
The Verge's web sucks - mbrubeck
http://blog.lmorchard.com/2015/07/22/the-verge-web-sucks/
======
insin
> We keep things like Adblock Plus at arm's length for plausible deniability -
> but everyone I know uses it.

I wish this had been included in the main body of this post, with some
metrics; everyone you know uses it because it makes the web suck _so much_
less.

Loading The Verge's article in a Chrome incognito window: 19.6 MB transferred,
finished in 41.9 s, huge ad covering the entire page above the developer
console I had open to watch things load.

Same article in a new incognito window with Adblock Plus enabled: 1.5 MB
transferred, finished in 16.94s.

Screenshots:
[https://twitter.com/jbscript/status/624535428620791808](https://twitter.com/jbscript/status/624535428620791808)

~~~
gorhill
Default-deny is the best answer against bloat -- though not for everybody
unfortunately, but I did try to make it as straightforward as possible with
uBlock Origin[1]. Using default-deny in uBlock Origin/Chromium[2] and with the
page displaying properly, I get from Network pane in dev console:

\- 62 requests

\- 508 KB transferred

Once you start using default-deny mode, it's difficult to go back to anything
less restrictive as one get quickly used to how fast pages load -- and with
such virtuous "side-effects" as foiling most 3rd-party tracking/data mining by
default. Once usual sites are "unbroken" and ruleset saved, using default-deny
become less and less of a annoyance over time. For example, I already had the
only two rules necessary to unbreak The Verge so the page appeared correctly
the first visit.

Another example of ridiculous amount of bloat:
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Tips-and-tricks-
water...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Tips-and-tricks-
waterfall#why-using-a-blocker-is-very-important)

* * *

[1] sorry if this sounds like a plug, I do feel strongly about users re-
claiming control about where their computer connects.

[2] using suggested default-deny ruleset at
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-
filtering:-de...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-
filtering:-default-deny:-useful-rulesets)

~~~
krstck
The difference in page load times before and after implementing uBlock is
_staggering_. Having to use a computer you don't own (or mobile) feels like
traveling back to 1999 using 56k dial-up.

~~~
josteink
Firefox mobile supports extensions like ublock just fine. Use a browser which
doesn't suck :)

And if you're using an Iphone: you made the choice that apple should make all
the choices for you. You've made your own bed. Sorry about that.

~~~
tdkl
They already made that choice for iOS9.

------
mr_sturd
Nilay Patel has the audacity to say that _the mobile web sucks_ [0]. No. It's
just _your_ website that sucks, mate.

[0] - [https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/20/9002721/the-mobile-web-
su...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/20/9002721/the-mobile-web-sucks)

~~~
untog
No, it isn't. The mobile web _does_ suck, and I say this as someone who works
making mobile web sites every day.

While Nilay's article is a bit hit and miss, it still seems pretty undeniable
to me that the mobile web experience is inferior to native apps.

~~~
talmand
As someone who builds mobile sites every day I disagree, mobile web does not
suck. It's not accurate to blame mobile web when someone attempts to make it
work in a way it wasn't intended, as a native app replacement. It's not a
tool's fault if someone insists on using it incorrectly. A hammer isn't bad
for hammering nails because a wrench is a better choice, over the hammer, for
removing bolts.

------
danboarder
Wow. From the article, an example post on the Verge "downloaded 12MB - a
little over 7MB in that is JavaScript" and a refresh of the page with things
cached still downloaded 8MB again.

And key here -- the article HTML content itself was 75k, the rest is ad
network Javascript. (apparently over 20 different companies)

I don't like tracking scripts either but why can't the ad networks get
together and create a shared script instead of so many that seem to be
redundant?

~~~
sudioStudio64
Why can't the site just collect some data from the client and forward it to
the ad networks on the backend? All of this stuff needs to happen out of band.

~~~
tempodox
Everybody is cooking their own soup and no-one wants to share their toys and
sandbox with the other children.

~~~
jfb
Sharpers and snake oil salesmen peddling nonsenseware to terrified publishers
who watched their entire business model crumble to sand in the face of
craigslist.

------
josteink
After reading this article, I decided to try reading the verge in a more
"limited" browser which doesn't support endless Javascript and too may
advanced features:

Emacs built in web-browser, or "eww" (that's its name). It's sort of like Lynx
or w3m, except you can click things and it shows actual images!

You can see it here: [http://imgur.com/FqJVB0U](http://imgur.com/FqJVB0U)

You know what? The site and all content loads _instantly_. It may not be
beautiful, but it works a hell of a lot better and is just so feather light it
feels surreal.

Maybe I'll seriously start using eww for more stuff. This was surprisingly
nice.

~~~
Tiksi
Links actually has a graphical mode too:
[http://paste.click/DdkwUx](http://paste.click/DdkwUx)

There's even a driver to draw straight to a framebuffer. It can be useful if
you're on a box without X or break X and need a browser (which is how I found
out about it).

I don't actually use it unless I have to, but interesting to know.

~~~
sp332
A note under Ubuntu: you'll have to install links2 (instead of links), and you
may have to change permissions on the fb device to allow your user to write to
it, if you don't want to run a browser as root.

------
wiremine
As a consultant, I only see web site producers making an effort to curb poor
web practices when Google forces them to: Google's move to boost mobile-
friendly design in the rankings has driven us a TON of responsive design work.

I wonder if that is going to be what it takes to fix today's bloat problems:
Google takes the hammer to sites that too much advertising cruft. Otherwise, I
don't see business makers seeing much of a reason to fix it on their own.

~~~
otis_inf
> I wonder if that is going to be what it takes to fix today's bloat problems:
> Google takes the hammer to sites that too much advertising cruft.

That could get interesting: Google, using the argument that all those ad-
related scripts make things slow, ranking sites with a lot of them lower than
sites which don't, and at the same time hitting their competitors hard: after
all, Google makes money through ads, if their competitors are forced to be
used less (by Google's own actions) more people might be using Google ad
networks.

~~~
eridal
nah, that wont work.

that would surely end up in legal battle, from the ad agencies saying that
Google used their monopolistic power on the search industry just to boost
their analytics product.

~~~
roninb
IANAL, but I would think that as long as, algorithmically, Google ensures it's
weighing all ads and trackers equally (read: whatever your concept of fairly
is) they could prove that it truly is in everyone's benefit. In a similar vein
to the aforementioned "Death to Small Businesses Day."

------
mdevere
The Verge has some interesting long-form from time to time but it's subsidised
by endless clickbait and empty 'conversation-starter' content.

Not to mention their recent move to close Comments being a cynical strategy to
get people using their forums.

Realise that's OT but wanted to get it off my chest.

~~~
cheshire137
What's this about comments? Do their articles not have comments and a form at
the bottom anymore?

~~~
mdevere
Temporarily disabled by default but they turn them on for certain articles.

They claimed this was because comments had become too negative. It is possible
they are genuinely just trying to protect the mental health of their staff who
are usually the targets of more aggressive comments but somehow I doubt it.

~~~
vvanders
It seemed to happen after they posted the SpaceX
article(www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8863121/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-
explosioauses) that was poorly thought through. They got some criticism(but
not abusive) feedback in the comments.

They started deleting comments in that thread and it all went downhill from
there once people realized posts were being removed.

Kinda a shame, I liked Topolsky & Co but I don't visit it nearly as much after
that.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
It had been brewing a while, in my opinion. What I was seeing happening was,
reasonable people would point out flaws in the article, then a moderator would
jump in and argue with the person like they were a child and their points were
stupid, escalating the situation and probably now pissing off more people than
just the original complainer. I stopped reading their comments because of the
moderators. Moderators should be seen and not heard.

------
oliyoung
These guys (ie Verge) are going to have a really really tough time when iOS9
lands

[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releaseno...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_9.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014305-CH9-SW9)

~~~
kryptiskt
They can just do what everybody else does, replace the site with "USE THE
VERGE APP!!1!", and show the ads there instead. Which is a good reason for
Apple to push adblocking in the browser.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This is Apple's goal. They want people to write apps and show ads through
Apple's own ad network.

------
dvh
After I started working on my own RSS reader, I started converting more and
more website to RSS feeds (e.g. twitter, youtube, all news site) where I only
extract interesting bits. It's faster and cleaner, not to mension no ads.

~~~
jacquesm
More and more sites (twitter is a major offender here) are switching off their
RSS feeds because they can't control the readers.

See for instance:

[https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_...](https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=jmattheij)

~~~
lmorchard
So I'm back to what I used to do 13 years ago - build my own little scrapers
and adaptors to generate RSS feeds for myself :) WHEEEEEE!

------
manigandham
The problem is shared between publishers and ad networks.

Sites are loading up on anything and everything to offset costs and it's only
getting worse with adblock. And ad networks are just built with poor
engineering and no attention paid to the user's experience. It's too easy to
whip up a basic ad server and just load a dozen more tags on a page with the
focus being volume and clicks. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to fix
things because of the way money flows.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of a digital ad network.

------
rossjudson
And it has for a long time (in terms of page performance):

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3034825/the-verge-page-
per...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3034825/the-verge-page-performance)

------
Lagged2Death
_...it downloaded 12MB - a little over 7MB in that is JavaScript!_

7MB was about the install size of Microsoft Windows 3.0, a complete (if
crummy) OS.

------
Yhippa
> Believe it or not, the Content Services team at Mozilla is thinking about
> way more than just "plunking ads into Firefox". Like, what if we actually
> accepted the fact that ads are a way of funding the web at large, and
> browsers themselves offered built-in mechanisms to support advertising that
> respect privacy & performance? Yeah, that's a bit of a change from browsers'
> traditional neutrality. But, it could be a better deal for publishers and
> users together.

I'm curious as to how that could ever be done. I feel that it's almost
impossible without somehow getting user information. I feel the trend is that
ads are going to continue to be tuned to people and aspects about them. Maybe
fully homomorphic encryption can do that without violating privacy but that's
a long way off.

> Here's another idea: Almost a year ago, I heard the notion of "Subscribe 2
> Web" at Mozilla. The gist is that you're worth about $6.20 per month across
> publishers via advertising revenues. What if you paid that much into an
> account yourself every month and used a mechanism built into your browser to
> distribute that money? Yeah, it's micropayments, but I find it interesting
> that these folks came up with a specific dollar amount that doesn't sound
> terrible.

It exists. It's called Contributor by Google:
[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/).
If anybody needs an invite please let me know.

------
Grue3
Ah, it's that site that's mostly known for posting inaccurate information
about Android and closing off comments because people called them out on it.
Why would anyone even go there anymore? They haven't published anything worth
reading in ages.

------
vinceyuan
I did the same thing several days ago. But after 30 seconds, the web page did
not finish loading. It has downloaded 7+ MB. I closed it.

~~~
smackfu
Some of these pages never "finish" loading. They use a tracker script that
pings a server every so often with your current position in the story, so they
can get stats on who actually reads the articles vs. who follows a link and
then bails out.

------
mike-cardwell
That article gets a score of 15% on Google PageSpeed -

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2015%2F7%2F20%2F9002721%2Fthe-
mobile-web-sucks)

~~~
omouse
Still loads faster than The Verge ;)

~~~
EdiX
It's The Verge's article that gets 15%, OP gets 63% (faster than The Verge,
obviously).

~~~
lmorchard
Huh. Interesting that mine is so bad. The PageSpeed report is fair, though. I
didn't optimize images, set expires headers, etc.

Weird that Amazon isn't serving things up gzip'd - oh, interesting, I have to
gzip the stuff in my build script and deploy it compressed.

------
ised
"263 HTTP requests"

Seems reasonable. bwahahaha!

Shall we discuss the number of DNS requests?

And how many of those offsite servers are using something convoluted like
Amazon for DNS? (which I find is more and more prevalent thanks to AWS)

The blog author, e.g., is using Amazon for DNS.

Alas, for each and every name, this adds more than a few lookups to what could
be a 1-2 request process. Amazon uses multiple levels of indirection.

This dance is not of much consequence in the case of a single name.

But in the aggregate, e.g., many names requested from one overloaded site
(such as one author singles out) after another, it does add up.

This also creates a larger margin for errors (failed lookups getting retried
and timing out, again and again... while the user sits and waits).

~~~
lmorchard
Actually, FWIW, I'm using pairNIC.com for DNS. I do host on Amazon S3, though.

~~~
ised
That means the full lookup for your personal domainname is for an Amazon S3
domainname. PairNIC just handles the first lookup to give the CNAME for
blog.lmorchard.com, pointing to Amazon.

Then there are multiple other CNAME's that Amazon uses. It is about the same
as looking up a Akamai customer domain. Lots of extra DNS queries.

------
devioustree
At lot of replies to that Verge article seem to be addressing the click-bait
title and not the content. The content is concerned with why an old Macbook
(with comparable specs to a new iPhone) will handle the web much better than
said iPhone.

~~~
lmorchard
I need to do more specific digging on this to have a good answer. From the
bits I know, mobile browsers offer more conservative support for caching &
hardware acceleration. Phones are way more sensitive to battery use & heat
than a plugged-in laptop. You can't really directly compare a phone to a
laptop, even if they seem to have similar hardware numbers. The form factor &
use cases matter.

------
krstck
Remember that beautiful, amazing time when pop-up blockers had forever
defeated those obnoxious and intrusive ads? My timeline could be off, but I'm
thinking somewhere around 2004-2006, when Firefox was really picking up steam.
I feel like the current web is in some kind of alternative universe where
we've been shifted back in time over a decade. I have to use Ublock and
Ghostery to make the web even remotely usable.

Perhaps websites just need to die altogether, and instead we'll just use APIs.
You choose how to render the content in your browser according to your
desires. Oh wait....RSS.

~~~
nathan_long
> Perhaps websites just need to die altogether, and instead we'll just use
> APIs. You choose how to render the content in your browser according to your
> desires.

Yeah. Maybe you could download some kind of menu of what the site offers. You
could go ahead and download the text because it's tiny, but you could decide,
eg, "I will request the image resources but not the javascript ones", or "I
will display the text in a font of my own choosing".

The site content could use a language to "mark up" what it offers, and the
site's specifications could be overridden by user preferences, sort of a
"cascade" of priority.

------
forty
I found it quite funny that this article ends like this
[https://imgur.com/SpEp9UF](https://imgur.com/SpEp9UF) :)

~~~
yoz-y
Well, at least Disqus has the merit of actually providing value to people
visiting your website.

------
justuk
The great thing about advertising is it funds you no matter if you are famous
or not. Bad thing is you have to live under their corporate censorship and all
the baggage that goes with using third party sellers (privacy and
inefficiency).

To use some of the examples in the article, not everyone can rely on national
license fees (BBC), corporate sponsorship (NPR), consistently making a loss
(The Guardian), search engines (Mozilla), having a legacy business (CNN) etc.

~~~
lmorchard
FWIW, my post is not a rant against advertising in general. It's about doing
it with such a large volume of code & third parties involved, leaning on my
bandwidth & CPU to cover for a lack of coordination.

Toward the end of the post I say something like "what if we actually accepted
the fact that ads are a way of funding the web at large" and mention some
Mozilla efforts in that direction

------
leni536
It's kind of funny to open up Verge with both uBlock and uMatrix enabled only
allowing only 1st party scripts. First I thought that I have to enable some js
to view the article, but then I noticed the small scrollbar and scrolled down.

[https://imgur.com/a/YVbDE](https://imgur.com/a/YVbDE)

------
yuhong
_browsers themselves offered built-in mechanisms to support advertising that
respect privacy & performance?_

I wonder which kinds of proposals you would suggest. It should also cover
analytics.

~~~
lmorchard
Well, some of the proposals flip the relationship on ads. For example, rather
than getting access to fine-grained personal data about readers, a marketer
gets some coarse data like general location (eg. midwest US) and language.
Using that, they propose a set of ads to the browser, and the browser decides
which might be relevant based on what it knows about you. The browser keeps
the personal data to itself, though. Marketers get some analytics on the
response to their ads, but not full-on tracking.

~~~
yuhong
Good idea, actually.

------
udkl
I concur ... The verge has been out of my feed for a long time .... their site
feels 'heavy' and filled with distractions ...

------
wtbob
And people laugh at me for disabling JavaScript!

