News Websites' Excessive Data Usage: How 49MB Pages and Programmatic Ads Degrade Reading Experience
By
kermatt
Hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked to perfection. Worth every minute at the bakery.
Summary
The article critiques modern news websites for their excessive data usage, slow loading times, and poor user experience caused by programmatic advertising technology. Using the New York Times as a case study, it reveals that a simple visit to view four headlines resulted in 422 network requests and 49MB of data transfer, taking two minutes for the page to fully load. The author argues that this hostile web architecture explains why many tech-savvy users install ad blockers, and examines how ad-tech has fundamentally damaged the reading experience on news sites.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledIf active distraction of readers of your own website was an Olympic Sport, news publications would top the charts every time.
I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data.
It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems.
How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
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