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How I Experience Web Today (2021)
- hyperhello 2y agoGreat parody that isn’t a parody. When I get a page like that now I’ve learned that there probably isn’t anything worth reading.
- Vermyndax 2y agoThis has been my mental shift as well. I also decide this when someone tells me the site only works in Chrome, so I should switch to Chrome. No, thanks.
- sonofhans 2y agoThis is too real. Even to the point where it barely works at all with ad blockers on. Without ad blockers it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, just like the web is. At this point I have so many different content-blocking extensions running, trying to trim this crap off my screen, that they sometimes conflict and break things. And still crap gets through.
- cle 2y agoIt's even worse than that, first Google will bug you to use Chrome, then bug you to login, then after your search the browser will pop up "Google would like to use your current location". And then the first half-page of results are ads. And half of the actual results are AI slop and a helpful AI summary of the slop. And that's before you even get to the page.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago> the first half-page of results are ads. I forget if it was crypto or AI, but not too long ago I put in what I would consider a "normie" query and every single above-the-fold result was an ad. Every single one.
- dylanowen 2y agoTime to switch to kagi.com
- whichdan 2y agoOh, don't forget, if you click "Allow (current location)" it will also reload the page.
- FridgeSeal 2y agoDon’t forget finally landing on the page and having the focus immediately stolen by some “LOG IN WITH GOOGLE” pop up that you didn’t ask for, and don’t want.
- andai 2y agoRan into this gem today: https://files.catbox.moe/bvrd6u.jpg https://files.catbox.moe/bvrd6u.jpg > Google (www.google.com) is a pure search engine — no weather, no news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distractions, no portal litter. > Nothing but a fast-loading search site. Reward them with a visit.
- safety1st 2y agoAh, the joys of crafting an illegal monopoly, systematically abusing the society that built you up, routinely breaking laws and defying judges. Enables you to become exactly what you got successful for NOT being. Must be great. /s
- zelphirkalt 2y agoNow only the people in majority need to realize this, and perhaps we can have a somewhat saner web again.
- nameless_me 2y agoKinda where AI is today.
- smittywerben 2y agoLOL, I didn't know they ran newspaper ads for Google. I love old images of the Google search engine. When I was a kid, I taught other kids how to use the "cache" button next to links. Then Google buried the cache button three clicks under before completely removing it, and Googlers said, "Well, nobody was using it." MBA's doing user-driven development, "As a user (child), I don't know what a cache is." and the legal department being like, "Yup less shit to DMCA." Google is the modern-day Yellow Pages; kill some trees and slam that rainwater-soaked stack of ads on my porch. I won't say no to free, but how many hoops did we go through to end up back here?
- hatsuseno 2y agoThat's not an ad, that was a highlighted blurb in a tech magazine from way back when.
- forgotmypw17 2y agoI switched my iPhone to Bing recently because of this. It’s in the same order of magnitude of usefulness.
- snapplebobapple 2y agoI was on bing for a while but switched to brave search necause it surprisingly had much better results and was even less annoying than bing.
- syncsynchalt 2y agoGetting to the final page was a good reminder of the new "Hide Distracting Items" in the latest macOS Safari. The feature lets you select offending blocks which are deleted from the page. The feature remembers the items you deleted on re-visit, too.
- tapete 2y agoI like how you talk about as if this was an exciting new feature, when in reality this is something that ublock had for at least five years.
- blackhaj7 2y agoSpot on!
- beretguy 2y agoAm i missing something is this text: === I search something https://example.com https://example.com Then it shows me something Example Domain. This domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents. You may use this domain in literature without prior coordination or asking for ... === And the rest of the page is blank white. I’m not seeing anything else. What is everybody talking about?
- hosh 2y agoWhen you click on the example.com link, it takes you to a page within the site that shows a bunch of blurred out content, a "Accept Cookie" footer. If you try to leave, it asks you if you really want to leave.
- beretguy 2y agoAh. Thank you. I clicked, saw “text placeholder”, scrolled down, got that email pop up and that’s it. I guess my ad blocking/coockie/dns stuff is working.
- CalRobert 2y agoclick on it
- anyfoo 2y agoWhat I always don't understand is: So you don't want to pay for online content, but you also want to use an ad blocker. In summary, you don't want the author or creator to get paid? Personally, I hate ads, so I pay. I have digital subscriptions to the newspapers I read. I have YouTube Premium (because I spend an ungodly amount of time on that site). But for people who want to do neither... what's your idea?
- hosh 2y agoThere is a whole lot more to this than just whether content creators or publishes should get paid, and whether there should be ad blockers (and whether they get paid). There are people who have been fed up by this because they remembered how the web was like in the late 90s, before social media pushes became the dominant experience. People have formulated ideas around the Small Web (https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/ https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/), or even opted out of the browser ecosystem entirely with Gemini (https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/) or keep the torch burning for Gopher (https://hackaday.com/2021/09/28/gopher-the-competing-standard-to-www-in-the-90s-is-still-worth-checking-out/ https://hackaday.com/2021/09/28/gopher-the-competing-standar...) From there, it is also a short hop and skip away to folks working on local-first (https://localfirstweb.dev/ https://localfirstweb.dev/), decentralization, collapse computing (https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html and http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/)
- anyfoo 2y agoI get that, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people whose job content is, and who may have had the same job in the 90s, e.g. newspaper journalists. So I'm asking those who don't want to pay for a subscription, but want to use an ad blocker: How does it work? As said, I opted for paying the creator directly, because I hate the ad ecosystem. Seems like a lot of people want to do neither, but still expect their content to magically exist.
- n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
- Bulbasaur2015 2y agoThis is so funny
- nickjj 2y agoMy favorite part is how inconvenient it is to only accept "necessary" cookies.
- bbor 2y agoA great example of why executive agencies need leeway in their power to make and refine policies. AFAIK the GDPR notifications were put into place by the "The European Parliament and The Council of the European Union" directly and haven't changed much since 2016, even though any vaguely-internet-aware child could identify this glaring loophole. I don't doubt their intentions, but the result is subpar at best. IMO the best outcome of GDPR wasn't the blocking of any significant number of cookies, but rather raising public awareness that these sites are collecting "non-vital" information in the first place. Why do we allow that, ever, in any way? If I started paying to put up facial recognition cameras in every restaurant and store in town to build my own little omniscient tracker of my fellow citizens, I think I'd be run out with pitchforks and torches. But somehow it's okay when ~~it's on the internet~~ when Google insists that it's a necessary evil...
- rambambram 2y agoIt also hijacked my Back button for full-on effect, nice.
- mrkramer 2y agoIn another words: UX nightmare!
- mlekoszek 2y agoThe cherry on top was the video player that solely exists to tell you "This content is not available in your country"
- terminalbraid 2y ago[dead]
- s-mon 2y agoCookie banners… the most silly idea made by non technical people mandated upon technical people. Does anyone remember P3P? If that was pushed and managed better it would have solved the entire problem.
- surgical_fire 2y agoCookie banners were not mandated. That was malicious compliance. That I keep seeing this bullshit repeated it tells me that "technical people" are not as smart as they think they are.
- s-mon 2y agoThe amount of client-side fetched third party tools fighting for the upper layer is so funny and accurate. Intercom + cookie settings + a newsletter popup + ads…
- max_ 2y agoHere is another funny illustration — https://modem.io/blog/blog-monetization/ https://modem.io/blog/blog-monetization/
- Ayesh 2y agoThis is brilliant! I like how it slowly drives you mad.
- marviel 2y agoI like them both -- but while the OP is excellent satire, this one approaches art.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoThe CSS on that page is impressive!
- xenic 2y agoThis is glorious, and made me think; is there a reverse-adblock addon that would “click” on all ads it finds on a page and would load them silently in the background..?
- blargey 2y agoThere’s https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ (posted to HN a few times https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37230898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37230898 )
- gruez 2y agoToo bad it fetches the pages via XHR and doesn't attempt to render them, so it's trivially detectable and filtered out.
- MattPalmer1086 2y agoFunniest (and most accurate) thing I've seen on the web in a while. Thanks for posting!
- 2y ago
- pranav_rajs 2y agoThis is brilliant. I'd probably add the notifications to download Chrome and ads in Google search to this experience.
- jonwinstanley 2y agoAgreed. And the UX for asking ChatGPT the same question is a lot more palatable
- alnwlsn 2y agoUnrealistic. There are far too few ads in between paragraphs.
- Terr_ 2y agoAlso the paragraphs needs those arbitrary phrases which have been turned into links to purchase a vaguely-related product with a referral code.
- strongpigeon 2y agoI can't laugh because this is too close for comfort... The only thing that's missing is the page scrolling back to the top and zooming behaving erratically on mobile due to ads popping in and out. Well done.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spencerchubb 2y agoWhen I tried to leave the page it said "Changes you made may not be saved" That was a nice touch
- yaky 2y agoI chuckled at the "You scrolled!" popup. Slightly disappointed I did not see the ubiquitous "Sign in with Google" popup in the upper right corner, nor comments full of spam.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- robofanatic 2y agoThanks to that MBA and SEO certificate!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 2y agoWhen the site loses focus, it should move into a useless page and show a dialog instead of just showing a dialog. Also, there are too few ads. Anyway, great site!
- CM30 2y agoSadly the reality for 99% of blogs and news sites nowadays. Makes me wonder whether this is part of the reason why social media sites, YouTube, etc have taken over as a source of information for many people now. Those sites are nightmarish in their own right, but they seem to be less heavy on the annoyances than the average news site now.
- airstrike 2y ago> less heavy on the annoyances than the average news site now or less heavy on the annoyances than the average news site for now
- mondobe 2y agoMaybe the quantity of the annoyances don't matter (see YouTube's recent anti-ad-blocking shenanigans), but the fact that the annoyances are mostly constant and known (at least, changing at a much slower rate than you view a new slop website) definitely reduces cognitive load.
- bbor 2y agoI think we should take the time to recognize that this isn't bad design, it's a badly regulated market. This is exactly what antitrust exists for: to prevent a small number of firms dominating a market with thin margins, leading to a few decent experiences (namely Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok) and crushing economics for the rest. What can you do as a publisher of web content other than compete with the big dogs on Display Ads (what this link is complaining about, that's why they request your data in the first place) or try to enforce paywalls (also what this link is complaining about, ironically)? Supposedly some parts of the internet work off of affiliate marketing, such as the few oddball companies that prop up the podcast space for the rest of us, but that seems A) terrible for consumers and B) incredibly hard to make a living with. For better or worse (worse!) we've trained ourselves to expect internet publishers to survive off of Display Ads alone, and act like we've been betrayed when someone links https://businessinsider.com https://businessinsider.com, https://nytimes.com https://nytimes.com, or another paywalled site to Hacker News. We're at a crossroads in history, my friends. We can, and must, change this. Substack is a beautiful step in the right direction, but real change must come with societal buy-in (AKA no more archive links on HN) and governmental intervention (AKA follow through on the US DOJ's recent threats to break up Google). There's no way in hell that any of us would accept the business model of "we'll emotionally manipulate you into buying stuff you don't really want" if we didn't grow up with it -- for anything, but especially for something as vital as journalism. I sincerely doubt Paul Graham could defend it, yet here we are; any paywalled link is removed as a matter of policy, even the fancy new Substack ones that have a few paragraphs of pre-paywall content.
- masswerk 2y agoFun effect: When finally confronted with the page-leave dialog, I automatically went for the non-default, grey option button – and was kind of surprised that this wasn't the option I wanted. I've a minor criticism: The "No thanks" button should really be "Remind me later" and possibly greyed out, since any negative wording is allegedly bad UX and users must be protected from any blunt denials in any options. "Maybe later" is also acceptable and even empowering, since this places users on equal footing as they are now lying to the website just as this is lying to them.
- gffrd 2y ago> "Maybe later" is also acceptable and even empowering You've got a fulfilling career in product management ahead of you!
- masswerk 2y agoHire me! Unfortunately (or is fortunate?), I'm rather bad at real-life cynicism. So, no results guaranteed… ;-)
- awinter-py 2y agopage leave dialog was chef's kiss
- ahmadtbk 2y agowe need a how-i-experience-interviews-today
- upupupandaway 2y agoGreat. The only thing missing is the infinite scrolling that surreptitiously loads another article to keep you reading, thinking you're still with the original article.
- kmoser 2y agoNot to mention prevents you from Ctrl+F finding something you just scrolled by because it has been removed from the DOM. Other thing missing is "Your browser doesn't support <foo>".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago'cept it's not today is it. It's (2021)
- zem 2y agoI'd say "it's funny because it's true", but this goes all the way into "too true to be funny"!
- airstrike 2y agoThe least accurate part of this is that the elements are all too quick to respond vs. IRL where every action takes multiple seconds to load
- judah 2y agoThis is great. I see: - Cookie acceptance overlay - Email prompt when switching away from tab - Push notification custom UI prompt - Push notification browser prompt - Subscribe to our newsletter prompt - Ad blocker detected modal - Please subscribe overlay - Continue reading overlay - Ratings prompt - Floating feedback button - "How can I help you?" chat popup - Email prompt when scrolling - Create an account footer - Interstitial ads - Social media share buttons - Click to play video overlay (one that isn't available in your country) - Tab closing prompt Thinking about this problem technically, most of these obscenities are vying for top level. In the early days, browsers could detect when a popup was trying to launch and block them. Could we do something similar but for top level DOM? Alternately, could a browser have a quiet mode? No prompts, banners, overlays, etc. Just thinking out loud.
- staplers 2y agoCould we do something similar but for top level DOM? It's called "reader mode" on most browsers.
- judah 2y agoYeah, but it doesn't work for 90% of the sites I try it on. And some sites, especially news sites, deliberately break it. Seems to me reader mode is a great idea but needs some dynamic behavior so sites can't break it.
- ravenstine 2y agoSadly, development of reader mode seems to be stagnant for both Firefox and Chrome. While it works for a substantial number of pages, I was hoping that more pages would work as years go by. Too bad that doesn't appear to have happened.
- neilv 2y agoUnfortunately, Firefox Reader Mode bypasses your uBlock Origin, so you get violated by trackers. IIRC, this `about:config` setting is how I disable Firefox Reader Mode: `reader.parse-on-load.enabled` = false
- 2y ago
- lambdaba 2y agoIt's funny because working with DNS-level blocking + cookie consent + ad blocker the sequence is perfectly fine, I had to go back to comments to understand what I was supposed to see. Of course, that is besides the point, but I am surprised not everyone here has a setup like this.
- shombaboor 2y agowhat is considered as the golden era of web browsing? Minimal intrusiveness, but decent images/video/readability?
- JohnMakin 2y agoRemember a ~year ago there was a swath of articles popping up everywhere, including this site, about how "search is fine actually." I'm glad people are noticing how bad it is now, I promise it has been this way longer than you realize. It's so user hostile it seems comical at times. I completely stopped using search and feel like I live in the dark ages now and have just accepted that's going to be the foreseeable future until I get a new library card.
- joshdavham 2y agoI'm a little disappointed that the email sign up doesn't seem to work. It would be hilarious if it did work and then sent you obnoxious email copy haha
- s010c011ab 2y agolol
- beders 2y agoBrave tried to fix this but the jury is still out if it has any chance of succeeding. The lack of diverse monetization models is forcing web sites to maximize for annoying-but-not-too-annoying. I'm waiting for a browser where I can collect gummy points by going to web sites with ads that I can then exchange for my chosen ad-free web content. Just one example of how we can regain control over content with content-creators and infra operators getting their fair share.
- darajava 2y agoI don’t get why more people don’t use Brave. It literally blocks all of these annoying things (not only ads) on mobile and desktop and it’s very easy to disable all the crap they add to make money (although I do feel bad and actually writing this made me think to donate if that is an option). Brave search is 80% as good as Google’s too.
- tiffanyh 2y agoSome have lost trust in Brave given various reports of them selling users data, which conflicts with their messaging as being the "privacy safe browser". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735777
- darajava 2y agoSeems indirect and I don’t really care if they use my usage data.
- littleweep 2y agoGood reminder, I’ll give it a download again.
- rglynn 2y agoYeah people always complain about ads, I havent seen a single ad in years (except twitch).
- xnorswap 2y agoI probably shouldn't divulge this since it risks this privilege disappearing, but Twitch is the one place I don't see ads, even though I don't use an ad-blocker. I think some years ago, I may have had a flag set on my account which stops me getting ads. In the past I've given security@twitch a heads-up about some minor vulnerabilities, so perhaps it was a gesture of good will from twitch. It may also have been a freak case of falling between the cracks when having "twitch prime" transitioned from ad-free viewing across all twitch to not doing so. It took me years to realise that I don't see adverts on twitch when I "should", and I don't fully understand why not. I'm not sure who even at twitch I would report it to, as it doesn't feel like a security issue.
- jay-barronville 2y agoHow could something be so relatable? It’s this type of foolishness that has turned me so trigger-happy with that “X” button. I close tabs so quickly nowadays that I sometimes forget why I even visited a website in the first place, and I usually end up having to right-click and click “Reopen closed tab” to go back once I remember why. The cookie pop-ups are especially annoying—no, I don’t want your cookies!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jb3689 2y agoI searched for a guide explaining PID controllers the other day, and after the fifth full screen mobile pop up on a result I finally just gave up. Even on your silly site I accidentally clicked allow because of the buttons switching to default positions I’m not used to.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 2y agoIt's ironic that the domain name is one of those that my mental "classifier" would instantly put into the "SEO spam / ads" category and subconsciously skip over when scrolling through search results.
- LordRatte 2y agohttps://imgur.com/a/NwhwnsZ https://imgur.com/a/NwhwnsZ This is all I see. I take it that my ad blocking plugins and security settings are working then.
- aanet 2y agoToo funny. Too true. Too sad. This is still true in 2024.
- aanet 2y agoI wish more sites were like this.... starting with HN. /s
- t0bia_s 2y agoLibreWolf with uBlock + NextDNS as DNS resolver (or PiHole) at home router. All phones are connected via Wireguard to router. I don't remember, when I saw an ad on web on any home device last time.
- mossTechnician 2y agoThe only update this site needs is at the beginning: instead of a helpful result, it needs to be below 16 AI generated or SEO spam links, and an AI-generated answer needs to appear and start pushing them down the page as it slowly spawns into existence.
- forgotmypw17 2y agoIt is not how I experience the Web today, and I was initially confused by what the hype was about this site, because… Anytime I see a pattern like this, I just close the tab and move on to browsing sites that respect me. So that's what I did after clicking the first link. It’s sort of like if an annoying or obnoxious person approaches me on the street… I just walk away! What could they possibly have to say to me that could be so important? And I have noticed the same with Web sites… this type of low-quality behavior correlates strongly with low-quality content, which also adds nothing to my life. So by immediately leaving, I am not only saving myself from aggravation, I am also saving myself from wasting time on fluff pieces, useless studies, clickbait, etc. I highly recommend this strategy, because it has transformed the Web for me into once again being usable and useful. (I still use an ad blocker for security reasons.)
- hidroto 2y agoThis let's play experience sums up the web pretty well too. Keep watching till 9:15. https://youtu.be/2Ch_PtGAaZg?t=222 https://youtu.be/2Ch_PtGAaZg?t=222
- musicale 2y agoThe video needs to auto-play regardless of "never auto-play" browser settings.