4 ms·

Not just load time, but "time to read content" has exploded. Once the webapp has downloaded and it can start doing REST like requests for the actual content, it

Not just load time, but "time to read content" has exploded. Once the webapp has downloaded and it can start doing REST like requests for the actual content, it also needs to start loading pop-ups and the "continue reading"-button, that can hide the content after it is loaded. So once all that is done, the user needs to click away cookie consent banner, newsletter sign-up and the continue reading button. And only now can we stop the clock on "time to read content". This is a big reason why I read comments first. I click and get straight to content. EDIT: I just realized that the "time to ..."-moniker works really bad in my phrasing here. Maybe "time to start reading" would have been better.

Kiro 4y ago
What's the point of "continue reading"? Why not just show the full thing immediately?
- praptak 4y ago
  It's obviously to show more ads.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    Can't be that obvious considering every reply claims a different reason.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Makes those user engagement metrics look good?
- lrem 4y ago
  A measuring point.
  - emiliobumachar 4y ago
    Don't web developers get full access to the state of the user's scrolling?
- pacifika 4y ago
  In theory on a list of stories this would give you the excerpt and help you scan the list for interesting pieces. In practice if editors don’t write excerpts, this is the first paragraph, and if there are no other stories, well it’s a measurement of engagement at that point.
- dspillett 4y ago
  What the network tab in your browser's DevTools when you click it, and you'll see. Even if the whole text is loaded with the initial page, you'll see a request to somewhere to record that you clicked. Your engagement has been measured. This can be helpful for the site directly (which articles do people actually care about after the first paragraph) and that people are engaged enough to click for more is something they can “sell” to advertisers. A better designed site will have the “read more” button be an actual link so if you have JS disabled (or it fails to load) instead of the content reveal simply failing it falls back to a full-page round-trip so you are counted that way. This could be done with picking up on scroll events or visibility tests on lower parts of the article, instead of asking the user to click, but those methods are less accurate for a number of reasons (people with big screens, people with JS disabled or JS failed to load, …)
  - exo762 4y ago
    So much effort to be able to claim that you do targeted advertising, that is yet to be proven to be effective.
    - dspillett 4y ago
      It isn't as much to claim specifics about what you do wrt targetting. It is to try prove they have engaged users who are looking at the screen rather than, for instance, opening it in a tab then closing it later without ever reading any of it. You might link that to what adverts were shown, but only if they know that information (they may not if the advertising space is farmed out to 3rd parties which is very common).
    - Kiro 4y ago
      Is it really that ineffective? Let's say I get 1 million click-throughs and 100k of them click "read more", which I send as conversions to Facebook. Won't Facebook's algorithm start targeting people similar to the 100k that "converted", making the next 1 million clicks contain more people that hit "read more"?
      - dspillett 4y ago
- sethammons 4y ago
  Originally, they saved bandwidth. High res images would take time. I believe it continues because they want you to see below at other potential articles/ads.
- rr888 4y ago
  My guess it figures out who actually wants to read the article, as opposed to accidental clicks, scrapers etc.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    First reason here that I actually think is valid. Thanks!
- g105b 4y ago
  More room for cramming ads, especially on mobile.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Those buttons drive me as crazy as cookie banners seems to drive others.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
haha.. i am building a browser extension that does login and bypass captcha by sending the captcha image to a server and getting a response. that roundabout takes ~6 seconds. the "normal" way of handling was designed with "username<tab>password<tab><captcha send><show captcha getting banner><spinner><captcha get><captcha paste><tab><enter> this "felt" too much work so i thought of redesigning the workflow so we ended up with <captcha send>username<wait><tab>password><wait><tab><show captcha getting banner><wait><captcha paste><tab><enter> we made the entire process take time to accommodate the ~6 seconds of captcha which currently does not "feel" as taking that time because people are now not happy with loading and wait spinnners generally or stuff taking time, they want everything to be instant. this is just gaming the system so that we can work around technical limitations
illuminati1911 4y ago
”So once all that is done, the user needs to click away cookie consent banner, newsletter sign-up and the continue reading button. And only now can we stop the clock on "time to read content".” You forgot the paywall that you will see at this point. Maybe there is also a customer service bot saying: ”Hey! Ask me about our special offer on 12 month subscription!”
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Don't forget about the banner advertisement which is lazily loaded and shifts the content you're reading so far down you can't see it anymore.
  - kamarg 4y ago
    And the banner asking you to install their PWA because you wanted to read one article on their site. Also don't forget to enable push notifications so they can tell you when they post a new update.
roydivision 4y ago
'Reader View' plugins for Chrome [1], and native for Safari help me a lot with this, cut out all the fat and you're left with only the meat. Doesn't help with load times though, it would be an interesting exercise for such a plugin to only fetch the content, a la Lynx back in the day. [1] https://add0n.com/chrome-reader-view.html https://add0n.com/chrome-reader-view.html
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  NoScript gives you a 90s style web experience. It's vastly superior to what passes for normal these days and blows away AMP pages on page load performance.
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    And for the most egregious cases of broken design, which are sadly regular, you need to disable styling too.
    - jakzurr 4y ago
      Yup, many sites just read faster without the cruft. For me, everything has continued to get faster for the past 30 years. Better modems, service, dsl, cable. 15 years ago, installed button on browser at work to turn off scripting (all or nothing). Used until NoScript came out. Most news sites, NYTimes, WPost, CNN, even HN - you don't even need scripting to read the text, and it loads like lightning. I don't even bother with an add blocker these days. Want to see pics? Tweak the pic link yourself, or google the article title. Worth it, because it's so much faster. On HN, I finally got a log in and enabled scripting for ycombinator.com - it's usually always fast anyway. Example: to follow the war in Ukraine at https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/091194 https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/09... - I just enable "scribblemaps.com". Don't need "azure.com", "google-analytics.com", or "visualstudio.com". Most sites I leave default, no scripting at all. If I really want to see missing content, I might try enabling some, or even all, if I trust the site. Most of the time I can read everything I want without wasting the time.
  - 4y ago

Kiro 4y ago

What's the point of "continue reading"? Why not just show the full thing immediately?

praptak 4y ago
It's obviously to show more ads.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Can't be that obvious considering every reply claims a different reason.
londons_explore 4y ago
Makes those user engagement metrics look good?
lrem 4y ago
A measuring point.
- emiliobumachar 4y ago
  Don't web developers get full access to the state of the user's scrolling?
pacifika 4y ago
In theory on a list of stories this would give you the excerpt and help you scan the list for interesting pieces. In practice if editors don’t write excerpts, this is the first paragraph, and if there are no other stories, well it’s a measurement of engagement at that point.
dspillett 4y ago
What the network tab in your browser's DevTools when you click it, and you'll see. Even if the whole text is loaded with the initial page, you'll see a request to somewhere to record that you clicked. Your engagement has been measured. This can be helpful for the site directly (which articles do people actually care about after the first paragraph) and that people are engaged enough to click for more is something they can “sell” to advertisers. A better designed site will have the “read more” button be an actual link so if you have JS disabled (or it fails to load) instead of the content reveal simply failing it falls back to a full-page round-trip so you are counted that way. This could be done with picking up on scroll events or visibility tests on lower parts of the article, instead of asking the user to click, but those methods are less accurate for a number of reasons (people with big screens, people with JS disabled or JS failed to load, …)
- exo762 4y ago
  So much effort to be able to claim that you do targeted advertising, that is yet to be proven to be effective.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    It isn't as much to claim specifics about what you do wrt targetting. It is to try prove they have engaged users who are looking at the screen rather than, for instance, opening it in a tab then closing it later without ever reading any of it. You might link that to what adverts were shown, but only if they know that information (they may not if the advertising space is farmed out to 3rd parties which is very common).
  - Kiro 4y ago
    Is it really that ineffective? Let's say I get 1 million click-throughs and 100k of them click "read more", which I send as conversions to Facebook. Won't Facebook's algorithm start targeting people similar to the 100k that "converted", making the next 1 million clicks contain more people that hit "read more"?
    - dspillett 4y ago
sethammons 4y ago
Originally, they saved bandwidth. High res images would take time. I believe it continues because they want you to see below at other potential articles/ads.
rr888 4y ago
My guess it figures out who actually wants to read the article, as opposed to accidental clicks, scrapers etc.
- Kiro 4y ago
  First reason here that I actually think is valid. Thanks!
g105b 4y ago
More room for cramming ads, especially on mobile.
JohnFen 4y ago
Those buttons drive me as crazy as cookie banners seems to drive others.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

haha.. i am building a browser extension that does login and bypass captcha by sending the captcha image to a server and getting a response. that roundabout takes ~6 seconds. the "normal" way of handling was designed with "username<tab>password<tab><captcha send><show captcha getting banner><spinner><captcha get><captcha paste><tab><enter> this "felt" too much work so i thought of redesigning the workflow so we ended up with <captcha send>username<wait><tab>password><wait><tab><show captcha getting banner><wait><captcha paste><tab><enter> we made the entire process take time to accommodate the ~6 seconds of captcha which currently does not "feel" as taking that time because people are now not happy with loading and wait spinnners generally or stuff taking time, they want everything to be instant. this is just gaming the system so that we can work around technical limitations

illuminati1911 4y ago

”So once all that is done, the user needs to click away cookie consent banner, newsletter sign-up and the continue reading button. And only now can we stop the clock on "time to read content".” You forgot the paywall that you will see at this point. Maybe there is also a customer service bot saying: ”Hey! Ask me about our special offer on 12 month subscription!”

sidewndr46 4y ago
Don't forget about the banner advertisement which is lazily loaded and shifts the content you're reading so far down you can't see it anymore.
- kamarg 4y ago
  And the banner asking you to install their PWA because you wanted to read one article on their site. Also don't forget to enable push notifications so they can tell you when they post a new update.

roydivision 4y ago

'Reader View' plugins for Chrome [1], and native for Safari help me a lot with this, cut out all the fat and you're left with only the meat. Doesn't help with load times though, it would be an interesting exercise for such a plugin to only fetch the content, a la Lynx back in the day. [1] https://add0n.com/chrome-reader-view.html https://add0n.com/chrome-reader-view.html

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
NoScript gives you a 90s style web experience. It's vastly superior to what passes for normal these days and blows away AMP pages on page load performance.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  And for the most egregious cases of broken design, which are sadly regular, you need to disable styling too.
  - jakzurr 4y ago
    Yup, many sites just read faster without the cruft. For me, everything has continued to get faster for the past 30 years. Better modems, service, dsl, cable. 15 years ago, installed button on browser at work to turn off scripting (all or nothing). Used until NoScript came out. Most news sites, NYTimes, WPost, CNN, even HN - you don't even need scripting to read the text, and it loads like lightning. I don't even bother with an add blocker these days. Want to see pics? Tweak the pic link yourself, or google the article title. Worth it, because it's so much faster. On HN, I finally got a log in and enabled scripting for ycombinator.com - it's usually always fast anyway. Example: to follow the war in Ukraine at https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/091194 https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/09... - I just enable "scribblemaps.com". Don't need "azure.com", "google-analytics.com", or "visualstudio.com". Most sites I leave default, no scripting at all. If I really want to see missing content, I might try enabling some, or even all, if I trust the site. Most of the time I can read everything I want without wasting the time.
- 4y ago