HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is the internet getting more jank?

2 points by taurath ↗ HN
I've been noticing especially over the last 3 months, the act of browsing the internet has become a lot more... well, jank. Random apps freeze in ways that didn't used to happen (Firefox).. whole websites just kinda whoops didn't load that time. Everything from navigating to typing feels loose and bedraggled in ways that used to feel crisper. My PC is wicked fast. What gives?

2 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 19.9 ms ] thread
orionblastar
I've noticed it. I tried to watch Daredevil Born Again Season 2 on Netflix, and every 15 minutes, it paused the video. I have Fiber Optic Internet, a fast $2000 PC, and a Netflix account.
anenefan
More likely you and others are encountering a common browser pirate as I have termed them - sites don't typically load from one site, but call a bunch of other web resources, and some come free but at a cost like heavily intrusive scripts for the site's users ... last time I ventured what many would view as a paranoid or misguided response was at a popular large forum which died back in 2017 [1] when they introduced a new feature - unfortunately one of the minor resources was script intensive and simply adding it to the deny list sorted it out. Understandably many who frequented the forum were way smarter than I and critical, but proof was in the pudding so to speak.

The easiest way to identify most of them, is a means to track every address and see where the loading process stalls at and if not essential, add into the deny / host file. This usually works but some sites will have a hissy fit when they don't get confirmation from some minor resource hasn't had a successful scrape and then refuses to load at all, or loads and blanks out the page. A few are pretty crafty like that - it doesn't solve everything and sometimes there is a price. I have banned one AI driven script a couple of years ago, that immediately afterwards it was like flicking a switch and feeling like a fifth of the net wasn't available any more - I can live with that though.

[1] tehparadox RIP 2017, of which in years afterwards many new versions popped up but were not viewed as valid as far as a couple of the old staff I knew from tehparadox