The Infinite Ugly Scroll — Pixel Envy

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2021-07-10 17:30:04

Every major website now requires users to complete the same set of tedious tasks approximately every seven or more days from their last visit, or whenever the site’s cookies expire. It is horrible. Between data-addicted advertisers and marketers, and well-meaning but flawed policies intended to impress upon users some semblance of informed consent, the web is increasingly hard to read.

Via Shoshana Wodinsky in the replies to that tweet, here is an excellent March 2020 piece by David Roth for Columbia Journalism Review:

Even on the websites of august institutions ads interrupt the text every two paragraphs; ads follow you down the sides of the page like store security; ads pop up in boxes that resist being closed, the elusive little x evading your cursor.

There have always been websites like this, usually the kind that we save for private browsing: places to stream out-of-market sporting events, or download bittorrents of hard-to-find films, or browse other things that no reasonable person would admit to.