can get fancy and make a simple syrup first, but if you stir well enough, it doesn't matter much in my opinion.) You know who has enough influence to fix this issue? Google. When they said they were giving mobile websites a ranking boost, the web changed relatively over night to mobile-friendly pages. If Google announces they will penalize websites that over monetize? Poof, we'd all have a readable web again.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
uBlock Origin blocks all of this. Everyone should install it. Everyone.
- Ycros 5y ago
  it really doesn't
kazinator 5y ago
Regarding partially paywalled articles, I just use one of several tricks: 1. Firefox reader mode. Sometimes that is enough. Switch to reader mode, reload. 2. Stopping the incomplete page load. May require several attempts. 3. Some combination of 1 and 2.
ezstar 5y ago
I'm sympathetic to the point being made, but amused that a script and cookie blocker snarled things up early on. And also impressed that they used the actual notification APIs and cookie banner standards with enough fidelity that my extensions hooked it.
dzonga 5y ago
props to whoever made that page. at times, I feel massive second hand guilt and shame by being associated through profession by those who make the crappy web experience we go through daily. one major benefit, is I seek books more now and relevant documentation or papers. I also like forums. and tend to try avoid sites with images. we as in industry should pushback on these practices so we can gain the trust of people utilizing stuff we build.
red_hare 5y ago
Fantastic. The only thing it’s missing is a broken Reader View easter egg.
eloisius 5y ago
They forgot to only show one paragraph of the article with an inexplicable “read more” that unveils the rest.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rpunkfu 5y ago
Hats off to the author, when I've made it through the end and wanted to come back to Hacker News, that window close prompt was like the cherry on top. This is terribly accurate.
nabakin 5y ago
Did some digging and found the guy who made this. Looks like he was a frontend engineer at Baidu! Would be neat to have some good Chinese software engineers on here. If you guys want to check out his content, maybe give him a review for this website, here's what I've found: https://juejin.cn/user/254742427077869 https://juejin.cn/user/254742427077869 https://www.producthunt.com/@evan_lee5/made https://www.producthunt.com/@evan_lee5/made https://www.cnblogs.com/hh54188/ https://www.cnblogs.com/hh54188/ https://www.zhihu.com/people/li-yi-69 https://www.zhihu.com/people/li-yi-69 https://v2ex.com/member/hh54188 https://v2ex.com/member/hh54188 http://qingbob.com/ http://qingbob.com/ https://spectrum.chat/users/hh54188?tab=info https://spectrum.chat/users/hh54188?tab=info https://codepen.io/hh54188 https://codepen.io/hh54188
- Breza 5y ago
  Great sleuthing!
danybittel 5y ago
The website is not drunk enough. By drunk I mean the effect that elements, often several beams and images, scroll with a delay.
fareesh 5y ago
Many such cases
eric_khun 5y ago
is there a way to block those GDPR popups?
sudcha 5y ago
They missed the auto playing videos that follow the page as you scroll with sounds on and need to be manually stopped, and download 50 mb without my permission. I agree with the idea. Miss a regular non intrusive web experience too much. The only place I usually find it is here on HN.
- pcurve 5y ago
  the worst is video players without separate audio control.
PrimeDirective 5y ago
love it. one complaint, after I click on the "Then it show me something", it should start popping all the stuff pretty much at once, not one after another
codeisawesome 5y ago
I think the "Leave site????!" Popup at the end is such a beautiful, excellent, delightful little touch! This is indeed how we experience the Web now :D
secondcoming 5y ago
I don't recall 'Alow notifications' ever been as widespread as it is now. What happened? It's on the vast majority of websites I visit.
hellweaver666 5y ago
It's just missing the auto-playing video that turns into an sticky overlay that follows you down the page and obscures content as you try to read
a3w 5y ago
Required JS, didn't load.
onehair 5y ago
at the paywall, I disable Javascript with uBlock Origin. Maybe you could play around that as well? By that I mean, make it possible to work without Javascript and be annoying
tweetle_beetle 5y ago
Tag Manager, Analytics, jQuery, Slick Slider and 20 network requests for a minimal parody site. Life imitating art?
orloffm 5y ago
This lacks a pop-up that suggests to go to a local site (".de") instead of the global one (".com").
jackthebadcat 5y ago
Problem: over-engineering and monetization
arendtio 5y ago
The ads are too small, the design is too clean and the usability is better than on most sites and there are 'No Thanks' buttons. Often these option are hidden behind some crap. And still the site shows very nicely what is wrong with the current state of the web -> Kudos The creators might want to mix in some https://userinyerface.com https://userinyerface.com sauce to increase realism ;-)

985 points by mrestko 5y ago

I'm relatively new here, but this post really caught my attention because I have faced the same problems most of you are mentioning. After reading the comments in this post I can see some of you want curated content, others just want to explore random websites that work perfectly on all types of devices and popped into a search engine. I've created a site that some of you may like (I'm sure it isn't what all of you are looking for) but it might be what some of you are looking for? It by no means has all the bells and whistles of a search engine but it does offer cool lesser known websites that Google fails to show us. If you visit https://boredhoard.com/ https://boredhoard.com/ you can give it a go and please fell free to provide feedback so that maybe I can morph it into something you guys like/want. Will be very happy to listen

random_2 5y ago

Full of alerts.

random_2 5y ago

Now I'm enjoying to disable the cookies and tracking options.

raman162 5y ago

This is perfect! I laughed harder the further I progressed. Not even sure if I experienced everything. The attention to detail in this is superb!

nicktorba 5y ago

my experience is exactly like this, but wayyyyy slower

plinkplink 5y ago

You forgot the one where you get a popup for moving your mouse out of the window. For some reason I hate that one the most.

tus89 5y ago

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 5y ago
Agreed, I'm especially fond of uMatrix lately for firefox.

beprogrammed 5y ago

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.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I had to turn ublock off to keep going after the first click, which is in fact an accurate depiction of the web experience.

jandrese 5y ago
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.
untoxicness 5y ago
Indeed. We can only hope this is an intentional self-referential joke.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

gfodor 5y ago

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.

beprogrammed 5y ago
Same, literally laughed out loud.
autoexec 5y ago
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.
- timando 5y ago
  Switch tabs and then switch back.
zem 5y ago
same :) came here to see if anyone else had commented on it

tester756 5y ago

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 5y ago

Lovely and accurate

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Lammy 5y ago

Needs more 100%-viewport-height ad blocks between the content paragraphs.

rafaelturk 5y ago

Kudos for the last part!

n4bz0r 5y ago

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.

handrous 5y ago

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.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> [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".
rchaud 5y ago
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.
aaron5 5y ago
Those headers are a biscuit(<-euphemism).
jb_s 5y ago
In real life, the news article is actually a PR release written entirely by a PR company and fed to some low-level staffer (because actual journalism is expensive and nobody can even tell that this is happening)
- Breza 5y ago
  If you're interested in this topic, I suggest the short book Ghosting The News.
lordlic 5y ago
How about a "Find everything you needed?" popover that appears near the top when you move your cursor up to the tab bar to close the tab?

pizzapim 5y ago

Had to turn javascript on to read an article, very realistic.

mrspeaker 5y ago
And I looked in the console messages, expecting to see a lil' easter egg or something, but instead I see `Loading failed for the <script> with source “https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-S8P17EH...” https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-S8P17EH...”.`. Extra realism!

4e530344963049 5y ago

https://trimread.org/ https://trimread.org/ helps with this.

floren 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=4e530344963049 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=4e530344963049 take a break.
- beprogrammed 5y ago
  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/ 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 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 5y ago

How did we get here? Does any and everything ultimately get absorbed by the marketing department?

jandrese 5y ago
Money. The web was great until someone said "I love this, but how do we make money with it?"
- throwawayswede 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    [deleted]

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
As per new trend even the content is advertisement

shakezula 5y ago

_Every day we stray further from the light_

eveningsteps 5y ago

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?

krono 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Is the business goal to get you to click the back button?
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      You clearly don't understand capitalism. The business just provided the most value™ to the customer at that moment in time
      - RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
        It sure is a good thing that externalities don't exist.

ivanovb 5y ago

The content should be just the title repeated a few times, but phrased differently.

jandrese 5y ago
Actual content was above the fold, it's already better than many websites.

herodotus 5y ago

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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  I usually get the "Bad? Rate on our own feedback page" "Good? Rate on the store" scam.
  - Breza 5y ago
    One popular service took this to its logical extreme. They sent me an email with five different star options to click to rate them. Stars 1-4 took me to a private page to offer feedback about what I didn't like about the service. The 5th star took me to their TrustPilot page. I complained to TrustPilot since that's against their TOS. Not sure if anything came of it.
SilasX 5y ago
>Thank you for doing this! I wish I could send the link to almost every organization whose web sites I have had to endure. Yeah I almost wonder how many of the people responsible for the final UX actually experienced it themselves. Not some debug or dev mode, but what the end user actually deals with. Would they tolerate it? Then how does this stuff persist?

vallas 5y ago

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

jollybean 5y ago

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'.

lesinski 5y ago

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.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago

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.

mathnmusic 5y ago
After all the popups, it needs a last one saying "this site works best in our mobile app".
- notquitehuman 5y ago
  IMHO, it should be there as soon as you arrive on the site and then reappear on every page load.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
      - arp242 5y ago
        I think it was just never implemented. The web page is fairly basic compared to the app, and AFAIK always has been (although I never used it much and haven't had an account in quite a while). Quite a few products are actually app-only now, without even any sort of web or desktop version. A few years ago I had trouble using the Dutch thuisbezorgd food service, I think it didn't allow me to change my address or something and just kept erroring out. I contacted support and they told me to use the app. I told them I don't have a smartphone. They said I was out of luck.

dormento 5y ago

Could not proceed after the article, which is somehow actually really dang realistic.

maccolgan 5y ago
Do you have uBlock Origin enabled by any chance?

gdsdfe 5y ago

It really is so freaking frustrating, browsing the web these days

max1cc 5y ago

The last part was a very nice touch

zwieback 5y ago

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

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

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 5y ago
I did something along those lines as a proof of concept, seeded with links harvested from this site. http://kakapo.susa.net:8080/cfs/ 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/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  I like your proof of concept. I guess, next step would be to take google result, and crawl all their result and convert it into scores, rejecting in the process those that are going outside defined limits. Additionally, a weekly list of most infamous sites would be interesting to see, in the sense what people visit the most (probably social ad driven) but has bad UX...
pneto 5y ago
wiby.me is an interesting one.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  it seems that manual submission is necessary.

bruce343434 5y ago

Nice touch that you need to disable the ad blocker to get the cookie privacy thing to show up.

dredmorbius 5y ago

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.

wisethrowaway 5y ago
- CAPTCHA - cloudflare redirections - Affiliate links to Amazon ... to read a minimally informative article.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nyanpasu64 5y ago
- Needs a CTA interruption that triggers when you move your mouse upwards to navigate back or close the tab.
rchaud 5y ago
- 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.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  There are two of those (or at least, representations), for Twitter and Facebook. Could use another few dozen, just for luck. (A few years ago I started collecting screenshots of link litter. I think the max was about a dozen links, though most sites seem to keep it to 3--5.)

LegitGandalf 5y ago

Way to much written content implied, needs more twitter embeds

aspectmin 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Of course :) There it is : https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
rchaud 5y ago
The current state exists because the web can't be monetized without it. How is Gemini different? Who will make content for free?

leandot 5y ago

Awesome, but not complete. It's missing the GDPR popup and the "better experience in app" one.

thatjoeoverthr 5y ago

Almost. It needs an ad that fills entirely the upper half of the screen, and stays with you while you scroll.

coffeecat 5y ago

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 5y ago
Yup, and it has a close button that conveniently appears right beneath the scrollbar.
- pbourke 5y ago
  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 5y ago
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.
- rchaud 5y ago
  The videos usually have unskippable ads.
  - Breza 5y ago
    And video ads carry much higher per-user prices then display ads. Especially if the whole ad finishes playing or you accidentally click on the ad when trying to close it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ub99 5y ago
    Oh I see. My ad blocker seems to block all those video ads pretty effectively! Even then, why would they not just run video ads in that spot? What is the point of trying to distract the user from the content of the article? Just feels weird to me.

tommica 5y ago

In a completely different direction - I've been getting a bit into cooking lately, and found a website called https://based.cooking 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

Breza 5y ago
I feel like we're going full circle to having web rings again.

croes 5y ago

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 5y ago
It's the business that doesn't care about you, not the developers.
- ratww 5y ago
  Considering that lots of developer blogs these days also employ some of those tricks, I wouldn't be so sure.
rchaud 5y ago
> So now someone tell me why we get such sites? People posting on HN usually work on web applications. Those don't need to serve ads because somebody is already paying for the service provided (e.g. Netflix, Salesforce, JIRA). Similarly, they don't serve annoying email popups because every user is already logged in, and their email is already known. A random website you came across while searching for X, doesn't have that luxury. So they can afford to talk about bad UX elsewhere, because their websites don't have to compromise on UX to make money.
danjac 5y ago
Web developers get zero say in all this. I've been in the room when developers - and UX people - call out this crap. After all, regardless of the user experience, adding all the popups and analytics garbage and whatnot makes developers' jobs much harder. And every single time, they are overruled.

cutler 5y ago

In the early 2000s there was a site usability movement centred around the work of Jakob Nielsen and http://useit.com 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 5y ago
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.
- kirse 5y ago
  I'd argue the real culprit is the "maximize shareholder value" mantra. Nothing is off limits in the Excel-sheet optimization game and room for experimentation or creativity is often axed in favor of minimizing risk and extracting more pennies for the cash pile. We'll break out of it eventually though. People are tiring of their walled technology gardens.

chestervonwinch 5y ago

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.

jason0597 5y ago

I literally laughed out loud when I heard my Thinkpad's fan start spinning up! This is just too accurate :(

juliend2 5y ago

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)

shwoopdiwoop 5y ago

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 5y ago

One part is missing: the IM window will make sound and show a respectable or attractive person in avatar.

SevenSigs 5y ago

You need to make the close buttons a lot harder to find... this looks like science fiction.

allenu 5y ago

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 5y ago
... 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.
Noumenon72 5y ago
On Bloomberg Opinion, this extra article used to always count as one of my 10 free ones, too.

leavenotracks 5y ago

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.

spikej 5y ago
Sometimes you need the content and for that I use browser reader mode or if the content is really good, subscribe via rss. If they don't have rss, use a service to build one for the site
themodelplumber 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  > …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 5y ago
    That would be a joy to have.

dsego 5y ago

Had to turn off ublock origin to experience it.

westoncb 5y ago

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 5y ago

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'

fogof 5y ago

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 5y ago
Would you care to share some useful extensions for these problems?
- fogof 5y ago
  A nice one is the "I Don't Care About Cookies" extension.

o2l 5y ago

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.

psilo 5y ago
I'm using Brave and the whole website is annoying.

wisethrowaway 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
reddit req
mod50ack 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.

mro_name 5y ago

another google honeypot. So ironic. haha.

sdevonoes 5y ago

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.

gnramires 5y ago
A/B testing seems very greedy in practice -- even in the purely economic sense (not in the user satisfaction sense). For example, say you "A/B tested" product pricing naively. I would expect demand to have a momentum component. If you set your prices to a large value abruptly, you will probably keep getting a similar sales rate for a while, until demand starts dropping over long term (could be years for all I know -- enough time for most opinions around information sources to have shifted, for example). Compare this to a strategy like Optimal Pricing[1] based on more refined methods. Overall, I can locate at least 3 large scale problems here: (1) Short term behavior of websites (maximizing ads, poor experience) (2) Poor industrial coordination: surely this practice brings the entire (web) industry down. If most of what you see is plagued by ads and infinite popups, you will seek alternatives. (3) Regulation failure. Sometimes even industrial coordination is insufficient, because joint efforts are still limited to a single domain, and not all of society. In this case usually regulation is necessary. Privacy is great and all, but clicking a cookie disclaimer for every website seems such unnecessary friction. Most inexperienced users I've met did not know what cookies meant and couldn't make the privacy-convenience decision effectively. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand#Optimal_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand#Opt...

jrochkind1 5y ago

Inaccurate, loads far too fast.

danuker 5y ago

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#browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API...

bee_rider 5y ago
Wait, can any webdevs explain a legitimate use for these features? Because my (admittedly uninformed) mind can only think of bad uses...
- throwthere 5y ago
  Routing in single-page applications relies heavily on the history API I think.
  - devinmcafee 5y ago
    That's correct. When navigating around in a single page app, clicking on an in-app link won't trigger the browser to make a new HTTP GET to fetch an HTML response from the server. Instead, the routing system will use the pushState API to push a new entry into the history and update the DOM to match the new route. By using pushState, your client side JavaScript can replicate native browser behavior and preserve function of the back button to get to previous routes in the application.
titzer 5y ago
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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chpmrc 5y ago

That is not at all how I experience the web today. I also get annoyingly loud and flashy autoplaying videos...

webmaven 5y ago

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.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.ht...

rchaud 5y ago
A static ad wouldn't be nearly as bad as a "audience-targeted" ad that's dynamically served several seconds after the page loads, reflowing the entire layout and causing page jank. For example, I know that every issue of the Economist is going to have an ad for a luxury watch I will never buy on the inside cover. I have full-on banner blindness to that. That's impossible on display ads that are dynamically placed right in the middle of the article body.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > reflowing the entire layout and causing page jank. I'm starting to suspect that page jank that causes spurious clicks is actually being optimized for, by which I mean that changes that cause less jank will also lower CTR,and so fail to pass A/B testing.

wibblewobble123 5y ago

You should also add blank text until the pointless web font loads.

Yeri 5y ago

"I don't care about cookies" [1] on Firefox breaks the website (ie nothing happens). [1] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Narushia 5y ago
Ah, I was wondering If I was supposed to see something else there… Really though, that extension (coupled with Privacy Badger) has made it so much less frustrating to browse the net.

jl6 5y ago

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.

cblconfederate 5y ago

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.

titzer 5y ago

They forgot search ads!

frompdx 5y ago

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.

lazyfanatic 5y ago

I miss stumbleupon too my friend.

kinnth 5y ago

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 :)

eloisius 5y ago
This sounds more like Brave's shtick, but I agree. I'd love to have a couple of symbols that warned of paywalls, ad/content ratio, cookie consent, etc.

junon 5y ago

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.

nrvn 5y ago

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 5y ago

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.

mod50ack 5y ago

This is why I only browse, both on desktop and mobile, with a bunch of extensions to make the nonsense (mostly) stop.

jstummbillig 5y ago

Did not even break the back button. What a joke joke.

peanut_worm 5y ago

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.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

I had to load it in safari because chrome + ublock was blocking all the crap and just showing a greyed out version of the article. Surprisingly fitting!

civilized 5y ago

It's like the front end industry has been working tirelessly for decades to serve the most beautiful fuck-you possible to each and every user.

nevster 5y ago

I love how it also asks the "Are you sure you want to leave?" Everything about this experience is so true.

every 5y ago

And this is why I do much of my browsing in lynx...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

russellbeattie 5y ago

The fact is that any web site that gets a majority of their traffic via search traffic tends to be trash: These sites don't care if they abuse their users as they know they're not coming back, so they play the numbers game and load the pages with any possible revenue generating feature possible, regardless of how user hostile it might be. Sadly, this represents most of the web. My personal pet peeves are recipe sites. They are the absolute worst!! The other day I went to look up the right proportions for lemonade - which has all of three ingredients, and a one word instruction: stir. You should try it yourself to really see how bad it is. (For future reference, 1 part sugar and lemon juice to 4 parts water. You can get fancy and make a simple syrup first, but if you stir well enough, it doesn't matter much in my opinion.) You know who has enough influence to fix this issue? Google. When they said they were giving mobile websites a ranking boost, the web changed relatively over night to mobile-friendly pages. If Google announces they will penalize websites that over monetize? Poof, we'd all have a readable web again.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

uBlock Origin blocks all of this. Everyone should install it. Everyone.

Ycros 5y ago
it really doesn't

kazinator 5y ago

Regarding partially paywalled articles, I just use one of several tricks: 1. Firefox reader mode. Sometimes that is enough. Switch to reader mode, reload. 2. Stopping the incomplete page load. May require several attempts. 3. Some combination of 1 and 2.

ezstar 5y ago

I'm sympathetic to the point being made, but amused that a script and cookie blocker snarled things up early on. And also impressed that they used the actual notification APIs and cookie banner standards with enough fidelity that my extensions hooked it.

dzonga 5y ago

props to whoever made that page. at times, I feel massive second hand guilt and shame by being associated through profession by those who make the crappy web experience we go through daily. one major benefit, is I seek books more now and relevant documentation or papers. I also like forums. and tend to try avoid sites with images. we as in industry should pushback on these practices so we can gain the trust of people utilizing stuff we build.

red_hare 5y ago

Fantastic. The only thing it’s missing is a broken Reader View easter egg.

eloisius 5y ago

They forgot to only show one paragraph of the article with an inexplicable “read more” that unveils the rest.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rpunkfu 5y ago

Hats off to the author, when I've made it through the end and wanted to come back to Hacker News, that window close prompt was like the cherry on top. This is terribly accurate.

nabakin 5y ago

Did some digging and found the guy who made this. Looks like he was a frontend engineer at Baidu! Would be neat to have some good Chinese software engineers on here. If you guys want to check out his content, maybe give him a review for this website, here's what I've found: https://juejin.cn/user/254742427077869 https://juejin.cn/user/254742427077869 https://www.producthunt.com/@evan_lee5/made https://www.producthunt.com/@evan_lee5/made https://www.cnblogs.com/hh54188/ https://www.cnblogs.com/hh54188/ https://www.zhihu.com/people/li-yi-69 https://www.zhihu.com/people/li-yi-69 https://v2ex.com/member/hh54188 https://v2ex.com/member/hh54188 http://qingbob.com/ http://qingbob.com/ https://spectrum.chat/users/hh54188?tab=info https://spectrum.chat/users/hh54188?tab=info https://codepen.io/hh54188 https://codepen.io/hh54188

Breza 5y ago
Great sleuthing!

danybittel 5y ago

The website is not drunk enough. By drunk I mean the effect that elements, often several beams and images, scroll with a delay.

fareesh 5y ago

Many such cases

eric_khun 5y ago

is there a way to block those GDPR popups?

sudcha 5y ago

They missed the auto playing videos that follow the page as you scroll with sounds on and need to be manually stopped, and download 50 mb without my permission. I agree with the idea. Miss a regular non intrusive web experience too much. The only place I usually find it is here on HN.

pcurve 5y ago
the worst is video players without separate audio control.

PrimeDirective 5y ago

love it. one complaint, after I click on the "Then it show me something", it should start popping all the stuff pretty much at once, not one after another

codeisawesome 5y ago

I think the "Leave site????!" Popup at the end is such a beautiful, excellent, delightful little touch! This is indeed how we experience the Web now :D

secondcoming 5y ago

I don't recall 'Alow notifications' ever been as widespread as it is now. What happened? It's on the vast majority of websites I visit.

hellweaver666 5y ago

It's just missing the auto-playing video that turns into an sticky overlay that follows you down the page and obscures content as you try to read

a3w 5y ago

Required JS, didn't load.

onehair 5y ago

at the paywall, I disable Javascript with uBlock Origin. Maybe you could play around that as well? By that I mean, make it possible to work without Javascript and be annoying

tweetle_beetle 5y ago

Tag Manager, Analytics, jQuery, Slick Slider and 20 network requests for a minimal parody site. Life imitating art?

orloffm 5y ago

This lacks a pop-up that suggests to go to a local site (".de") instead of the global one (".com").

jackthebadcat 5y ago

Problem: over-engineering and monetization

arendtio 5y ago

The ads are too small, the design is too clean and the usability is better than on most sites and there are 'No Thanks' buttons. Often these option are hidden behind some crap. And still the site shows very nicely what is wrong with the current state of the web -> Kudos The creators might want to mix in some https://userinyerface.com https://userinyerface.com sauce to increase realism ;-)