[Tzk]

No sane person would ever come to the conclusion that it’s a great idea to make the user click away numerous popups, (cookie) banners and modals just to actually see the content. And yet here we are.

Today most commercial or news sites use those plus dark patterns to make it go away as hard as possible. I usually just close the tab and never come back. My choice is “no” not “ask again later”…

Same for those annoying chatbot buttons which just take away screen space.

[throw101010]

> My choice is “no” not “ask again later”…

My choice is uBlock Origin and enabling the Cookie Notices filter lists and other Annoyances filter lists (which block the Mobile app banners and such). Works pretty well.

Obviously using Firefox, since Chrome doesn't let me filter content my own computer renders locally these days...

[Tzk]

Couldn’t agree more. Also FF user and Ublock Origin works great. On mobile (iOS in my case) it’s not that easy though. I’m using safari with AdGuard which works for some annoyances, but by far not all.

[jahnu]

Brave on iOS seems to work well. Ideally I would use Firefox on iOS but last time it didn’t seem to be as good.

[plagiarist]

I have been having some success with wipr 2. The developer is respectful of privacy, so the blocking is split into regular content blockers (Apple claims cannot send data) and one extra (could send data). I enabled only the regular content blockers.

[aucisson_masque]

Ublock light is pretty good on Safari

[ycombinatrix]

Not compared to the uBlock Origin. You can't even import a filter list. Main reason I use Firefox.

[XzetaU8]

Something that [1] AdGuard Browser Extension can do, it make you wonder why uBOL can't include such a feature.

[1] https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-browser-extension-v5-2.h...

[OptionOfT]

Firefox on iOS has 0 support for Adblocking, making it hell to use.

[ycombinatrix]

That's not Firefox, that's Safari wearing a fake mustache

[apothegm]

I’ve gotten good results from BlockBear, fwiw.

[FergusArgyll]

I've enjoyed https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic/ it fills out cookie banner automatically according to your preferences.

Obviously alongside ublock origin for the rest of the minefields

[nicbou]

On iOS, Adguard does a decent job. It's the only way I would ever use the internet.

[mozarella]

I also supplement it with the "Web Archives" extension to access paywalled and login-walled articles.

[f1shy]

The web experience, specially in the phone, reminds me of the 90, if not worst, because some of those cookies dialogs have “processing” time (just a 5 sec. Wait)

I have counted 20 clicks until I get a clean view of actual content with all possible distractions closed. And never EVER less than 5.

The thing is so awful, that I started trusting the sheitty Gemini extract, because at least pops up at once. If I open a site to check, I have to be prepared to about 10 annoying and slow, microscopic buttons to close all the sheit. Then you realize the site is LLM slope anyway… or just marketing BS… next site… rinse and repeat.

Specially EU and specially Germanay, the web is dead. (Was anytime alive?!)

[elcapitan]

That was the big aha moment last year with Noscript for me. For a long time I avoided it because of the occasional case where I have to whitelist a site, which costs a bit of time.

Now every site has so much forced garbage interaction that with Noscript on average I have way fewer clicks.

[Tanoc]

I've been using NoScript since 2016, and the number of things that get loaded in via Javascript has sextupled since then. This isn't an exaggeration, some websites like Wal-Mart's went from five extra domains to thirty. Going to Fossil's website to look at a watch for a Christmas gift this year, the domain whitelist panel for NoScript was so long I actually had to scroll down because there were just that many.

And there's no silver bullet to fix it, because there's three parts of it. The first is that these Javascript modules are literally drag and drop, so you can add new functionality in minutes. The second is that most of this stuff is being delivered offsite from a CDN anyways, so why bother doing anything like a static page? And the third is that it forces the users to enable Javascript so that trackers, fingerprinters, third party cookie loggers, and all sorts of other things get their filthy little digits into your window.

Javascript devs aren't going to change, because they don't want things to be harder and slower (putting side the mess that is the Javascript ecosystem). The hosts don't want things to revert, because then that's more money paid for bandwidth when that cost can instead be dropped in someone else's lap. And the little bastards doing the tracking definitely aren't going to change, because it's a source of money for doing nothing other than being a voyeur.

I still block Javascript everywhere just so that things will actually work and won't crash my browser by eating an entire gigabyte of RAM just loading fonts from some third party website. I still recommend other people to as well. Not because I think it will actually protect them, but instead to show them just how inefficient and predatory modern website design is. It spooks people when they see two dozen URLs that aren't the website they're currently on.

[LoganDark]

I've started to encounter news outlets / etc that use JavaScript to load most of the article. So if you don't have it enabled you get like one or two paragraphs and that's it. Usually I didn't care about the article that much anyway, but it's still annoying.

[zelphirkalt]

In theory with GDPR conforming websites it should be 1 click and that is "reject all" or "accept only essential" cookies and a website would truly only ever set essential cookies, and not something else that is non-essential to reading the content.

In practice lots of websites are developed by people going to huge lengths to make it more cumbersome and sneak in shit that's not essential, and the websites do not actually follow the law.

Mind, this is talking about the not rolled back version of GDPR, that I read they are planning to roll back somewhat and thereby destroy the good it was.

In Germany the web is dead, because of laws, that require most websites to have the author's friggin address on the website. Like, who wants every idiot on the web to know one's address? Might as well not have a blog or website. There are websites which don't require it and you can sort of gray zone get around it, but that's already too much effort that inhibits a freely developing web. Instead people flock to abusive social media presences. Germany has managed to basically kill its blogging and web culture through this idiocy and thereby got rid of a lot of educational potential and skilled workforce.

[f1shy]

> In practice lots of websites are developed by people going to huge lengths to make it more cumbersome and sneak in shit that's not essential

I feel it was from the begging a way of screw people so people say “fuck me as you like, but let me surf the web!” And they are getting away with it, sadly.

> In Germany the web is dead, because of laws, that require most websites to have the author's friggin address on the website.

Amen! That is was one of the dumbest things. I would be ok to have it registered somehow. But just for everyone to know my private address because I want to share some stupid thing online?! Pretty strange, when we talk about privacy!

Another one was making the owner of a wifi spot 100% responsible for crimes committed by that connection. That made free wifi absolutely disappear.

That leaves us with sites than only try to make money. Which is ok, I guess. But the web could be much richer than just a virtual shop window.

[PaulHoule]

Maybe if the US leaves the EU we can make those cookie banners go away. ;-)

But really I am so sick of Germans making excuses for their delinquent government, if I was elected the first thing I would do is unplug them from the global internet.

[zelphirkalt]

Unplug the government or Germans?

[GoatInGrey]

Yes.

[kamma4434]

Speaking for myself only, but I find it easier to click ‘back’ than waste time on my ‘consent’.

Lately, I’m asking some llm to fetch it and summarize, so the one sentence content that was expanded into a full page article goes back to its original form.

[cheschire]

I’ve noticed some LLMs lately aren’t pulling the page and try guessing the content from URL SEO.

[k__]

Brave made this more bearable for me, by blocking cookie banners by default.

[Yokohiii]

It's so lazy and dumb. The wildest thing about it, is that they could mostly delay required cookies to the second contact, first interaction or at the time it's actually required. Raw first contact engagement can be tracked cookieless.

[MetaWhirledPeas]

Ad delivery services don't care about the user experience because it's not their site, so anything goes. The host justifies their decision because hey, look, money. That money is quantifiable while user experience is less so.

[chrisjj]

> No sane person would ever come to the conclusion that it’s a great idea to make the user click away numerous popups, (cookie) banners and modals just to actually see the content.

Ads are content too, you know?

Without ad revenue, many sites would have no content at all.

[Tzk]

> Ads are content too, you know?

Yes, and I’m not against ads in general.

It’s about the balance of actual content (the user wants to read and cares about) and ads/popups the site owner needs to run the site or generate some kind of income. If the user has to click away numerous things to be able to see any “real” content, then something’s clearly wrong. We’ve gone from showing ads to support the site to generating just enough content for the site to make the user visit and show them ads.

Sad times.

[rkomorn]

Agreed that there are many sites that seem to have no other purpose than to get ads displayed.

Unfortunately, it's also getting harder and harder to tell them apart from the sites that have legitimate content supported by ads because the quality of the latter is nosediving.

[chrisjj]

The reason you can't tell them apart is there's no meaningful distinction. Whether content is sufficiently "legitimate" to be worth the ads depends entirely on the particular user.

[rkomorn]

I don't entirely agree. Yes, there's subjectivity, but there's more to it, IMO.

There are sites (eg along the lines of legacy print or established in the "early" internet days) that still try to generate news content for reading, but are seeking more revenue.

And then there are sites that are just modern click/impression factories that never tried to actually produce real content.

[chrisjj]

I don't agree that whether the content is "real" is anything more than subjective.

If content you see laden with ads was not "real" enough to earn from sufficient readers, you would not be seeing it.

[PaulHoule]

From the viewpoint of Hirschman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

you don't have any "voice" about ads so your choice is to "exit" by running an ad blocker. Obnoxious advertising tactics, scam ads, and other problems in the advertising system lower people's responsiveness to advertising. We need to restore the responsiveness to weak signals (bidirectionally) that Vaughn talks about in The Challenger Launch Decision and her book about her divorce Uncoupling.

[aebtebeten]

wrt GP: "generating just enough content for the site to make the user visit and show them ads" is how publishing has always worked, even way back when it all came on dead trees. My library had a book in the reference section that had, for various types of demographic, the maximal percentage of ads to run (ie, how much content you needed to pay for having sold a given volume of ads), but it would probably have been almost as quick, just as cheap, and likely more accurate, to empirically determine that percentage by visiting a local newsstand and sampling the ad density from your target section of the rack.

wrt Exit vs Voice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46376098

[rglullis]

If people are willing to consume content but not willing to pay for it, then you have a very strong indicator it has no value at all and therefore no actual need to be produced in the first place.

[chrisjj]

People willing to pay by consuming ads are indicating the content is worth that price - to them. The fact such people exist is proved by the fact such sites exist.

[rglullis]

This is not how it works. Ad-subsidized content is functionally equivalent to price-dumping. The more ad-subsidized content is out there, the less incentive there is to focus on quality and quantity of eyeballs become the only metric that matters.

[chrisjj]

On the contrary, content quality is a major driver of ad revenue.

[rglullis]

Then you'd have to explain why every reputable newspaper is putting up paywalls and all the quality sites that used to cover specific niches went out of business in the last 20 years.

Saying "revenue goes up with content quality" only makes sense if you compare one poor site with another, but when you put in terms of ROI, you will see it is a lot easier to set up hundreds of different content farms than to keep a sustainable source of well written, reputably sourced reports.

[sunrunner]

Or at least, not enough subjective value for that person to outweigh the cost. Paywalls are a great screening filter that actually tests if people want to spend any money or time on an article, or merely clicked through from force of habit.

[chrisjj]

So? Ads are a screening filter that tests if people want to spend time consuming ads to consume content.

What's odd is when people here complain of screening by ads because they'd think screening should instead be by money. It is proper that the choce for the publisher's site is made by the publisher and for the reader's visits is made by the reader.

[lelanthran]

> Without ad revenue, many sites would have no content at all.

I'm fine with that. An ad-laden site with ads I cannot block won't have me as a visitor anyway, so I'm not really going to notice if they are gone.

[chrisjj]

Can you really not conceive of some content sufficiently valuable to make it worth you consuming those ads?

[lelanthran]

> Can you really not conceive of some content sufficiently valuable to make it worth you consuming those ads?

Honestly, no.

Perhaps I am just lacking imagination; can you think of any content compelling enough that a) I am not prepared to pay to get it and b) I am still prepared to view ads to get it?

I can't imagine any type of content that I both don't want to pay for and feel it is worth sitting through the ads.

I expect the ratios matter as well; the average webpage/site has more ads than content that I specifically want. If I had to sit through a 10s ad to see a 90m movie, I might do it. As it stands, right now on youtube, there is a 30s-60s ad shown between 5-minute videos.

So, when I am not using Firefox, I simply don't go to youtube.

[chrisjj]

I don't know how much you can afford to pay. But I do know many users can afford to consume ads more than pay money.

[lelanthran]

> I don't know how much you can afford to pay.

I didn't say anything about content I can afford to pay for. I am talking specifically about content that I am unwilling to pay for, yet am willing to put up with ads for.

Like I said in my previous post, the ratio matters a lot, here.

[barnabee]

To me this sounds like “can you not conceive of some content sufficiently valuable that you’d let someone get you addicted to their brand of cigarettes so you could get it for free”

If it’s that valuable, just let me pay a fair price to see it.

In general, I’d like to see personally targeted ads banned entirely and a legal requirement for a fairly priced (i.e. same order of magnitude as the lost ad revenue) ad free option.

[chrisjj]

Ads are addictive?? News to me.

[dxdm]

Ads do not absolutely have to be delivered via pop ups or modals.

[appreciatorBus]

If the content is so worthless that people will not voluntarily pay for it, then this outcome would be no great tragedy.

[chrisjj]

People voluntarily pay by consuming the ads.

[Gareth321]

But what would humanity do without garbage LLM content slop? How would we survive?

[plagiarist]

I would care if they were at all capable of respecting people who allow ads.

[RobotToaster]

I was fine with ads when they were a text AdSense banner.

Now a lot of sites have scammy full page js-popups of the kind that were only found on dodgy websites in the 90s.

[Anthony-G]

As a life-long hater of ads (before the Internet, I would mute the TV during ad breaks), I must agree. Before AdSense, animated GIFs for advertising were obnoxious. When the “Don’t be evil” Google started doing advertising, I was so impressed with them. Even their advertising is tasteful - and relevant! They really seemed to have the Midas touch.

But I feel that their choice of advertising revenue as their predominant income stream set them on a trajectory that gradually and inexorably led them further away from their original principles.

[amanaplanacanal]

The content was better when it was posted by hobbyists for free than it is now posted by people trying to make money off of it. So... fuck 'em.

[sznio]

I'd be fine with a whole web free of revenue.

There would be much less stuff around, but what would stay is the things people created for fun, not for profit. SEO spam, AI slop - these are all solved by removing money from the web.

[chrisjj]

I doubt you'd say tha same about films and music. Why should the web be different?

Web ads exist because they are one option that serves the needs of content providers and consumers alike.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

> Ads are content too, you know?

I agree. Why there isn’t this technology implemented on film streaming, movie theaters, even games? I think ebooks should stop you reading every five minutes just to show ads. I’m sure it could be implemented in to PDF pretty easily.

Internet and all medias point is to make money for jesus christ, what are we, a charity? Why don’t book publishers put ads into printed books, they are goving away content for free!