12 ms·

How I Experience the Web Today

421 points by chynkm 4y ago

ugjka 4y ago
Nice touch that this website is broken on Firefox, had to open Chromium
- wtf77 4y ago
  it works for me on Firefox
  - ugjka 4y ago
    Probably all those privacy extensions I have are messing with it
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  I had to disable uBlock Origin for it to work.
- kuratkull 4y ago
  Firefox tracking protection + uBlock Origin + uMatrix + Privacy Badger + I Don't Care About Cookies. With those enabled I got the article, but with the dark-gray overlay. Clicked on "Kill Sticky" addon to remove it, and the article became readable. The only one that sqeueezed through was the "You scrolled!" notification.
roguas 4y ago
Its funny how it hits so close while being parody depiction.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
You forgot the popup that is shown after 30 seconds of inactivity that there is new content available. Some news sites seem to have that now...
- dobladov 4y ago
  And on top of it, they make it look like there's an unread notification in the tab.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  This has really started to annoy me on the Apple News app. Hover over a section of headlines without touching the phone for too long and suddenly it claims there are new stories up top, but if you click on that, they're just lying. Gotta make sure there is nonstop "engagement" with the touchscreen. None of that pesky reading, thinking, and introspecting when consuming information. Better not talk to the person sitting next to you about what you're reading, either, unless they're also using an app that can find a way to measure their interest in what you're talking about.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
Hey, this is great! It's like you have all the functionalities of the new project I'm making all implemented, only without the content. Can I just take the code and slot my own content in! I guess I have to specify that was sarcasm, otherwise I might end up experiencing some other parts of the web today. :(
- tobr 4y ago
  Content looks fine to me. Maybe you meant to say, “take the code and slot my own ads in”?
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    >“take the code and slot my own ads in”? Hey, you say Potato I say Ore-Ida brand Potatoes, when it's Ore-Ida it's Alrighta!
radiojasper 4y ago
This has been reposted here 8 times before or so? https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=how-i-experience-web-today.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=how-i-experience-web-...
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Reposts after 12 months are permitted. There was significant discussion 10 months ago, which would make this a dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28280051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28280051 That said, I do love the satire.
avipars 4y ago
So irritating
- memorable 4y ago
  That's the whole point.
drawkbox 4y ago
The video "Sorry, this content not available in your country" and the back button / close action "Leave site" edit confirm are nice touches to highlight the madness of the modern content experience.
- quaintdev 4y ago
  What if we create search engine that does not index such websites?
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  Also present all content in the dominant language of the country that my IP address is in, not the language my browser specifically asks for.
  - ghusto 4y ago
    This could come from the presumption that most people won't have set that preference, so it would be correct more often to assume language based on IP? I mean I doubt it, since even the setting is automatic based on where you download your browser in most cases, but whatevs, let's be generous in _our_ assumptions. It doesn't make it any less annoying though. What tips it over the edge into maddening, is not allowing me to correct the assumption, or overriding my choice when I do.
  - mordae 4y ago
    Using automatic machine translation I can't turn off.
- seydor 4y ago
  Especially when it's from the BBC (paid already) or sky news (they used to have their youtube channel open). It doesnt cost anything, but they still do it
khazhoux 4y ago
Forgot to disable pinch-zoom on mobile.
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
  Absolutely enraging. Why do browsers even have absurd "features" like disabling a crucial accessibility gesture????
windex 4y ago
Back navigation capture is another one. You click back and the site has somehow created about 40 pages.
revskill 4y ago
My experience: Google something The result is linked to a Medium article, which's guarded by a Paywall or Firewall. Give up on googling. Find another solution for the problem. Basically, i have about 80% probability of wasting my time on the internet.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Knowing alternative-interface sites to get around paywalls / regwalls helps. For Medium: https://scribe.rip/ https://scribe.rip/ (replace the host/domain part of the URL). Twitter -> Nitter (e.g., https://nitter.net/ https://nitter.net/ ... there are numerous others) YouTube -> Invidious or Piped (e.g., https://yewtu.be/ https://yewtu.be/ or https://piped.kavin.rocks/ https://piped.kavin.rocks/) Instagram -> Bibliogram (https://bibliogram.art https://bibliogram.art) Reddit -> Teddit (https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/)
  - yakubin 4y ago
    I don't understand Piped. It's marketed as a faster frontend for YouTube, but more often than not, for me it's actually a lot slower (buffering-wise) than normal YouTube, gives me lower video quality and I end up switching from it[1] to normal YouTube to make the experience bearable. [1]: Nitter replaces YouTube links with Piped links, so I end up on Piped partly involuntarily.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      I find Piped seems to work more reliably than Invidious (or at least my usual Invidious instance). Particularly on newer or music videos. I consider the two largely exchangeable, though Invidious is my first choice. Piped seems to offer finer-grained control. Most often I simply listen (usually to lectures / podcasts) via mpv (accessing through yt-dlp).
  - noSyncCloud 4y ago
    The real MVP is always in the comments. Thanks! What has our "open" web become...
gotbeans 4y ago
The back button at the end, holy cow. Good job.
arminsergiony 4y ago
You neglected to remember the popup that appears after thirty seconds of inactivity to inform you that new content is available. It appears that certain news websites now have that...
- lakomen 4y ago
  That's because of service workers informing you of new content. You don't care, I don't care, but someone just had to nerd out and notify you of the realtime capabilities of this site. It's usually found on news sites and in that context it does make sense but then again you would've seen it if browsing to another link on the site.
mrtksn 4y ago
Yes, that's why I prefer apps where possible. The problem with websites is that they need to be "installed" and they need to get something out of you for their services without the abilities of a proper app. This cookie->email->adblock->subscribe flow is essentially an installers next->next->next flow. The cookie dialog is there because they want to track you and EU wants it to be optional for the user and the user is aware of being tracked. The first notification banner is a HTML one and it is there to make sure that the user doesn't waste the only chance(if the user rejects the browser on, you can't fire it up again) to subscribe to push notifications. The second notification banner(if you accept the first one) is the actual batter by the browser to make sure that you actually want to subscribe. The subscribe to the newsletter modal is there because as soon as you close the tab you will forget about that site and they want a way to remind you of their existence. The adblock detected modal is there because they made that content and that website in hopes to show you an ad and make money of it. The paywall is there because they want alternative revenue stream since ads are not ideal and they don't want to leave money on the table. The ad banners everywhere is the money shot and the reason you have have an adblocker. The modal that appears after scrolling is actually one with good intentions and bad implementation. The idea is that since you consumed the content maybe you would like more from it but most of the time the implementation is bad and its supper annoying. They wanted to show it to you once you finish your thing and you are happy. The modal that appears when you switch tabs is there in another attempt to establish a way to connect with you. Since you switch a tab, maybe you are done with the site and it's a good time to ask you for your e-mail. If you are annoyed, who cares you are about to close the tab anyway. The chat popup is there to engage with you if you are super interested in the website. Rate your experience is there probably because the people who designed this horror show want to read back from you as another signal for their KPI. The %50 off banner on top is a call for action, they still have a chance to sell you something. The share buttons are there to remind you that you can share this horror show with your worst enemies. And the alert you get when you try to close the tab is a last ditch effort to keep you interested. Usually contains %99 off first 10 years free kind of offer. All this delivered to you through carefully studying the analytics data and doing A/B tests. The apps have the advantage of sticking around the users sight, thus they don't have to achieve something the first time the user interacts with the app and as a result they can design the app around user satisfaction so that the user opens the app by itself. Another advantage of the apps is that you get to see the app before going through the installation. You see the screenshots and user reviews on a clean screen before committing.
oxplot 4y ago
Exactly why I have RSS feeds setup, even for Twitter and Youtube.
lujz 4y ago
Rating should require login.
kaichanvong 4y ago
loved it; great experience. Felt almost for a second like being at a theme park (computer game theme park, not the IRL theme park).
alex3305 4y ago
Very clever, and very good. As a visually impaired user with larger fonts, websites can be impossible to use. In my experience you are even missing a sticky header which blocks at least 25% of the page. And perhaps a Clippy like assistant, trying to get your attention in the bottom right corner. Other than that this is pretty accurate.
- dailykoder 4y ago
  Just a quick reminder to keep this in your bookmarks: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ A life safer especially on the rare occassions where I am using my old thinkpad with 1386x720 resolution.
  - alex3305 4y ago
    Thanks for this. Although I have the most issues with sticky headers on mobile. Currently I mostly bail out of those websites.
  - kuratkull 4y ago
    There's a Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kill-sticky https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kill-sticky I use it often. It also worked great on the presented site.
  - myfonj 4y ago
    That bookmarklet was a brilliant idea. I've made a slightly more invasive variation targeting more (potential) annoyances, and I cannot imagine not having it in the bookmarks toolbar now. http://myfonj.github.io/utils/bookmarklets/sweep-stickies.html http://myfonj.github.io/utils/bookmarklets/sweep-stickies.ht...
  - foo_foo_can_do 4y ago
    For about five years i hit this bookmarklet when visiting almost any site. in most cases it gets rid of the cookie banners, bulky headers, and sidebars so this is the true fix for me. If the page doesn't work under all the fixed position junk, then i bounce.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Ha ha glad someone did this to show all the bad patterns. In some ways it is not as bad as many sites. It didn’t auto play for me, and it didn’t bring my browser to a crawl. Suggestions: ask me to use “the app” and request video and mic access.
adsfqwop 4y ago
Ha. Great. Also needs a giant ginormous sticky header and menu structure at the top of the page, so that together with the sticky footer it covers up pretty much any remaining article content.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Lovely. Missing the "advert or other cruft so big in the middle of the text that you genuinely wonder if you've reached an abrupt end of the article, but scroll down enough and it continues."
- memorable 4y ago
  I hate that one too.
- grishka 4y ago
  Some of them do recognize that this might be a problem and add "article continues below" before that thing
_zfxr 4y ago
This is a wonderful work of art.
npteljes 4y ago
Very nice work, the design and the dark patterns are spot on. Darkpatterns.org used to collect websites who seriously did stuff like this. They have since rebranded to deceptive design, also an apt name. The hall of shame is well worth checking out. https://www.deceptive.design/ https://www.deceptive.design/
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
Great work, I love this. > slide out hover menus where when you try to hover over a subitem the whole menu disappears > trying to open an image in google images and the link doesn't have the image > websites that wants to know my location pop up > google how to format a USB drive and all the page are 100,000,00 words and subdivided into 60 chapters, including the entire wikipedia entry for what is USB > login forms with copy/paste disabled > clicking on a button/link and nothing happens > apps without a home button, have to keep clicking back until you exit from the app completely by mistake > autoplay videos that follow you down the page > password fields without a way to reveal password > an article, you scroll down and half the article is cut off/blurred out behind a pay/sign up wall. there is so many more...
- pxmpxm 4y ago
  > google how to format a USB drive and all the page are 100,000,00 words and subdivided into 60 chapters, including the entire wikipedia entry for what is USB This has leaked to virtually all content: "medium rare lamb temperature" will return an infinite number of 10k word essays, titled same as the search query, containing the history of cooking, lamb as food, physics of temperature, lamb recipes and may or may not have the actual information from the title.
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    And the information likely will be wrong. Look at five different pages for the same cooking stuff, and all of them will present different cooking times, temperatures, etc...
  - rawoke083600 4y ago
    Yup cooking pages/queries has been guilty of this for some time now and there are enough threads/post on hn to show its a repeating problem. I cannot phantom that in the great brain/talent pool that is google, that google hasnt figured out that when ppl google lamb cooking temps they dont want a 10k essay !
- usrn 4y ago
  >No home button >Crazy menus This is why on my sites I refuse to use a CMS and just write everything in vim with a single link back to index.html at the top. It's the only way.
hef19898 4y ago
This is hillarious, brilliant, genious! And reflecting reality rather well...
Helmut10001 4y ago
The site did not work for me.. due to "I don't Care About Cookies" [1]. I had to open it in a bare Firefox to see the 'story'. I realize this extension is a good big filter that helps me to avoid the part of the web described by the author. [1]: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
- boesboes 4y ago
  Doesn't work for me either. I just have an adblocker. The whole site does absolutely nothing and doesn't have any text either. I wish that was the web i experience
- Operyl 4y ago
  I wonder if this is on purpose though, given the name of the site. You see it how you would experience most sites?
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    Yeah, exactly, it's like browsing regular news sites.. I cannot see anything (or I turn off all adblockers, I don't care about cookies etc. and then I still cannot read the article due to all the popups).
stackbutterflow 4y ago
Nowadays I close a tab at the slightest inconvenience. Want me to subscribe to a newsletter? Close. Allow notification? Close. Privacy popup because you need to spy on me? Close. Close. Close. There's a very small club of players that I can't afford to reject and you're website is probably not in it.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  Same. I even close when YouTube tries to make me watch 2 15-second videos back to back, without the option to skip. My naive belief is that if enough people leave, they’ll back off.
  - candiodari 4y ago
    > My naive belief is that if enough people leave, they’ll back off. Just like the TV channels did/are doing! Oh wait ...
    - vladvasiliu 4y ago
      But with all the tracking, you'd expect Youtube to know that people are actually going away, while TV channels didn't have that luxury. Then again, maybe they've seen that people mostly don't go away...
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        YouTube has enough users that they don't care if you go away. Because if it bothers you enough, you'll pay to stop it. I subscribe to YouTube Premium and the only time I see an ad on YT is when I'm accidentally logged in as another user.
    - danielvaughn 4y ago
      It’s kinda my point though. I’m sure TV didn’t have 5 minutes of ads every 5 minutes or whatever the ratio is. It slowly built up to that because that’s what people were willing to put up with. Over time it’s going to be the same with YouTube. People will accept multi-minute ads eventually, so eventually YouTube will run them. It’s only a matter of time. The only thing that could stop it is if people immediately leave the site when you feel the ads are too long. If that happens enough, it will force YouTube to back off. Naive to think that would happen, but I’m doing my part.
NKosmatos 4y ago
Very clever and nicely done but you're missing something, please add a notification/message saying something in the lines of: "There are 5 other users viewing this page. There is only 1 offer left. Hurry up and book it!!!"
- butz 4y ago
  E-commerce dark patterns deserve a separate page or two.
jarek83 4y ago
It's fantastic and so real! One thing missing is the pop-up when user moves mouse over the top edge of the page to bother them with "Please don't leave" thing.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  I also love infinite scroll. Sarcasm
thuruv 4y ago
Unsurprisingly accurate to most of the sites I visit. One extra thing is, the page load times and the slowness in loding the page or added content which will displace the buttons/header links I'd want to click resulting in a misplaced click :)
- muyuu 4y ago
  "better" yet: ads download immediately but the content you are looking for takes forever - bonus points if they automatically play some loud audio
r00t4ccess 4y ago
It should also not allow you to leave the page using the back button on the browser, it should intercept that and redirect you to the homepage and as you scroll it adds more to your browser history.
pprotas 4y ago
Funny how uBlock blocks a request to https://dc.services.visualstudio.com/v2/track https://dc.services.visualstudio.com/v2/track when i visit this site (look in your network tab)
scoutt 4y ago
I love it. I would add a user avatar on the top right with a red "unread notification (1)" overlay icon. Why would I have a personal notification for a site I have just entered? Also, a "login to continue scrolling" like desktop Twitter. And... a hamburger menu somewhere.
kebman 4y ago
I once spoofed my buddies with a pop-up that asked: "Are you an idiot?" Then they are prompted to answer "Yes" or "No." Whenever the mouse pointer hovers over "No," it immediately switched to "Yes." I've also seen variations on this where the mouse pointer will push the "No" away like a magnet, making it impossible to click. Great fun.
togs 4y ago
Though a bit extreme, the individual components are definitely there across various webpages. Certainly it is annoying. The fact that we can control whether or not we see them is somewhat remarkable, considering conditions under the dominance of TV: mandatory commercials and high cost subscriptions. Today, the internet is in the process of wrestling that control back from us, driven by the lucrativeness of ad revenue. Ideally, the revenue user subscriptions would obviate the need for ad revenue, but sadly, this is not the case.
- coldpie 4y ago
  > Ideally, the revenue user subscriptions would obviate the need for ad revenue, but sadly, this is not the case. That model will never work, because the ad-based business model still provides an incentive for others to steal the content and slap ads on it. The only way to fix this is to make ad-based business models not viable.
dawbs 4y ago
The hijacked back button gave me a good laugh.
gondo 4y ago
At least we got away from "download our mobile app" step
fumblebee 4y ago
I just clicked a link to read an article on The Economist [1] and it made me appreciate that, even though I can't read the article, it's SO much nicer to have a message inline with the subscription offer instead of as a popup. [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/14/europes-winter-of-discontent https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/14/europes-winter-...
shultays 4y ago
Should have override the scroll behavior and space bar.
leangeek 4y ago
This got me good. 10/10.
dugmartin 4y ago
The missing step is to finally show the text in a system font for a 1/2 second and then blank the page and then take 6 seconds to load a remote font that renders exactly the same to anyone but a font designer.
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  This is not evil. Evil is a font that's so different metrics-wise that it makes the page jump away from where you've been reading it. And then a large ad loads, and makes it all jump away again.
butz 4y ago
An unrelated video should start playing in the background after first click. Article content should end after first paragraph and ask you to create an account. After leaving tab the page title should be constantly changing (text in browser tab) and demanding your attention. In all seriousness, it would be great if you added an example of how website could look without all this mess, and how it would have better performance (literally and figuratively - as in returning visitors).
tboyd47 4y ago
This can be solved very easily at the search engine level.
jfoster 4y ago
I'm surprised that nothing happened when I reached the bottom of the article. Could definitely have got more engagement by having a "you've reached the bottom!" pop-up offering more content or to subscribe.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Or allowing infinite scroll, automatically navigating the entire page to the next article, including changing the URL
sabr 4y ago
We built Smort.io [1] to solve this problem! Here is the Show HN post from March https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673502 Just add smort.io/ before any URL to read it better. You can also annotate, share and save articles. [1] https://smort.io https://smort.io
M0r13n 4y ago
It is frightening to see that most of the gestures are already in my muscle memory. Without even reading the advertising popups, I intuitively scan the site and click the relevant closing button. Because the basic patterns are similar on many pages, my brain seems to have developed muscle memory for most of the common anti patterns. On the final page, I don't even notice most of the banner ads anymore. Here, too, my brain skillfully blanks out the noise.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
And like many problems facing humanity, while we are perfectly capable of recognizing the problem, we will do nothing to fix it.
rosmax_1337 4y ago
Man I get that this is supposed to be funny but it just makes me sad, because it's so true. The constant fucking assault on our minds as we browse the web is enough to drive you insane nowadays. It should be illegal to employ dark patterns like these. Frankly it's malware presented plainly at a url disguised as commerical intrest. Don't reply to me about how "you can't legislate something like that", I know it's hard. But we have to do it somehow.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  I don't think it needs to be illegal, because the "market pressure" is still there: - users don't like it and go away without actually reading the content - Google detects click-away from these sites as a bad search result and begins downranking them (ask yourself: "Am I getting to most of these sites via search results, or via mindless social media browsing?" Social media isn't optimized for search-efficiency signal like a search engine is). So there's a negative-feedback loop on the thing, but the transition from accessing the web via search to social has disrupted the old feedback loop enough that some people think it's short-term profitable to be like this. It will be until either Facebook catches up to the game and starts down-sampling bad actors too or users get tired of it and stop clicking through off of social to those sites, but I expect that negative feedback loop is kicking in.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    > I don't think it needs to be illegal, because the "market pressure" is still there Also, I see people complaining about all kinds of stuff that doesn't bother me at all. Just because something annoys you personally, that doesn't necessarily mean it should be forbidden.
mordae 4y ago
Is there an SDK for this? I need to create a professional website like that and all these cool widgets are hard to make! /i
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  IAB usually heavily recommends those to news sites that have to/think they have to partner with them.
shadowgovt 4y ago
I never get that adblock one. Easiest way to avoid it is stop running adblock. The cookie one though, I see all the time.
DecoPerson 4y ago
The real cherry on top that’s missing would have been hijacking the back button to show a “Hey! Before you go…” popup.
adnauseum 4y ago
I appreciate the prompt initiated when I tried leaving
s1k3s 4y ago
A friend asked me to help him set up some software. He shared the screen for me to watch. He Googled the software, clicked on the first link - an ad to some blog with Top 10 software for X. Then, in under 3 seconds, he accepted all cookies and tracking, allowed notifications and started typing his email address to subscribe to their newsletter, and only stopped because I told him. It was like he wasn‘t even thinking about this anymore, just automatically click on the brightest button to reach content faster. Anecdote, but I think a lot of people act like this which is why these websites think it’s successful.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Don’t think “IT people” are immune. My favourite one is VMware vSphere: it shows several in-your-face pop ups the first time you run it with a checkbox to “never show again”. I consider it a funny kind of anti-shibboleth seeing VMware admins that use that console daily clicking through that dialog without ticking the checkbox. Every day, for years.
phailhaus 4y ago
You forgot the ads that pop in randomly while you're trying to read, pushing the text all over the place. I swear, nobody making these websites actually uses them.
akrymski 4y ago
Funnily enough the web would have looked better if we'd stick to pay-per-minute phone lines as a business model.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
New one I’ve seen is the inclusive language modal

421 points by chynkm 4y ago

ugjka 4y ago

Nice touch that this website is broken on Firefox, had to open Chromium

wtf77 4y ago
it works for me on Firefox
- ugjka 4y ago
  Probably all those privacy extensions I have are messing with it
red_trumpet 4y ago
I had to disable uBlock Origin for it to work.
kuratkull 4y ago
Firefox tracking protection + uBlock Origin + uMatrix + Privacy Badger + I Don't Care About Cookies. With those enabled I got the article, but with the dark-gray overlay. Clicked on "Kill Sticky" addon to remove it, and the article became readable. The only one that sqeueezed through was the "You scrolled!" notification.

roguas 4y ago

Its funny how it hits so close while being parody depiction.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

You forgot the popup that is shown after 30 seconds of inactivity that there is new content available. Some news sites seem to have that now...

dobladov 4y ago
And on top of it, they make it look like there's an unread notification in the tab.
nonameiguess 4y ago
This has really started to annoy me on the Apple News app. Hover over a section of headlines without touching the phone for too long and suddenly it claims there are new stories up top, but if you click on that, they're just lying. Gotta make sure there is nonstop "engagement" with the touchscreen. None of that pesky reading, thinking, and introspecting when consuming information. Better not talk to the person sitting next to you about what you're reading, either, unless they're also using an app that can find a way to measure their interest in what you're talking about.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

Hey, this is great! It's like you have all the functionalities of the new project I'm making all implemented, only without the content. Can I just take the code and slot my own content in! I guess I have to specify that was sarcasm, otherwise I might end up experiencing some other parts of the web today. :(

tobr 4y ago
Content looks fine to me. Maybe you meant to say, “take the code and slot my own ads in”?
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >“take the code and slot my own ads in”? Hey, you say Potato I say Ore-Ida brand Potatoes, when it's Ore-Ida it's Alrighta!

radiojasper 4y ago

This has been reposted here 8 times before or so? https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=how-i-experience-web-today.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=how-i-experience-web-...

dredmorbius 4y ago
Reposts after 12 months are permitted. There was significant discussion 10 months ago, which would make this a dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28280051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28280051 That said, I do love the satire.

avipars 4y ago

So irritating

memorable 4y ago
That's the whole point.

drawkbox 4y ago

The video "Sorry, this content not available in your country" and the back button / close action "Leave site" edit confirm are nice touches to highlight the madness of the modern content experience.

quaintdev 4y ago
What if we create search engine that does not index such websites?
marcus_holmes 4y ago
Also present all content in the dominant language of the country that my IP address is in, not the language my browser specifically asks for.
- ghusto 4y ago
  This could come from the presumption that most people won't have set that preference, so it would be correct more often to assume language based on IP? I mean I doubt it, since even the setting is automatic based on where you download your browser in most cases, but whatevs, let's be generous in _our_ assumptions. It doesn't make it any less annoying though. What tips it over the edge into maddening, is not allowing me to correct the assumption, or overriding my choice when I do.
- mordae 4y ago
  Using automatic machine translation I can't turn off.
seydor 4y ago
Especially when it's from the BBC (paid already) or sky news (they used to have their youtube channel open). It doesnt cost anything, but they still do it

khazhoux 4y ago

Forgot to disable pinch-zoom on mobile.

noSyncCloud 4y ago
Absolutely enraging. Why do browsers even have absurd "features" like disabling a crucial accessibility gesture????

windex 4y ago

Back navigation capture is another one. You click back and the site has somehow created about 40 pages.

revskill 4y ago

My experience: Google something The result is linked to a Medium article, which's guarded by a Paywall or Firewall. Give up on googling. Find another solution for the problem. Basically, i have about 80% probability of wasting my time on the internet.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Knowing alternative-interface sites to get around paywalls / regwalls helps. For Medium: https://scribe.rip/ https://scribe.rip/ (replace the host/domain part of the URL). Twitter -> Nitter (e.g., https://nitter.net/ https://nitter.net/ ... there are numerous others) YouTube -> Invidious or Piped (e.g., https://yewtu.be/ https://yewtu.be/ or https://piped.kavin.rocks/ https://piped.kavin.rocks/) Instagram -> Bibliogram (https://bibliogram.art https://bibliogram.art) Reddit -> Teddit (https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/)
- yakubin 4y ago
  I don't understand Piped. It's marketed as a faster frontend for YouTube, but more often than not, for me it's actually a lot slower (buffering-wise) than normal YouTube, gives me lower video quality and I end up switching from it[1] to normal YouTube to make the experience bearable. [1]: Nitter replaces YouTube links with Piped links, so I end up on Piped partly involuntarily.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    I find Piped seems to work more reliably than Invidious (or at least my usual Invidious instance). Particularly on newer or music videos. I consider the two largely exchangeable, though Invidious is my first choice. Piped seems to offer finer-grained control. Most often I simply listen (usually to lectures / podcasts) via mpv (accessing through yt-dlp).
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
  The real MVP is always in the comments. Thanks! What has our "open" web become...

gotbeans 4y ago

The back button at the end, holy cow. Good job.

arminsergiony 4y ago

You neglected to remember the popup that appears after thirty seconds of inactivity to inform you that new content is available. It appears that certain news websites now have that...

lakomen 4y ago
That's because of service workers informing you of new content. You don't care, I don't care, but someone just had to nerd out and notify you of the realtime capabilities of this site. It's usually found on news sites and in that context it does make sense but then again you would've seen it if browsing to another link on the site.

mrtksn 4y ago

Yes, that's why I prefer apps where possible. The problem with websites is that they need to be "installed" and they need to get something out of you for their services without the abilities of a proper app. This cookie->email->adblock->subscribe flow is essentially an installers next->next->next flow. The cookie dialog is there because they want to track you and EU wants it to be optional for the user and the user is aware of being tracked. The first notification banner is a HTML one and it is there to make sure that the user doesn't waste the only chance(if the user rejects the browser on, you can't fire it up again) to subscribe to push notifications. The second notification banner(if you accept the first one) is the actual batter by the browser to make sure that you actually want to subscribe. The subscribe to the newsletter modal is there because as soon as you close the tab you will forget about that site and they want a way to remind you of their existence. The adblock detected modal is there because they made that content and that website in hopes to show you an ad and make money of it. The paywall is there because they want alternative revenue stream since ads are not ideal and they don't want to leave money on the table. The ad banners everywhere is the money shot and the reason you have have an adblocker. The modal that appears after scrolling is actually one with good intentions and bad implementation. The idea is that since you consumed the content maybe you would like more from it but most of the time the implementation is bad and its supper annoying. They wanted to show it to you once you finish your thing and you are happy. The modal that appears when you switch tabs is there in another attempt to establish a way to connect with you. Since you switch a tab, maybe you are done with the site and it's a good time to ask you for your e-mail. If you are annoyed, who cares you are about to close the tab anyway. The chat popup is there to engage with you if you are super interested in the website. Rate your experience is there probably because the people who designed this horror show want to read back from you as another signal for their KPI. The %50 off banner on top is a call for action, they still have a chance to sell you something. The share buttons are there to remind you that you can share this horror show with your worst enemies. And the alert you get when you try to close the tab is a last ditch effort to keep you interested. Usually contains %99 off first 10 years free kind of offer. All this delivered to you through carefully studying the analytics data and doing A/B tests. The apps have the advantage of sticking around the users sight, thus they don't have to achieve something the first time the user interacts with the app and as a result they can design the app around user satisfaction so that the user opens the app by itself. Another advantage of the apps is that you get to see the app before going through the installation. You see the screenshots and user reviews on a clean screen before committing.

oxplot 4y ago

Exactly why I have RSS feeds setup, even for Twitter and Youtube.

lujz 4y ago

Rating should require login.

kaichanvong 4y ago

loved it; great experience. Felt almost for a second like being at a theme park (computer game theme park, not the IRL theme park).

alex3305 4y ago

Very clever, and very good. As a visually impaired user with larger fonts, websites can be impossible to use. In my experience you are even missing a sticky header which blocks at least 25% of the page. And perhaps a Clippy like assistant, trying to get your attention in the bottom right corner. Other than that this is pretty accurate.

dailykoder 4y ago
Just a quick reminder to keep this in your bookmarks: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ A life safer especially on the rare occassions where I am using my old thinkpad with 1386x720 resolution.
- alex3305 4y ago
  Thanks for this. Although I have the most issues with sticky headers on mobile. Currently I mostly bail out of those websites.
- kuratkull 4y ago
  There's a Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kill-sticky https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kill-sticky I use it often. It also worked great on the presented site.
- myfonj 4y ago
  That bookmarklet was a brilliant idea. I've made a slightly more invasive variation targeting more (potential) annoyances, and I cannot imagine not having it in the bookmarks toolbar now. http://myfonj.github.io/utils/bookmarklets/sweep-stickies.html http://myfonj.github.io/utils/bookmarklets/sweep-stickies.ht...
- foo_foo_can_do 4y ago
  For about five years i hit this bookmarklet when visiting almost any site. in most cases it gets rid of the cookie banners, bulky headers, and sidebars so this is the true fix for me. If the page doesn't work under all the fixed position junk, then i bounce.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Ha ha glad someone did this to show all the bad patterns. In some ways it is not as bad as many sites. It didn’t auto play for me, and it didn’t bring my browser to a crawl. Suggestions: ask me to use “the app” and request video and mic access.

adsfqwop 4y ago

Ha. Great. Also needs a giant ginormous sticky header and menu structure at the top of the page, so that together with the sticky footer it covers up pretty much any remaining article content.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Lovely. Missing the "advert or other cruft so big in the middle of the text that you genuinely wonder if you've reached an abrupt end of the article, but scroll down enough and it continues."

memorable 4y ago
I hate that one too.
grishka 4y ago
Some of them do recognize that this might be a problem and add "article continues below" before that thing

_zfxr 4y ago

This is a wonderful work of art.

npteljes 4y ago

Very nice work, the design and the dark patterns are spot on. Darkpatterns.org used to collect websites who seriously did stuff like this. They have since rebranded to deceptive design, also an apt name. The hall of shame is well worth checking out. https://www.deceptive.design/ https://www.deceptive.design/

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

Great work, I love this. > slide out hover menus where when you try to hover over a subitem the whole menu disappears > trying to open an image in google images and the link doesn't have the image > websites that wants to know my location pop up > google how to format a USB drive and all the page are 100,000,00 words and subdivided into 60 chapters, including the entire wikipedia entry for what is USB > login forms with copy/paste disabled > clicking on a button/link and nothing happens > apps without a home button, have to keep clicking back until you exit from the app completely by mistake > autoplay videos that follow you down the page > password fields without a way to reveal password > an article, you scroll down and half the article is cut off/blurred out behind a pay/sign up wall. there is so many more...

pxmpxm 4y ago
> google how to format a USB drive and all the page are 100,000,00 words and subdivided into 60 chapters, including the entire wikipedia entry for what is USB This has leaked to virtually all content: "medium rare lamb temperature" will return an infinite number of 10k word essays, titled same as the search query, containing the history of cooking, lamb as food, physics of temperature, lamb recipes and may or may not have the actual information from the title.
- elzbardico 4y ago
  And the information likely will be wrong. Look at five different pages for the same cooking stuff, and all of them will present different cooking times, temperatures, etc...
- rawoke083600 4y ago
  Yup cooking pages/queries has been guilty of this for some time now and there are enough threads/post on hn to show its a repeating problem. I cannot phantom that in the great brain/talent pool that is google, that google hasnt figured out that when ppl google lamb cooking temps they dont want a 10k essay !
usrn 4y ago
>No home button >Crazy menus This is why on my sites I refuse to use a CMS and just write everything in vim with a single link back to index.html at the top. It's the only way.

hef19898 4y ago

This is hillarious, brilliant, genious! And reflecting reality rather well...

Helmut10001 4y ago

The site did not work for me.. due to "I don't Care About Cookies" [1]. I had to open it in a bare Firefox to see the 'story'. I realize this extension is a good big filter that helps me to avoid the part of the web described by the author. [1]: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

boesboes 4y ago
Doesn't work for me either. I just have an adblocker. The whole site does absolutely nothing and doesn't have any text either. I wish that was the web i experience
Operyl 4y ago
I wonder if this is on purpose though, given the name of the site. You see it how you would experience most sites?
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  Yeah, exactly, it's like browsing regular news sites.. I cannot see anything (or I turn off all adblockers, I don't care about cookies etc. and then I still cannot read the article due to all the popups).

stackbutterflow 4y ago

Nowadays I close a tab at the slightest inconvenience. Want me to subscribe to a newsletter? Close. Allow notification? Close. Privacy popup because you need to spy on me? Close. Close. Close. There's a very small club of players that I can't afford to reject and you're website is probably not in it.

danielvaughn 4y ago
Same. I even close when YouTube tries to make me watch 2 15-second videos back to back, without the option to skip. My naive belief is that if enough people leave, they’ll back off.
- candiodari 4y ago
  > My naive belief is that if enough people leave, they’ll back off. Just like the TV channels did/are doing! Oh wait ...
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    But with all the tracking, you'd expect Youtube to know that people are actually going away, while TV channels didn't have that luxury. Then again, maybe they've seen that people mostly don't go away...
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      YouTube has enough users that they don't care if you go away. Because if it bothers you enough, you'll pay to stop it. I subscribe to YouTube Premium and the only time I see an ad on YT is when I'm accidentally logged in as another user.
  - danielvaughn 4y ago
    It’s kinda my point though. I’m sure TV didn’t have 5 minutes of ads every 5 minutes or whatever the ratio is. It slowly built up to that because that’s what people were willing to put up with. Over time it’s going to be the same with YouTube. People will accept multi-minute ads eventually, so eventually YouTube will run them. It’s only a matter of time. The only thing that could stop it is if people immediately leave the site when you feel the ads are too long. If that happens enough, it will force YouTube to back off. Naive to think that would happen, but I’m doing my part.

NKosmatos 4y ago

Very clever and nicely done but you're missing something, please add a notification/message saying something in the lines of: "There are 5 other users viewing this page. There is only 1 offer left. Hurry up and book it!!!"

butz 4y ago
E-commerce dark patterns deserve a separate page or two.

jarek83 4y ago

It's fantastic and so real! One thing missing is the pop-up when user moves mouse over the top edge of the page to bother them with "Please don't leave" thing.

chiefalchemist 4y ago
I also love infinite scroll. Sarcasm

thuruv 4y ago

Unsurprisingly accurate to most of the sites I visit. One extra thing is, the page load times and the slowness in loding the page or added content which will displace the buttons/header links I'd want to click resulting in a misplaced click :)

muyuu 4y ago
"better" yet: ads download immediately but the content you are looking for takes forever - bonus points if they automatically play some loud audio

r00t4ccess 4y ago

It should also not allow you to leave the page using the back button on the browser, it should intercept that and redirect you to the homepage and as you scroll it adds more to your browser history.

pprotas 4y ago

Funny how uBlock blocks a request to https://dc.services.visualstudio.com/v2/track https://dc.services.visualstudio.com/v2/track when i visit this site (look in your network tab)

scoutt 4y ago

I love it. I would add a user avatar on the top right with a red "unread notification (1)" overlay icon. Why would I have a personal notification for a site I have just entered? Also, a "login to continue scrolling" like desktop Twitter. And... a hamburger menu somewhere.

kebman 4y ago

I once spoofed my buddies with a pop-up that asked: "Are you an idiot?" Then they are prompted to answer "Yes" or "No." Whenever the mouse pointer hovers over "No," it immediately switched to "Yes." I've also seen variations on this where the mouse pointer will push the "No" away like a magnet, making it impossible to click. Great fun.

togs 4y ago

Though a bit extreme, the individual components are definitely there across various webpages. Certainly it is annoying. The fact that we can control whether or not we see them is somewhat remarkable, considering conditions under the dominance of TV: mandatory commercials and high cost subscriptions. Today, the internet is in the process of wrestling that control back from us, driven by the lucrativeness of ad revenue. Ideally, the revenue user subscriptions would obviate the need for ad revenue, but sadly, this is not the case.

coldpie 4y ago
> Ideally, the revenue user subscriptions would obviate the need for ad revenue, but sadly, this is not the case. That model will never work, because the ad-based business model still provides an incentive for others to steal the content and slap ads on it. The only way to fix this is to make ad-based business models not viable.

dawbs 4y ago

The hijacked back button gave me a good laugh.

gondo 4y ago

At least we got away from "download our mobile app" step

fumblebee 4y ago

I just clicked a link to read an article on The Economist [1] and it made me appreciate that, even though I can't read the article, it's SO much nicer to have a message inline with the subscription offer instead of as a popup. [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/14/europes-winter-of-discontent https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/14/europes-winter-...

shultays 4y ago

Should have override the scroll behavior and space bar.

leangeek 4y ago

This got me good. 10/10.

dugmartin 4y ago

The missing step is to finally show the text in a system font for a 1/2 second and then blank the page and then take 6 seconds to load a remote font that renders exactly the same to anyone but a font designer.

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
This is not evil. Evil is a font that's so different metrics-wise that it makes the page jump away from where you've been reading it. And then a large ad loads, and makes it all jump away again.

butz 4y ago

An unrelated video should start playing in the background after first click. Article content should end after first paragraph and ask you to create an account. After leaving tab the page title should be constantly changing (text in browser tab) and demanding your attention. In all seriousness, it would be great if you added an example of how website could look without all this mess, and how it would have better performance (literally and figuratively - as in returning visitors).

tboyd47 4y ago

This can be solved very easily at the search engine level.

jfoster 4y ago

I'm surprised that nothing happened when I reached the bottom of the article. Could definitely have got more engagement by having a "you've reached the bottom!" pop-up offering more content or to subscribe.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
Or allowing infinite scroll, automatically navigating the entire page to the next article, including changing the URL

sabr 4y ago

We built Smort.io [1] to solve this problem! Here is the Show HN post from March https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673502 Just add smort.io/ before any URL to read it better. You can also annotate, share and save articles. [1] https://smort.io https://smort.io

M0r13n 4y ago

It is frightening to see that most of the gestures are already in my muscle memory. Without even reading the advertising popups, I intuitively scan the site and click the relevant closing button. Because the basic patterns are similar on many pages, my brain seems to have developed muscle memory for most of the common anti patterns. On the final page, I don't even notice most of the banner ads anymore. Here, too, my brain skillfully blanks out the noise.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

And like many problems facing humanity, while we are perfectly capable of recognizing the problem, we will do nothing to fix it.

rosmax_1337 4y ago

Man I get that this is supposed to be funny but it just makes me sad, because it's so true. The constant fucking assault on our minds as we browse the web is enough to drive you insane nowadays. It should be illegal to employ dark patterns like these. Frankly it's malware presented plainly at a url disguised as commerical intrest. Don't reply to me about how "you can't legislate something like that", I know it's hard. But we have to do it somehow.

shadowgovt 4y ago
I don't think it needs to be illegal, because the "market pressure" is still there: - users don't like it and go away without actually reading the content - Google detects click-away from these sites as a bad search result and begins downranking them (ask yourself: "Am I getting to most of these sites via search results, or via mindless social media browsing?" Social media isn't optimized for search-efficiency signal like a search engine is). So there's a negative-feedback loop on the thing, but the transition from accessing the web via search to social has disrupted the old feedback loop enough that some people think it's short-term profitable to be like this. It will be until either Facebook catches up to the game and starts down-sampling bad actors too or users get tired of it and stop clicking through off of social to those sites, but I expect that negative feedback loop is kicking in.
- dionidium 4y ago
  > I don't think it needs to be illegal, because the "market pressure" is still there Also, I see people complaining about all kinds of stuff that doesn't bother me at all. Just because something annoys you personally, that doesn't necessarily mean it should be forbidden.

mordae 4y ago

Is there an SDK for this? I need to create a professional website like that and all these cool widgets are hard to make! /i

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
IAB usually heavily recommends those to news sites that have to/think they have to partner with them.

shadowgovt 4y ago

I never get that adblock one. Easiest way to avoid it is stop running adblock. The cookie one though, I see all the time.

DecoPerson 4y ago

The real cherry on top that’s missing would have been hijacking the back button to show a “Hey! Before you go…” popup.

adnauseum 4y ago

I appreciate the prompt initiated when I tried leaving

s1k3s 4y ago

A friend asked me to help him set up some software. He shared the screen for me to watch. He Googled the software, clicked on the first link - an ad to some blog with Top 10 software for X. Then, in under 3 seconds, he accepted all cookies and tracking, allowed notifications and started typing his email address to subscribe to their newsletter, and only stopped because I told him. It was like he wasn‘t even thinking about this anymore, just automatically click on the brightest button to reach content faster. Anecdote, but I think a lot of people act like this which is why these websites think it’s successful.

jiggawatts 4y ago
Don’t think “IT people” are immune. My favourite one is VMware vSphere: it shows several in-your-face pop ups the first time you run it with a checkbox to “never show again”. I consider it a funny kind of anti-shibboleth seeing VMware admins that use that console daily clicking through that dialog without ticking the checkbox. Every day, for years.

phailhaus 4y ago

You forgot the ads that pop in randomly while you're trying to read, pushing the text all over the place. I swear, nobody making these websites actually uses them.

akrymski 4y ago

Funnily enough the web would have looked better if we'd stick to pay-per-minute phone lines as a business model.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

New one I’ve seen is the inclusive language modal