The Frustrating Web
Viewability and time-on-page are very important metrics these days. Every hostile UX decision originates from this single fact. The longer you're trapped on the page, the higher the CPM the publisher can charge. Your frustration is the product.
And even with content blockers installed (of late, I’ve been using and enjoying uBlock Origin Lite in Safari), many of these news websites intersperse bullshit like requests to subscribe to their newsletters, or links to other articles on their site — often totally unrelated to the one you’re trying to read — every few paragraphs. And the fucking autoplay videos, jesus. You read two paragraphs and there’s a box that interrupts you. You read another two paragraphs and there’s another interruption. All the way until the end of the article. We’re visiting their website to read a fucking article. If we wanted to watch videos, we’d be on YouTube.
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The web is the only medium the world has ever seen where its highest-profile decision makers are people who despise the medium and are trying to drive people away from it.
I completely agree with the anger and sadness expressed in these articles. I myself use uBlock Origin for Firefox on my laptop, and Mullvad's ad-blocking DNS filter on my phone, simply to be able to enjoy surfing most websites. Unregulated advertising is a cancer, slowly killing the web, and software engineers enable it.