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Downloading 500 MB in 5 minutes in the background of a random article is really disrespectful to readers on low-end devices or metered data plans (and these two
by timpera 7mo ago
Downloading 500 MB in 5 minutes in the background of a random article is really disrespectful to readers on low-end devices or metered data plans (and these two groups are often the same people!). What a waste of ressources.
- qingcharles 7mo agoI've worked with a lot of people at the bottom end of society in the USA. They are given government provided phones they can use so they have access to Google Maps, email, job search apps etc. These phones come with 3GB of regular data per month. After that they drop down to 2G speed, but not in a way that will allow anything to actually load. Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- bethekidyouwant 7mo agoI have 4g of data and never go over. I use it for maps, email even hn.
- abustamam 7mo agoDo you have a stable internet connection that is not your phone data plan? Many people in the lower economic class don't have that and their 3gb data plan may be the only 3gb they can use for the internet in any given month.
- reaperducer 7mo agoMany people in the lower economic class don't have that and their 3gb data plan may be the only 3gb they can use for the internet in any given month. And poor people often share one phone for an entire family, or even one phone among two or three neighboring households. These are a lot of the customers I serve, and it has a lot of unique challenges around accounts, privacy, and yes data use. HN has no idea was poverty looks like.
- abustamam 7mo agoWow, I had no idea. The shitty thing is that serving the under-served is almost by definition (and perhaps by design) not lucrative so such folks continue to go under-served. As we scale our products we think a lot about p99 and ensure we have all the 9s of uptime but even then we ignore the small percentage of folks who can't even begin to load our sites. Thanks for sharing and for your service, sir/madam!
- abustamam 7mo agoI rarely go over 3gb in a month. But, I also work from home, and I have stable internet connection from home. If their data plan is the only way they are able to access the internet then yes this is definitely a problem especially with random websites downloading literal gigabytes of ads.
- what 7mo agoThey can go to a library. Or go to basically any business (or sit outside) and use their WiFi.
- abustamam 7mo agoSo instead of having website owners ship websites that don't attempt to download the entire internet to your device, your solution is to have people for whom bandwidth is a problem to go somewhere in order to just use the internet?
- Aurornis 7mo ago> Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste. If someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose. It would be great if they got higher days caps, though, because let’s be realistic in acknowledging that they’re not only going to use it for Google Maps, email, and job search apps.
- tormeh 7mo agoEmail and chat apps will work, but everything else will slow to a crawl at best and time out at worst.
- NullPrefix 7mo agoby email you mean pop3, imap and smtp or the heavy html web client?
- hedora 7mo agoI doubt email would work, even with imap or pop3. I get a lot of spam per day, and imap clients typically download unread messages. I guess you could configure it not to do that, or write your own imap client with better behavior -- on your 2G smartphone.
- reaperducer 7mo agoIf someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose. Guess how I know you've never actually tried this. Part of my job is testing the web sites I build in the terrible real-world conditions where our customers are. Places like machine rooms, deep basements, and small towns with only municipal or small-carrier 3G cell service. (In spite of what HN believes, there are plenty of places in America with 3G or even zero cell service.) 2G speeds will not work. The device or one of the essential thousands of processes in it will time out because they were designed by tech bubble tech bros who never use their apps in the real world.
- thevinter 7mo agoI lived for months with a 4GB roaming plan. Given, I was not using it at home since I had a wifi connection, but I rarely came close to using all my data unless I was watching YT videos when traveling or something. I share your sentiment and I agree we should be more mindful of people with metered/slow connections, but the last statement feels blown out of proportion.
- doubled112 7mo agoI had a 200MB data plan until ~ 2018. I had data turned off most of the time. At home and in the office I had WiFi. Loaded the map before I left home. Most other places I was too busy doing whatever I was doing to use a phone. Since upgrading, I guess I can look products up in stores now. That's about it.
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo agoNot using it at home likely discounts a lot of personal consumption. If you can get your fill at nights, less need to access the internet during the day.
- qingcharles 7mo agoI've had a 1GB/mo $5/mo plan from good2go for the last 2 years. I've never gone over it. But that's because I go from wifi to wifi all the time and I'm very careful when I'm on cell. That definitely doesn't work for most people!
- benatkin 7mo agoIf you're highly tech literate, you can get by with 4GB or even 3GB. What you cannot do, contrary to what someone posted in this thread, is get by on 2G. So an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in this case.
- hedora 7mo agoI used to be able to get away with this by downloading music, podcasts and maps at home. During the iOS 26 upgrade cycle, iOS deleted all my third-party map apps and then expired the locally downloaded apple maps. My phone also somehow lost my downloaded podcasts + music a few times, but, unlike losing three offline map applications, that didn't strand me in the middle of the woods with no cell coverage and no maps. I agree that 4GB (or even 1GB) goes very far with a working phone OS though.
- pkaye 7mo agoOur Comcast plan has a monthly data usage of 1.2TB. We rarely go over 600GB in any month but month we nearly hit the limit. I was looking through the router logs to see what was going on and it turned out that somehow one particular Instagram video my spouse was watching would consume huge amounts of bandwidth when the channel was live streaming!
- novaleaf 7mo agocrazy solution that might work for you: open an incognito browser and check for deals for new customers. "someone" I know was able to switch from a $50/1.2TB limited 300mbit plan to a $45/unlimited 1Gbit plan doing this. if they have a better deal for new users: sign up for a new account under someone else in your household, and cancel your old account after you get your new account hardware setup and working.
- tw04 7mo agoCalling them ewaste is a little dramatic. While sites like this are a cancer, there is free WiFi in basically every town in America. You can get data for free, even if it’s slightly inconvenient.
- bsammon 7mo agoI think you may be a bit out of date. There was free WiFi in basically every town. Now it's frequently a vestigial, no-longer-maintained free WiFi that works like crap, because there's no maintenance, because "everyone has cellular data nowadays".
- tw04 7mo agoEvery public library in the US has free wifi. Every Starbucks in the US has free wifi. Every public school has free wifi. I can tell you don’t actually have to use it because if you did you’d know your statement isn’t accurate.
- neutronicus 7mo agoI was gonna say - the public library wifi is up to this task.
- bsammon 7mo agoActually, this is based on my personal experience. I don't use a smartphone for internet. Many of the places where I've tried it, the "free wifi" doesn't work. Maybe the wifi is there, but the uplink is 2G speed, or it has a web sign-in that doesn't work any more. Or maybe an employee accidentally unplugged the router. Days/weeks ago. And "no one complained about it". I've traveled Greyhound and Amtrak recently. They both advertise free wifi, but it's quite clear they no longer prioritize keeping it working. Libraries are (probably/hopefully) an exception. But, seeing as Starbucks has been wanting to discourage people from hanging out in recent months, I wouldn't count on Starbucks wifi being reliable.
- joshuacc 7mo agoNope. Virtually every fast food restaurant has free wifi, to say nothing of public libraries. It’s more common now than it ever was previously.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- promiseofbeans 7mo agoHere in NZ, a lot of people live with less than 1GB of mobile data / month. Once you run out, you have to pay per MB at extortionate rates. Most people still use sms rather than RCS or Signal or anything secure so they don’t have to pay for the data (most plans have unlimited SMS now) Of course, the whole country has ultra-fast fibre on unmetered connections (even on the very cheapest plans), so if you’re at work or home it’s fine. Just using data on the go is a non-starter for many
- hedora 7mo agoYears ago (before the fiber landed) we hit this problem in NZ, but could generally find ridiculously throttled WiFi somewhere. Presumably, that's fast now, right? I'm surprised people don't just lean heavily on it instead of the (mismanaged?) cell network.
- bandrami 7mo agoAs someone living in a non-net-neutral country this really is the big advantage everybody in net-neutral-land ignores: Meta and Google pay for nearly all of my data use (one of them even seems to cover HN).
- account42 7mo agoMeta and Google aren't the ones paying in the end, you are - just indirectly.
- lostlogin 7mo ago> I've worked with a lot of people at the bottom end of society in the USA. In adtech?
- wodenokoto 7mo agoI have a 8gb plan and don't go out of my way to connect to wifi everywhere I go. 3 is almost a third of that, but I don't spend it all every month.
- mikkupikku 7mo agoNormies don't have good intuition for the size of different kinds of data. They'll stream Netflix for a few hours then genuinely wonder how they hit their data limit because they "weren't even using the internet."
- psychoslave 7mo agoTalking about (electronic-)waste, what’s choking is how much resources are required to do the same or less than what used to be possible with far more humble hardware and bandwidth, all that in living memory. Sure part of "software fills space like a gas" can be explained by "got to go fast to stay ahead on the market", but at some point it’s blatant negligence of frugality where it’s providing overall economical benefits.
- mr_toad 7mo ago> it’s blatant negligence of frugality where it’s providing overall economical benefits. Recently tried to alter a phone plan on EE’s website, something that should have involved a few clicks. It was slow (literal seconds to open a page) and clunky. The Javascript console was bleeding error messages, and it looked like they’d used every Javascript framework under the sun. And after all that it just gave me an error message saying that the transaction could not be processed. Gave up and texted (old school SMS) their help line. With a few text messages I was able to change plans. Probably used under 500 bytes to accomplish what the bloated and broken website couldn’t.
- mapt 7mo agoI think a basic principle with limited plans that offer the ability to buy extra data is "You should be able to actually load the account platform at the 2G hobbled speeds in order to pay". The heavyweight website/app for the mobile network, combined with the use of a phone number-tied Android login as primary login credential rather than a user account, it meant that the only way to actually get 4G back online was to have access to wifi on the phone in the place & time you needed to re-up; If I did have that access at work, I wouldn't need the data. Despite years of being too lazy/anxious to figure out phone number portability, I ultimately ended up switching carriers from Simple to Mint because it was just too annoying.
- thatguy0900 7mo agoI know at least on att prepaid they don't meter their own websites, if you have completely used your data up you can still access the website at normal speeds to change plans and stuff
- Someone 7mo ago> These phones come with 3GB of regular data per month. […] Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste. Are you saying using 1GB of data a day on a smartphone is normal for smartphone users? I have a 10GB plan not because I need it (looking at this year, 2GB would be more than sufficient) but because that’s about the lowest I can get nowadays. Certainly if, as indicated, the intent is for these users to have a phone for essentials, not for watching YouTube or playing music, 3 GB, IMO, should be sufficient.
- jon-wood 7mo agoMy phone also reports as only having used a couple of gigabytes of mobile data each month but that's because most of the time I'm using it attached to wifi at home or work. The people being given free phone plans by the government probably don't have a home internet connection, that 3GB of data will be the only access they have outside of finding a library that's somehow still funded, or paying for a drink to use coffee shop wifi. Maybe YouTube or listening to music aren't strictly essentials but they also don't seem like absurd luxuries that we should be arbitrarily denying to people in 2026 to save a few cents per user on what I assume is a set of bulk purchased SIMs.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- philipallstar 7mo ago> finding a library that's somehow still funded Libraries just got an increase in funding in the US in the 2026 appropriations bills. > Maybe YouTube or listening to music aren't strictly essentials but they also don't seem like absurd luxuries that we should be arbitrarily denying to people in 2026 No-one's arbitrarily denying things. It's about what should and shouldn't be given as free things that other people work to pay for.
- bjoli 7mo agoLibraries haven't gotten much since 2009 except for huge costs for digital licensing. Ebook publishers are scamming the libraries. I shit you not, but over something like 4 years an ebook can be 10x the cost.
- prmoustache 7mo agoHow so? Aren't there any public wifi anymore? My daughter also has a 3GB data plan but she knows to only use whatsapp when she isn't connected to a Wifi network and we configured it to not auto load the photos and videos when on mobile data.
- cozzyd 7mo agothis is why Firefox with uBO is basically a requirement to browse mobile internet.
- al_borland 7mo agoEven with good bandwidth and unlimited data, it’s still disrespectful.
- wildzzz 7mo agoI wonder how much money is wasted just transmitting ads over the internet. Like I get websites are getting paid for displaying them but imagine how much cheaper things would be if ads weren't jacking up demands for bandwidth.
- MBCook 7mo agoNow that we have auto play video ads? Most of it.
- TheDong 7mo agoIt's not wasted bandwidth; we've reached this level of ads because brands have realized that brainwashing the populace via ads to make them want their brand is cheaper than building a better product, so the bandwidth is a small price to pay for brainwashing people. If we didn't have ads, people would not only need less bandwidth, they'd buy less physical junk, and quite possibly be happier for it.
- drnick1 7mo agoEstimates suggest that between 1/3 and 1/2 of all Internet users in the U.S. use an ad blocker.
- navigate8310 7mo agoMoney wasted by the user on a data contract is a gain for the carrier.
- coffeebeqn 7mo agoThat’s a low bar. Like crypto mining for the power company or throwing extra food out at the end of the day is revenue for the trash pickup company!
- hohithere 7mo agoAgreed, my data plan don't approve these kind of pages.
- coffeebeqn 7mo agoThis also partially explains why my phone sometimes gets hot and uses a double digit of battery randomly when using the browser if it’s streaming video in multiple divs
- freedomben 7mo agoFully agree. Having worked closely with a marketing exec/entreprenur type, I've never felt more incompatible with a person's worldview. I mentioned the ads that are "disrespectful to users" at one point when he put one of those annoying modals that pops up half way through the story, and he looked utterly perplexed that anyone would even think thoughts like that. When I pointed out that his analytics and ad stuff were turning my hard-fought 100 ms full page load work into a 5 second nasty mess (I used much more diplomatic language with him :-) ) it was like I was trying to tell a hunter-gatherer to go vegan during the winter. I really think the marketing people behind most websites just could not give a shit less about users. To them, they are faceless plebs to be manipulated and milked, not humans to be respected. It's quite disheartening.