Windy cityMar 12

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✨🙏

https://thatshubham.com/blog/news-audit

#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy

The 49MB Web Page

A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.

Show threadJack Yan (甄爵恩)
@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.
Mar 13 at 8:55amWeb
Show threadJack Yan (甄爵恩)Mar 13

@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:

https://lucire.com/insider/20260309/bhavitha-mandava-named-chanels-newest-ambassador/

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.

Lucire: Quintessential quality

Jack Yan interviews Caitlin McEachran, the designer behind Seam New York, discovering a well thought-out label that will never compromise on its values of quality and craftsmanship.

Show threadWindy cityMar 14
@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! 🙏