I click the comments on Reddit to read the full text of the article copied and pasted instead of clicking on the actual link and dealing with the website at the other end.

RAMP: Reddit Accelerated Mobile Pages :-)

I guess Reddit would be happier about Reddit Optimized Mobile Pages though :-)

Sadly, we seem to be pressed towards Reddit Ultimate Mobile Pages.

BTW I wonder what makes Reddit so much more expensive to run in "web mode" than in "mobile app mode" that they push so hard for switching to the app.

You can block ads on mobile web but you cant on their app.

Nothing. The app is just stuffed full of ads and tracking they want to force on you.

You don't use an adblocker? I almost never see any ads when clicking through

In addition to what the other post says, even a relatively light website will take a moment to load which can cause loss of mental context and focus, even if the target page supports reader mode and you can automatically load it. If all you want is text I really think having everything in the one app is more comfortable.

Ads are just the beginning. Paywall kvetching, loud Autoplay videos, cookie banners, mailing list pop-ups and all manner of dark patterns and anti features that hijack a simple reading experience are enough to just keep me off of those sites unless I can help it.

Yes, ublock origin can probably be configured to take care of a lot of this, but it's a manual process and a moving target.

Easier just not to engage.

It’s a but ironic since the above user is doing so on Reddit, the place that blares ads at you, funnels into mobile app, has increased number of walls to access content, messed up comment threading, etc.

Much easier to just use an RSS reader.

It's not that bad, just select more filter lists like the 'annoyances' ones. I also use a lot of custom CSS rules that remove big pictures from sites (so they look a lot more like hacker news) though the latter does cause me to keep up sometimes, true

Exactly.

I can barely visit a page without having to dismiss a cookie banner.

And then "You're using an adblocker!" and hunt for the "Continue without disabling" link.

And then "Sorry, this story is paywalled" for some local news site I have never visited before and will probably never visit again.

Or another big popup asking me to sign in with Google, that I have to dismiss.

Or an autoplaying video with an impossibly tiny X close button that takes 10 taps on mobile to finally get rid of.

Or a font so large it's impossible to read, and I have to hunt down the "Text Zoom" feature of mobile Chrome that's way down the list in the hamburger menu.

Or the "Read more" button that you don't even notice because it's in between an image and "related content", so the article seems to just mysteriously end because the remaining 80% is hidden.

I could go on... but wow the mobile web sucks.

Someone should make a "bullshit blocker" that's like an adblocker but it extracts the article text, disables everything that isn't the article text and just shows you the text. Firefox's Reader Mode does this on some websites, but I suspect not on recent websites.

Reader mode does exactly this at 90% of websites that I visit. I sometimes wonder what sites people use that they have such a profoundly broken experience

This. And for example, that is why I'm just using ChatGPT to get recipes to cook; it is so much better, right to the point, no ads, follow-up questions, etc. I know the moral argument about ChatGPT being trained and monetizing other people's work, but it is just so easy and has better UX.

And regarding "The way forward is to go where your audience is being influenced," that this marketer says, for my case and the his “best rice to make risotto.” case, they can't do SEO on ChatGPT (at least for now). ChatGPT doesn't even show/link to sources like Gemini; they are screwed.

This process of

1. Scrap content.

2. Train/mix.

3. Show new mixed content without sources.

is a nightmare for them.

I have lots of recipe books. An entire (small) bookshelf of them, the most recently purchased one was probably at least 10 years ago. Since then I've just been looking up recipes online because it was more convenient. Now, however, I find that I'm getting off my ass to go look through a book because I'm so irritated with online recipes.

I don't need your family history, or how excited you are to make this, or why it has that "special importance" to you, or whatever you wrote to get more clicks. I really don't need to scroll through pages of irrelevant ads or dismiss 10 autoplaying videos just because it's been a while and I forgot how wet a pita recipe should be.

I just want to read the fscking recipe!

And that is where paper books excel! And the funny thing, is I like reading the recipe intros there, or the sidebar 400 year-old original version of the recipe because it's interesting, and not just another attempt at eking some micro amount of ad revenue from me.

[/rant]

And yet, if a recipe site did just tell you the recipe, you wouldn't use that site, because you'd never find it, because it wouldn't be on Google.

> I'm just using ChatGPT to get recipes to cook

Pretty brave. How's that rock soup going?

I can see this. I didn't really think about it until I switched to Kagi search. Being able to block (or deprioritize) sites because I find them abusive in advertising practices has been great. I would love to see an old netflix-like algorithm that tells you if you'll like a site based on your site rank choices. Almost all of my block/lowers are enshitified websites, so I'd love to pre-block what others have found :-)

Kagi publishes stats on the most up/down ranked sites, most blocked, etc.

https://kagi.com/stats

I added a few things to my list from that because of sites like Quora that I hate but don’t show up often enough to really irritate me.

Yeah, these days clicking on a link on a mobile phone sadly means putting yourself at risk of an ugly, slow loading page with a paywall or login banner and big ugly ads and a prompt to sign up for a newsletter.

I still link to things, and I try to make sure that the things I link to are non-frustrating such that people learn to trust my links over time - but that's a pretty optimistic position I'm taking there!

100%. While not entirely mitigating the issue, android Firefox lets you install the uBlock extension and that helps quite a bit for mobile browsing.

If only it was just ads.

No, it's also mads (malvertisements, aka malicious advertisements), several solar systems worth of cookies, and a few galaxies worth of JavaShit wasting our CPU/RAM and power.

Yeah, sincerely fuck those clicks.

If only there existed a program that could do the clicking for me, then clean the resulting page from cruft I'm not interested in, and present the useful bits to me! It would be a joy to use, and should it become popular, it might kick the internet back to 1998 when Google was supremely useful. (Oh, that would ruin most of the "economy of attention" though...)

/s

What you want is Ad Nauseam

This is, 100% exactly, why I primarily come to HN to get commentary on the articles and don't click on the articles. I don't want to have to deal with the onslaught of ads, or the passive-aggressive guilt-tripping, or even just the janky page that's left behind when my adblockers remove 80% of what took up space on the page.

I don't know... I have to wonder how google et al got all this money from advertising in the first place. Do you really think it's because people are getting smarter?

It doesn't have to be useful, it just has to look useful to people who have lots of money. Just look at the AI hypewave.