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Trying to read this to the end feels impossible - the Guardian keeps flicking the page to show ads and the page refreshes for no reason and I’m sure their ads i

by dzink 11mo ago

Trying to read this to the end feels impossible - the Guardian keeps flicking the page to show ads and the page refreshes for no reason and I’m sure their ads impressions numbers are going through the roof. Feels like ad fraud.

munchler 11mo ago
Reader mode. No ads, just text.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
actionfromafar 11mo ago
Worked fine in Firefox incognito.
esseph 11mo ago
I'm not seeing page refreshes on chrome. It's just a lot of fixed sized ad boxes.
JKCalhoun 11mo ago
I hate ads as much as everyone, but I think you need to at least take a modicum of steps to block ads before posting to HN that you hate seeing all the ads. (Perhaps your point though is to broadcast to everyone—who presumably are in fact blocking ads—that the site is pure awfulness without any ad-blocking. Of course you're preaching to the choir at that point anyway.)
- gjm11 11mo ago
  The Guardian attempts to stop you accessing its articles if you are using an ad-blocker and don't have a paid subscription. (They didn't always do this. I don't know whether they do it uniformly to everyone or whether e.g. it's different based on their guess of your location.)
- philipallstar 11mo ago
  This is like saying "if you don't like train prices then don't complain until you've tried jumping the turnstile".
  - zen928 11mo ago
    Yeah, which is a reasonable statement to make on the website TrainHackersAndPassAvoiders.com. I think its appropriate if you consider yourself in the culture to be reminded of the norms everyone in that culture typically follows.
    - philipallstar 11mo ago
      That definitely isn't the topic of this website, though.
  - JKCalhoun 11mo ago
    If jumping the turnstile were legal, yeah. So far anyway, Reader Mode, and various ad-blockers are still legal. I see your point generally though: accessing content that the publisher has attempted to force you to pay for. My general thought though is that it appears to be a failed (failing?) business model. I just don't know what the solution is. Perhaps if the ads avoided obscuring the content (like newspapers and magazines) I would probably just ignore them and not actively try to suppress them.
HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
The Guardian from a desktop browser started confronting me with a paywall about two weeks ago. Can’t even see the front page, and uBlock Origin doesn’t help. Far from encouraging me to subscribe, I think this might actually finally cure my news addiction.
gooseus 11mo ago
I remember reading The Guardian back in the oughts when they were winning awards for their UX and they were my go-to answer to the front-end interview question of "Which websites do you admire?" Ha, they even have their "Website of the year" award linked on their top banner https://web.archive.org/web/20080704050905/http://theguardian.co.uk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080704050905/http://theguardia...
pwg 11mo ago
Ublock origin -- blocking the javascript, and the article is readable with no page flicking, and no ads at all.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

by dzink 11mo ago

munchler 11mo ago

Reader mode. No ads, just text.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

actionfromafar 11mo ago

Worked fine in Firefox incognito.

esseph 11mo ago

I'm not seeing page refreshes on chrome. It's just a lot of fixed sized ad boxes.

JKCalhoun 11mo ago

I hate ads as much as everyone, but I think you need to at least take a modicum of steps to block ads before posting to HN that you hate seeing all the ads. (Perhaps your point though is to broadcast to everyone—who presumably are in fact blocking ads—that the site is pure awfulness without any ad-blocking. Of course you're preaching to the choir at that point anyway.)

gjm11 11mo ago
The Guardian attempts to stop you accessing its articles if you are using an ad-blocker and don't have a paid subscription. (They didn't always do this. I don't know whether they do it uniformly to everyone or whether e.g. it's different based on their guess of your location.)
philipallstar 11mo ago
This is like saying "if you don't like train prices then don't complain until you've tried jumping the turnstile".
- zen928 11mo ago
  Yeah, which is a reasonable statement to make on the website TrainHackersAndPassAvoiders.com. I think its appropriate if you consider yourself in the culture to be reminded of the norms everyone in that culture typically follows.
  - philipallstar 11mo ago
    That definitely isn't the topic of this website, though.
- JKCalhoun 11mo ago
  If jumping the turnstile were legal, yeah. So far anyway, Reader Mode, and various ad-blockers are still legal. I see your point generally though: accessing content that the publisher has attempted to force you to pay for. My general thought though is that it appears to be a failed (failing?) business model. I just don't know what the solution is. Perhaps if the ads avoided obscuring the content (like newspapers and magazines) I would probably just ignore them and not actively try to suppress them.

HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago

The Guardian from a desktop browser started confronting me with a paywall about two weeks ago. Can’t even see the front page, and uBlock Origin doesn’t help. Far from encouraging me to subscribe, I think this might actually finally cure my news addiction.

gooseus 11mo ago

I remember reading The Guardian back in the oughts when they were winning awards for their UX and they were my go-to answer to the front-end interview question of "Which websites do you admire?" Ha, they even have their "Website of the year" award linked on their top banner https://web.archive.org/web/20080704050905/http://theguardian.co.uk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080704050905/http://theguardia...

pwg 11mo ago

Ublock origin -- blocking the javascript, and the article is readable with no page flicking, and no ads at all.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]