The 49MB web page

> "Does anyone even care about how their end-product appears to a user anymore?"

Of course not. Its all about maximising shareholder value. The users aren't a consideration anymore

Only major media can get away with this kind of bloat. For the normal website, Google would never include you in the SERPs even if your page is a fraction of that size.

I actually feel offended with a download size this big, it's completely careless from the website owners

An anecdote from an OG (me):

The same phenomenon worsened during the DotCom Meltdown and the Great Financial Crisis. This accelerated desperation is a sign of the times; paying subscribers are likely cancelling due to current economic conditions.

I opened a startup's page the other day, and their streaming demo video was 550mb

Bit unfair, turned off my adblocker and ran NY Times website with cache disabled via Dev Tools, came to 3MB. Still pretty damn high but not 49MB. (Will say I'm in the UK so might be different across the pond).

I cannot even imagine browsing the internet or using my devices without Consent-O-Matic and NextDNS.

with almost all options and filters enables ofc

and the NYT web team was praised as one of the best in the world some (many?) years ago.

"The Sticky Video Player Publishers love embedding auto-playing videos these days, which isn't really popular. You'll find mulitple forum, Reddit, HN, or Twitter threads about it.

To make it somehow worse...when you scroll down, you think it would leave you as it leaves the viewport. No. It detaches, shrinks and pins itself to the bottom right of your screen and continues playing. It keeps the distraction going and as if teasing you, features a microscopic 'X' button with a tiny hit area (violating Fitts's Law)."

Is there not way to stop this? The do not autoplay videos option often does not work.

> The user must perform visual triage, identify the close icons (which are deliberately given low contrast) and execute side quests just to access the 5KB of text they came for.

They thing is, though... they _don't_ have to. It's been my standard practice for years to just tap ctrl-w the moment any web page pops up a model box. Some leeway is given to cookie dialogs _if_ they have a disagree/disable button _prominently_ visible, otherwise they're ctrl-w'd too.

"Newsletter..." ctrl-w.

"Please disable your..." ctrl-w.

"Subscribe to read..." ctr-w.

Ctrl-w is your friend.

Got to hand it to this guy, this page loads FAST.

I hate this trend of active distraction. Most blogs have a popup asking you to subscribe as soon as you start scrolling.

It’s as if everyone designed their website around the KPI of irritating your visitors and getting them to leave ASAP.

Removing the round navbar in the other pages is unsettling.

49mb web page? How about a 49meg go cli.

I recently had to switch to a Japanese LINE account to gain access to certain features. I had no idea how good I had it on my American LINE account. The Japanese account is covered with ads EVERYWHERE on the home screen and even in the chat area. I have no idea how this app is still popular in Japan. I would pay to remove the ads if I could.

They also have their own tiktok and AI slop that I never knew about.

49mb web page? Try a 45mb graphql response.

Imagine just paying for content

Ublock origin helps mitigate at the least a little bit here.

I worked at big newspapers as a software engineer. Please do not blame the engineers for this mess. As the article says news is in a predicament because of the ads business model. Subscriptions alone usually cannot cover all costs and ads will invariably make their way in.

For every 1 engineer it seems like there are 5 PMs who need to improve KPIs somehow and thus decide auto playing video will improve metrics. It does. It also makes people hate using your website.

I would constantly try to push back against the bullshit they'd put on the page but no one really cares what a random engineer thinks.

I don't think there's any real way to solve this unless we either get less intrusive ad tech or news gets a better business model. Many sites don't even try with new business models, like local classifieds or local job boards. And good luck getting PMs to listen to an engineer talking about these things.

For now, the bloat remains.

The sad thing is, this is already a paywalled site.

I’m afraid someone who wants to support professional journalism and agrees to pay ~$300/yr for an NYT subscription still gets most (all?) of this nonsense?

Another reason for this is that often the non-tech people can inject third party scripts via CMS, GTM and so on. I remember once we had a large drop in indexed pages on Google and it turned out that a script had moved our entire site into an iframe. The marketing people who injected it was like "it is just a script".

Every time some site or person tries to make me feel bad for using AdGuard DNS, ad blockers etc. I read an article like this and I feel fine.

I see three options:

1. Show me reasonable ads and I will disable ad blocking

2. Do the crap described in this article and don't complain when I arm myself against it

3. Do a hard paywall and no ads; force me to pay to see your content

The tracking pixel count is the more alarming number to me. A 49MB page is slow, but it's a UX problem. Hundreds of third-party scripts executing on load is a supply-chain attack surface. Each of those vendors has access to your DOM, cookies, and keystrokes. The industry spent years hardening server-side infrastructure against injection, then handed the client-side equivalent to anyone willing to pay for an ad slot.

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Its a crazy goal , amazing , congrats. Its vanilla stack?

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I've gotten tired of these "Journalists shouldn't try to make their living by finding profitable ads, they should just put in ads that look pretty but pay almost nothing and supplement their income by working at McDonalds" takes.