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You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

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Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#111

Post by sroussey »

isamuel wrote: post #31
northwest65 wrote: post #16

How about an opt in botnet extension for your browser that focuses it's energy on sites with this sort of dark pattern behaviour. i.e. You install the extension, when you come across a site like this you vote it for getting punishment, once the site gets enough vote the botnet occasionally focusses it's energy on the site in question when the participants browser is otherwise sitting idle. The punishment could potent…

Why stop there? Maybe websites you don’t like should have a crowdsourced assassin come to kill the relevant developers.

Yeah, so I’ve been a host of things a few times, and got the hate mail, bomb threats and various lawsuits that were aimed at other people but landed with me.

The bomb threats and car bomb threats did get me talking to the sheriff about concealed carry permit, but I backed away.

The poor woman that answered the phone for a shared office space quit.

At Weebly, people bought DDOS but didn’t realize that every site had the backing of our entire infrastructure.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#112

Post by [deleted] »

rstat1 wrote: post #39
yellowapple wrote: post #22

Not just news sites, either. A lot of fandom wikis run on the same platform, fandom.com. That site is a pain in the absolute fucking ass to use on any mobile device, specifically because of the autoplaying video that takes up half the screen on every page load . Weirdly, desktop is fine; no autoplaying videos or any such nonsense. It's only on mobile that Fandom has seemingly made a deliberate effort to make the user…

I'd say the worst part is that Firefox has a feature for blocking auto playing video. But it never works.

[deleted]

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#113

Post by the_only_law »

isamuel wrote: post #31
northwest65 wrote: post #16

How about an opt in botnet extension for your browser that focuses it's energy on sites with this sort of dark pattern behaviour. i.e. You install the extension, when you come across a site like this you vote it for getting punishment, once the site gets enough vote the botnet occasionally focusses it's energy on the site in question when the participants browser is otherwise sitting idle. The punishment could potent…

Why stop there? Maybe websites you don’t like should have a crowdsourced assassin come to kill the relevant developers.

Although you joke, I’ve seen slightly less extreme propositions that were only half-jokes.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#114

Post by mhb »

makecheck wrote: post #104

I feel like these are “somebody got a promotion” patterns. Basically, somebody was able to “prove” to Higher-Up Managers that $X number of these videos were “watched” or “engaged with” (or whatever today’s BS lingo is), and therefore the business “benefited” in some way by “reaching” more people. Profit? In reality, at least in my case, what happens is: (1) I say “WTF!?!?”, (2) I make a mental note to never ever visi…

Sort of related - is geeksforgeeks the new experts-exchange?

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#115

Post by bambax »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #103

> Inexplicably, it was not blocked by your ad-blocker. This is the real problem. Why wasn't it blocked? We must fix that!

I think because technically, it's not an ad. But you can surely block the zone. Or, more simply, just disable javascript for the whole site. If it breaks the site, you know you don't want to come back.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#116

Post by bogomipz »

I've noticed a variation on this which is a video that is related to the news story however since I am reading the article I press stop on the autoplaying video. However as soon as I scroll down to continue reading the page the video also moves to the lower left corner so that it is still visible even though I have paused this. This seems quite hostile as one has signaled their preference to read the article since they stopped the video. Can anyone say what the thinking is here? Is this just another technique to game some engagement metric?

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#117

Post by pushrax »

cabalamat wrote: post #110
dragontamer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about an extension that disables video elements until you click on them ... Like how Internet Explorer treated Java applets towards the end on their days. No. Short MP4 files should replace GIFs. MP4 files are more efficient than the terrible compression GIF files have. I've made a few video game pages where auto-playing MP4s were essential at giving the right message... discussion of tactics and "movement" of…

> I've made a few video game pages where auto-playing MP4s were essential at giving the right message No. What you say is simply factually inaccurate. I've looked at the web page in your URL and it would be much better without distracting auto-playing video. The video should play then the user wants it to play. Is that really so hard to understand?

I agree completely. When there's a looping video below the fold, I'd rather start it with a click, instead of having to watch it up to twice just to see the clip from beginning to end.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#118

Post by ndynan »

makecheck wrote: post #104

I feel like these are “somebody got a promotion” patterns. Basically, somebody was able to “prove” to Higher-Up Managers that $X number of these videos were “watched” or “engaged with” (or whatever today’s BS lingo is), and therefore the business “benefited” in some way by “reaching” more people. Profit? In reality, at least in my case, what happens is: (1) I say “WTF!?!?”, (2) I make a mental note to never ever visi…

This pattern is purely a representation of how financially hurt news institutions are. They are desperate to make revenue and the end user experience is sacrificed in the name of keeping the ship afloat (and sometimes profit).

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#119

Post by marcosdumay »

waltbosz wrote: post #88

How about an extension that disables video elements until you click on them ... Like how Internet Explorer treated Java applets towards the end on their days. You could add a whitelist feature to the extension for YouTube et al. Sure, it would be nice if websites didn't do shitty UX, but as others have said, don't visit those sites. The other extension idea I had was one which would reference a database of sites know…

You know, Firefox has that option right at the settings window. And if there's audio, it blocks by default.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#120

Post by donohoe »

makecheck wrote: post #104

I feel like these are “somebody got a promotion” patterns. Basically, somebody was able to “prove” to Higher-Up Managers that $X number of these videos were “watched” or “engaged with” (or whatever today’s BS lingo is), and therefore the business “benefited” in some way by “reaching” more people. Profit? In reality, at least in my case, what happens is: (1) I say “WTF!?!?”, (2) I make a mental note to never ever visi…

Sort of.

When I worked at a rather large publisher they did a deal like this because someone promised a large truck of revenue by a company.

For a site that was badly monetized (because they it was over-weighed with ads and poorly engineered to begin with) this was seen as something they could not say no to.

Again, it is a slow race to the bottom.

I can assure you that often these deals are done by the business-side without consultation with product/engineering.

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