Discussion
PC Gamer Recommends RSS Readers in a 37MB Article That Just Keeps Downloading
nslsm: It seems the author’s browser is severely misconfigured. The PC Gamer website works fine for me. I can read the contents of the article he linked to with no issues or distractions and it loads instantly.
jonathanlydall: Sounds like the author is running the same browser configuration as the vast majority of internet users.While I use ad-blockers and the like, I know I’m far from the norm.
adampunk: Post a network recording of that page loading from a code start on your machine. I’ll believe chrome devtools.
userbinator: "misconfigured" as in no adblocker? ;-)
goldenarm: I'm trying to migrate to 100% RSS right now, to avoid the hateful algorithmic editorialization of modern social media.And I'm shocked that almost no paid media provides full articles in RSS anymore, and force me to navigate their 37MB pages with popups all over the place. Has anyone found a solution against that ?
mrweasel: Disable Javascript or use Lynx, Links or Dillo to open the articles from your newsreader. Some pages won't work obviously, you remove those from your feed.
themafia: > no paid media provides full articles in RSS anymoreSubstack does and it's first class. Patreon does a decent job.
impure: There are readers with a 'full text mode' which will fetch the website and display it in something like Mozilla's Readability view. It does not always work, especially if the page is paywalled but it works for most sites.
goldenarm: Most quality journals are paywalled nowadays, I'm considering to scrape using my cookie, or maybe use archive.is..
MBCook: The title buried the lede.> In the five minutes since I started writing this post the website has downloaded almost half a gigabyte of new ads.I’m guessing this is due to autoplaying videos. *500 MB* in 5 minutes.37 MB is petite compared to that.
dbtc: Nah, in my opinion the original title is art. That line is a whopper though.
simonw: This is so upsetting. No wonder people spend more time in mobile apps than they do using the mobile web - the default web experience on so many sites is terrible.
m463: this just reminds me of...- watching "normal" cable tv- listening to "normal" fm radio- shopping on amazon (sponsored... everything)
add-sub-mul-div: A difference between cable and streaming is that cable has DVRs that let you skip commercials if you want, while streaming tech introduced unskippable ads.
vel0city: > cable has DVRs that let you skip commercials if you wantThe last time I had DirecTV several channels had managed to have unskippable ads in recordings. Paramount was egregious with this and was the first channel I saw with this "feature" enabled.
WarmWash: Imagine trying to run an ad supported business to a bunch of people who are avid proponents of ad blocking.Also, thank you to the six people who download those 500MB to keep the site alive for the rest of us.
WarOnPrivacy: In Firefox + Unlock Origin: Downloads 5.6MB and then stops loading.Scrolling to the bottom of the page added 3MB of images and then stopped loading.
Barbing: >In Firefox + Ublock OriginThis is the way, just gotta pay (journos)37MB sounds like pure mismanagement though beyond understandable desperation. Surely a competent consultant could reduce that number with zero negative impact?
notepad0x90: we need some sort of a universal crowd-sourced site rating system. Things like user experience, scamminess, user-hostility, site ownership-affiliations,etc.. all opt-in by users of course, you setup the criteria that is important to you and the browser displays different ratings or blocks certain sites (like scammy/fraudulent ones) out right. The reputation providers would also be selectable like search engines. I'd imagine there would be crowdsourced lists of all sorts.If you have older pepople struggling with cognition for example, this would be a good way to limit their exposure to scams.But commercial sites like this could also be rated as a privacy risk for the intense ad capitalism, or a 'bloat' to tell users it will slow down their computer by visiting the site. You could set it up so that when certain categories and ratings are met, the browser warns you before you could navigate to it.Another idea is to have this same system include alternative suggestions. For example, if a site has age verification, you would be able to setup your browser so that it warns you when you visit sites of that nature, listing alternatives recommended by the list maintainer, for whatever that site provides.
herb_derb: I wonder if you could automate the rating. Suppose you had some sort of engine where people could search for things, and the pages that get more clicks would have a higher rank. Plus you could supplement that by tracing links, since better pages will probably link to each other. As long as you promise to do no evil, I bet this would be a pretty good system.
mrighele: What is your screen resolution ? I have the same setup but got different results.Initial load, after closing cookie banner and another one, was about 500KiB (200KiB transferred). After scrolling to the bottom I got 1.7MiB/1.0MiB transferred.I guess you're using a retina-like display ? (I got there results with a 1080p screen)
PhilippGille: On Kagi you can increase/decrease a domain's ranking for your personal search results, and they make the aggregated stats public, showing for example Pinterest as the most blocked site, which matches part of what you're looking for: https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights
KostblLb: it's relatively easy for an ai to write such an article now, just open all websites and gather metrics while crawling...
kelvinjps10: The person who wrote the article and the people in charge of the site are different.
devmor: Sure, but it’s a great example of the reason RSS readers are so great. No matter how much you enjoy the work of particular authors - their editorial oversight might make it too miserable to enjoy.
MBCook: This is why I pay to get rid of ads in things I like. Podcasts and TV are the big ones.I just started watching season 2 of Jury Duty on Amazon. I had deleted the app when they announced that as a paying subscriber I would be getting ads.Oh my God the ads are so horrible. So much worse than I remember.Also, extra kudos to Amazon for nearly doubling the price of removing the ads the week before the show came out. How nice of them.
shellwizard: Arr matey
userbinator: To use a good point of reference that I've seen others also start using lately, an installation of Windows 95 is roughly 40MB, so in loading that page you've downloaded approximately one Windows 95 installation. Then another 10+ times with the 500MB more that came after.
1bpp: For a lot of sites Firefox's reader mode is great at bypassing paywalls, just turn it on & refresh
valicord: I hate ads as much as anyone, but the OP article would be more convincing if it didn't itself include 6MB worth of screenshots.
MBCook: I’ve been using the Reddit app some lately after being a longtime old.Reddit.com + blocker person.Ignoring how [ad] navigation is kinda annoying [ad] the shear [ad] number of ads [ad] they [ad] insert [ad] is insane.The only good thing is none of them seem to be animated/video. Which is an incredibly low bar, but most sites can’t even jump that.
dwayne_dibley: I'll probably leave reddit when old.Reddit.com gets the chop
MBCook: I suspect I will too. I’ve been playing with the app a bit as it’s easier for me on my phone to view subs that are mostly pictures (e.g. awuariums). But I only do it from time to time.Apollo was much better, of course.
dehrmann: That's not a fair comparison. A desktop wallpaper could be 8 MB for a modern OS just because of screen resolution. A 4-minute music video would probably be 100 MB.
