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I decided to disable AMP on my site

alexkras.com

341–350 of 360 posts

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#341

There's a lot of backlash against AMP on principle, which I agree with and support. However, as a non-principled web consumer, I think AMP pages are 10x better than the ad-filled, slow as molasses, jump-around-as-JavaSript-loads, video autoplaying, 'stories you might like' suggested bullshit, auto-loading 20MB heaps of steaming garbage that current news sites are. I think that AMP is a stepping stone that shows the u…

> However, as a non-principled web consumer, I think AMP pages are 10x better than the ad-filled, slow as molasses, jump-around-as-JavaSript-loads, video autoplaying, 'stories you might like' suggested bullshit, auto-loading 20MB heaps of steaming garbage that current news sites are. You don't need AMP to get rid of them though. We can appreciate that Google encouraged developers to get rid of bloat AND to opt-in for…

I think it's because these bad little decisions make the publisher incrementally more money, and so their managers push for bloat. Eventually they end up squeezing more and more out of the audience subset that hasn't cracked and turned to an alternative.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#342
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said many times in discussions about ad-blockers - I think that content that can't exist in a non-ad-supported way can stop existing, we'll all be better off. Almost anything that's valuable on-line is either a marketing expense or done pro bono. Also, I didn't mean I want a Google-dominated reality. Only said that this particular feature - content in search results - is a step in the right direction; it showcas…

> I think that content that can't exist in a non-ad-supported way can stop existing, we'll all be better off. I'm not sure what is stopping you from doing that now. You can blacklist domains that serve ads and stop visiting them. Or even better yet, hire someone to write a browser plugin that blocks websites with ads, should be fairly trivial to do. And release the source code so others can benefit.

It's even simpler and I alerady do it - all it takes is to install an ad blocker.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#343
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but users don't care about the reasons why it's faster. They just know it's faster. Hence they use AMP, and AMP gains traction. We can say it's unfair, but that's life. If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP. And clearly we've failed as developers to push for non-bloated solutions. It might be possible to cre…

> If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP. The technical work has been done for years. The problem is that currently the only decision which matters is Google's and they're treating performance concerns as a way to use other people's content to bolster their own brand. The only two ways that seems possible to change…

This is similar to what happened with HTTP/2. Varnish author has his own proposal, but everything asides from SPDY simply wasn't even looked at.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#344
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true but it's a band-aid fix. We need to figure out how people can browse the web efficiently while ensuring websites are financially feasible, and everybody simply blocking javascript is not a financially feasible solution. I'd be more than happy to pay cash for a lot of stuff rather than have to deal with tracking/obnoxious ads, but I think the web would be a much worse place if all non-advertisement content…

"We need to figure out how people can browse the web efficiently while ensuring websites are financially feasible" I'm trying to figure out how to make JS blocking available to normal end users. Why should users have to put up with the current shitty situation when a simple, technical solution is available that doesn't involve Google or anyone else whose intentions are not aligned with users' intentions? The main cha…

Make all web sites not require behaviour? This is a classic boiling the ocean solution.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sites that are traditionally called walled gardens (facebook, AOL, compuserve...) often combine four features; (a) all the content is hosted under the walled garden's domain; (b) the walled garden designs key parts of the navigation and layout, understandably acting in their own interests; (c) the walled garden has content policies and declines to host certain content; and (d) users must have accounts and be logged i…

The feature that defines a walled garden is the wall. AMP doesn't have that wall: it is perfectly usable by any other search engine/spider to replicate the experience. The website itself can link to the AMP version if that makes sense for users. Mobile browsers, or web servers, could check for and redirect to the AMP version. There's a slightly-higher wall for advertisers, I believe. But Google is rightfully afraid o…

What other CDN than Google's can host AMP content and still get in the Carousel?

Hint: none.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#346
post #138

AMP news articles lack comments. This is often were most of my interest lies. I want to see if anything in the article is called out in the comments.

I actually think suppressing comments (sometimes called "the sewer of the internet") is a feature, not a bug. I block Facebook comments using a Chrome extension mainly because I don't want to send huge amounts of information to Facebook when browsing random web pages, but not having to see the comments is also a bonus.

Just calling them names doesn't change anything. You are assuming the article is more truthful than the average comment.

FB posts are often not about anything, unlike news articles. FB and YT are entirely different.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#347
post #225

please​ change your hn discussion link > https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww....

It's auto generated, clicking submit will redirect to the right discussion

I thought it was a typo but it seems all your post contains link like this :)

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#348
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that content that can't exist in a non-ad-supported way can stop existing, we'll all be better off. I'm not sure what is stopping you from doing that now. You can blacklist domains that serve ads and stop visiting them. Or even better yet, hire someone to write a browser plugin that blocks websites with ads, should be fairly trivial to do. And release the source code so others can benefit.

It's even simpler and I alerady do it - all it takes is to install an ad blocker .

Right, I thought you were principled. My mistake !!

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#349
post #343
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP. The technical work has been done for years. The problem is that currently the only decision which matters is Google's and they're treating performance concerns as a way to use other people's content to bolster their own brand. The only two ways that seems possible to change…

This is similar to what happened with HTTP/2. Varnish author has his own proposal, but everything asides from SPDY simply wasn't even looked at.

And the current SPDY solution actually turns out to be worse under many circumstances, causing QUIC.
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