[stopads]

It boggles my mind how terrible the web is becoming on lower end connections. I have about 200ms of delay to most servers and about 5Mbit of bandwidth, and many major web pages take over 30 seconds to load if I don't block most of the assets.

It's insane that webpages are now loading megabytes of data across hundreds of http requests before the images even start downloading.

I've completely given up on the mobile web since I can't block things the way I need to. It's just unusable. It's a platform that just flat out doesn't work anymore for lots of people in remote areas.

[dahfizz]

I think there is a serious culture problem in the web development world.

Web devs are obsessed with the fancy new frameworks that allow you to use even more JavaScript and somehow convince themselves that it's what users want.

And not only do the users get stuck downloading megabytes of JS, but now the client computer has to do all the calculation of putting the page together!

There is a strong aversion to simplicity. A single web server serving HTML is simple and fast and easy. But web devs want "new and interesting", users be damned. So we get huge kubernetes clusters running all sorts of useless junk just to serve huge JS payloads for no benefit.

[magduf]

>Web devs are obsessed with the fancy new frameworks that allow you to use even more JavaScript and somehow convince themselves that it's what users want.

Do they really convince themselves of this, or even care about users? Why would they care about anyone besides their employer, who only has an interest in profit, and doesn't care at all about users aside from how much profit they can extract from them?

>There is a strong aversion to simplicity.

Right, because simplicity doesn't generate profit. Simplicity is a web page that tells the user what they need to know, and no more. But that doesn't generate as much profit as having loads of JS which tracks the user so that information can be sold to marketers.

>But web devs want "new and interesting", users be damned. So we get huge kubernetes clusters

The other factor is skill development. Crafting a simple website with minimal JS doesn't look as good on your resume as working with the latest trendy tool, so having Docker and Kubernetes on your resume looks great for future job prospects, so devs have an incentive to use those things everyplace, even if it's just overly complicating the solution and making things slower.

[squiggleblaz]

> I've completely given up on the mobile web since I can't block things the way I need to.

Can't you just use uBlock Origin with Firefox Mobile and run it behind a localhost VPN like Blokada? It's not perfect but it seems enough for me. A different localhost VPN will probably give you even better results, if you customise it to your specific purpose.

[OJFord]

Not on iOS, I got one recently for while my Android phone's being repaired, and it was an unwelcome surprise that A) FF (or anything) can't be set as default browser instead of Safari; B) 'content blockers' only work in Safari, even though all browsers are forced to use it to render anyway.

[magduf]

You shouldn't be trying to set anything besides Safari as your default browser in iOS: Apple doesn't want you to. Your desires are not important if you're using an iOS device, and you're thinking wrongly to be wanting to do anything differently. If you want to do things your own way, Apple products are simply not for you; they've made this abundantly clear for decades now.

[OJFord]

I thought I'd try it out while my usual phone's being repaired (plus I'm sceptical it can even be repaired, so that two weeks might turn into four if a replacement isn't forthcoming) - since Android has its issues too.

But yeah, I don't think it's for me. It may be a step forward on first-party privacy, but it's two steps back on third-party. And 20 steps back on 'platform freedom', no changing defaults, no file access for running apps like Syncthing, extremely limited customisation of the home screen (I like a simple alphabetical list of apps, nope, can't have that) or 'control centre' (not possible to put hotspot toggle there? Come on...) etc.

Plus fonts and UI elements feel massive, on the lowest text size. The Slack 'sidebar' takes up almost the full width, and about five channel names fill the height. (On an SE. Larger models of course have more space, but it's the size of things that irritates me, that presumably wouldn't change, there's just be a few more of them.)

[choward]

Pihole with wireguard works very good but there's a little bit of effort required to set it up.

[pier25]

I usually browse with my phone on wifi with fiber and it's still mostly terrible. There are ads and popups everywhere. It feels like Indiana Jones avoiding traps to get to the golden idol.