The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix Re: the obsession with publisher-specific apps: apps can grab way more data than web browsers will let publishers have, and because it's a lot harder to get around adverts and paywalls in an app.
It also creates a soft lock-in of sorts, someone who's installed a news app will probably use that instead of going to other publishers, and they're less likely to forget about this specific publisher.
Higher retention and higher CTR due to less blocking are appealing to suits xP
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix Long covid prevents me from being able to cope with them at all so my default move is to go the reader. I would say I miss the old web with all its handmade html, but I remember the blinking red and yellow scrolling banners and bright green backgrounds and don't miss them!
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@pheonix Long covid prevents me from being able to cope with them at all so my default move is to go the reader. I would say I miss the old web with all its handmade html, but I remember the blinking red and yellow scrolling banners and bright green backgrounds and don't miss them!
@robotistry I'm so sorry to hear you're dealing with long covid, but you highlight a crucial point here.
Accessibility is also about cognitive load. When the DOM is constantly shifting and prompting, it physically exhausts the user. Reader modes on browsers is a lifesaver for stripping out that bloat.
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@pheonix Re: the obsession with publisher-specific apps: apps can grab way more data than web browsers will let publishers have, and because it's a lot harder to get around adverts and paywalls in an app.
It also creates a soft lock-in of sorts, someone who's installed a news app will probably use that instead of going to other publishers, and they're less likely to forget about this specific publisher.
Higher retention and higher CTR due to less blocking are appealing to suits xP
@eishiya Aha good point! you hit the nail on the head.
As browsers like Safari and Firefox have started aggressively throttling third-party cookies and cross-site tracking, the publishers might be panicking. The only way for them to maintain deep, device-level telemetry and completely bypass ad-blockers is to force you into their native sandbox.
I might borrow your term 'soft lock-in' in the future. It makes total sense for the suits looking at avg revenue per user, even if it is hostile to the open web
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@pheonix honestly, I usuae avoid them. On the one hand for all the click baity shit and tracking, on the other hand for keeping sane amidst all those crazy shit going on in the world
I subscribe to a few news outlets here on Mastodon, such as @tagesschau, @tazgetroete and @heiseonline - and that's enough for me on a normal day.
I also subscribe to a printed weekly newspaper.
@Ketakater ngl that's a highly effective strategy for keeping your sanity! There is a beautiful irony that a printed weekly newspaper represents the ultimate 'zero cumulative layout shift' experience.
I honestly think more tech-literate folks are going to start adopting your exact media diet as the web gets noisier. Thanks for reading!
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@pheonix It seems to me one answer is for more people to have their own websites, or even their own domains, and publish #disenshittified content, then others will link to them.
Old timers and historians will say I just 'reinvented' the 20th century web and webrings. I think we can do better than that, but it would be better than the current mess, yes?
@RupertReynolds I couldn't agree more! The indieweb movement and the concept of POSSE feels like a good escape hatch.
We might be reinventing 90s webrings, but this time we're armed with much better typographic standards, CSS Grid and protocols like RSS and activitypub. Owning your own DOM is the only way to guarantee your readers actually get a respectful UX. Love this perspective.
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@pheonix@hachyderm.io There really ought to be some kind of organization that rates/certifies a website's useability. Something like a Better Business Bureau or whatever. That way these trash websites can get jeered into doing better, and good websites can show off their friendliness.
I don't really know if that would work, but these things exist in other domains, right?
@calvin This is a really interesting idea. IIRC in theory, Google's core web vitals was supposed to be exactly this.
They promised to penalize sites with bad UX in their search rankings. Yet, the irony is that Google's own ad scripts are usually the primary offenders destroying those usability scores on news sites! An independent, non-profit like this could hold these platforms accountable.
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@RupertReynolds I couldn't agree more! The indieweb movement and the concept of POSSE feels like a good escape hatch.
We might be reinventing 90s webrings, but this time we're armed with much better typographic standards, CSS Grid and protocols like RSS and activitypub. Owning your own DOM is the only way to guarantee your readers actually get a respectful UX. Love this perspective.
@pheonix I started seeing things differently after reading Enshittification. I used to do my own things, sure, but the idea was new to me that an open internet was seen as an affront to every company that wanted to insert itself between me and the things I do (and charge both sides for the 'privilege'). Cory Doctorrow's book crystallised it all in my head. Freedom is a kind of rebellion.
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix Excellent analysis! We’ve been going the opposite way since the start of 2025—removing advertisers and networks who track at a cost to ourselves, but in the hope readers will choose to support us in other ways (e.g. buying our magazine in PDF form or as a hard copy). So far few have cared but I am doing it out of principle. We started publishing online in the 1990s.
We are not perfect as we use services that still have trackers but hopefully our pages aren’t as heavy as this. -
@pheonix Excellent analysis! We’ve been going the opposite way since the start of 2025—removing advertisers and networks who track at a cost to ourselves, but in the hope readers will choose to support us in other ways (e.g. buying our magazine in PDF form or as a hard copy). So far few have cared but I am doing it out of principle. We started publishing online in the 1990s.
We are not perfect as we use services that still have trackers but hopefully our pages aren’t as heavy as this.@pheonix Examples:
https://lucire.com/2026/0306fe0.shtml
https://autocade.net/index.php/Maruti_Suzuki_Alto_(2012%E2%80%9323)Unfortunately part of the first site is on WordPress and that must introduce a few things:
Bhavitha Mandava named Chanel's newest ambassador
A fast rise on the modelling ladder for the NYU graduate who originally headed to the city to study assistive technology.
Lucire (lucire.com)
I’m not technical enough to know how to measure the loads but I really hope that by cutting out Google and a few regular culprits we’re leaner.
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix The civilised way is never try to sell anyone anything unless you think they’ll willingly come back for more. So yeah, that principle is being increasingly violated and it’s especially problematic when no-one at all wants or has to follow it any more. That’s when the race to the bottom is complete. Enshittification.
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@eishiya Aha good point! you hit the nail on the head.
As browsers like Safari and Firefox have started aggressively throttling third-party cookies and cross-site tracking, the publishers might be panicking. The only way for them to maintain deep, device-level telemetry and completely bypass ad-blockers is to force you into their native sandbox.
I might borrow your term 'soft lock-in' in the future. It makes total sense for the suits looking at avg revenue per user, even if it is hostile to the open web
@pheonix Something else I hadn't considered that helps explain why these apps get made, perhaps even initially in good faith, is that many mobile users are reluctant to use web browsers. Their app store is the first place they look, rather than a web search engine. A publisher that doesn't want to miss those readers will therefore want to show up in the app store.
And then the "benefits" of a more publisher-controlled experience would make them want to direct their web users to the app too.
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@pheonix Excellent analysis! We’ve been going the opposite way since the start of 2025—removing advertisers and networks who track at a cost to ourselves, but in the hope readers will choose to support us in other ways (e.g. buying our magazine in PDF form or as a hard copy). So far few have cared but I am doing it out of principle. We started publishing online in the 1990s.
We are not perfect as we use services that still have trackers but hopefully our pages aren’t as heavy as this.@jackyan I think that's a very noble strategy and it shows that you, as a publisher are also mindful about how readers experience the final product. Thanks for reading!
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix it sometimes feels to me as if the whole world is shouting at me. thank you for your voice!
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix I use a script blocker. News sites are often the worst offenders when it comes to presenting a completely unusable document on first page load, and 30+ domains other than the one serving the base document that want to run scripts. This is especially grievous if the content is a video clip from a broadcast television station. You have to guess which panel of the adware-newsware quilt operates the content you wanted, and which are adware and trackers. Enshittified web.
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@pheonix I use a script blocker. News sites are often the worst offenders when it comes to presenting a completely unusable document on first page load, and 30+ domains other than the one serving the base document that want to run scripts. This is especially grievous if the content is a video clip from a broadcast television station. You have to guess which panel of the adware-newsware quilt operates the content you wanted, and which are adware and trackers. Enshittified web.
@log IKR. Such is the state of web these days..
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@arrrg Holy smokes! Needs to be in some kind of hall of fame with those numbers
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@pheonix it sometimes feels to me as if the whole world is shouting at me. thank you for your voice!
@the_bogolepov thank you!!
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The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.
When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.
I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts
The 49MB Web Page
A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
(thatshubham.com)
#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy
@pheonix An interesting overlap here is with accessibility. Specifically screen reader accessibility is my angle, but cognative load is a real thing and curves differently, and any visual issues would become problematic with what you point out. But take screen readers. Assuming the article isn't paywalled, if we don't have an ad blocker, all those ad frames literally slow down navigation of the entire page, including arrowing through the text, the modals can be half visible and sometimes not actually in focus but disable interaction with the page, and those frames? Not a single ad frame in the history of ever has ever been accessible. They generate text that's marked as inserted over and over again, with image links who's alt text is a stream of easily hundreds of characters, the raw text of an add link. I saw one of those reach 900 characters. We don't even know what they're advertising And the user has to navigate *through* every one of these, there is no such thing as skimming. Sure, we could navigate by heading or something, but there's actual text below that frame without any markup besides not in the frame. NVDA, at least, provides a gesture that says exit current container from the bottom, so you should be able to get out oa f rame that way, except there is a combination of nesting and chains going on. Without uBLock origin, most of the web is downright completely unusable. And on iOS? We just don't browse the web.
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@pheonix An interesting overlap here is with accessibility. Specifically screen reader accessibility is my angle, but cognative load is a real thing and curves differently, and any visual issues would become problematic with what you point out. But take screen readers. Assuming the article isn't paywalled, if we don't have an ad blocker, all those ad frames literally slow down navigation of the entire page, including arrowing through the text, the modals can be half visible and sometimes not actually in focus but disable interaction with the page, and those frames? Not a single ad frame in the history of ever has ever been accessible. They generate text that's marked as inserted over and over again, with image links who's alt text is a stream of easily hundreds of characters, the raw text of an add link. I saw one of those reach 900 characters. We don't even know what they're advertising And the user has to navigate *through* every one of these, there is no such thing as skimming. Sure, we could navigate by heading or something, but there's actual text below that frame without any markup besides not in the frame. NVDA, at least, provides a gesture that says exit current container from the bottom, so you should be able to get out oa f rame that way, except there is a combination of nesting and chains going on. Without uBLock origin, most of the web is downright completely unusable. And on iOS? We just don't browse the web.
@pheonix Also, if you think the text shifting down a bit is bad and destroys spatial mapping? Try the reading cursor being thrown randomly about the page or up to the top every time one of those loads, because the sheer scope of the DOM refresh caused it to scramble and lose its place. Like if you were reading a book and kept getting randomly jumped back to the beginning of the chapter or somewhere 15 pages from where you are now.
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