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 ?
Edit : Sorry I'm asking specifically about paywalled stuff
Could also be looping videos - some browsers had bugs whereby looping videos would continously redownload.
I recall some years back having corporate IT ask me why I was downloading terabytes off this weird website called "imgur" that they didn't know about. Realized I had a tab open with a stupid jackie chan mp4 a few seconds long on some background workspace, and that had just kept downloading over and over and over and over...
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.
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.
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.
This was the exact motivation that led me to develop my own news feed for a vulnerability dashboard I'm working on. I would wait for my NVD API calls to finish by scrolling tech sites but was always inundated by ads...
To measure network load, open dev tools, uncheck "disable caches" then clear your browser cache then load the page. Screenshot indicates network cache is disabled so the stated number is inflated.
Not a problem for me (Unlimited data plan, 1000/40).
The website is around PC Gaming - users with the top of the line machines and fast internet. I don't see a problem with websites catering to their audience?
Why should I get a worse lower quality website full of text and nothing visual because somebody else has limited data?
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 67.8 ms ] threadAnd 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 ?
Edit : Sorry I'm asking specifically about paywalled stuff
I wonder how this works on mobile data though which is significantlym more expensive than home network data.
> 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.
I recall some years back having corporate IT ask me why I was downloading terabytes off this weird website called "imgur" that they didn't know about. Realized I had a tab open with a stupid jackie chan mp4 a few seconds long on some background workspace, and that had just kept downloading over and over and over and over...
- watching "normal" cable tv
- listening to "normal" fm radio
- shopping on amazon (sponsored... everything)
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.
Scrolling to the bottom of the page added 3MB of images and then stopped loading.
Also, thank you to the six people who download those 500MB to keep the site alive for the rest of us.
By default, I browse without JS. If I get to a website that I want to explore that requires JS, I turn it on with one click:
https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher
The website is around PC Gaming - users with the top of the line machines and fast internet. I don't see a problem with websites catering to their audience?
Why should I get a worse lower quality website full of text and nothing visual because somebody else has limited data?