How I Experience Web Today (2021)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction to the parody

  • Many find the site both hilarious and depressing because it closely matches how the web feels today.
  • Some say it’s “too true to be funny” and immediately triggered their real-life reflex to close such pages.
  • A few users with heavy blocking setups initially saw almost nothing and had to be told to click through to experience the “full horror.”

Ads, Popups, and Modern UX Misery

  • The parody accurately chains together cookie banners, newsletter modals, “allow notifications,” chat widgets, “continue reading” overlays, “create an account” footers, and exit-confirm dialogs.
  • People note the constant fight for the top visual layer and the way elements steal focus, hijack the back button, and break scrolling/zoom.
  • Geo-blocked videos and “this content is not available in your country” messages are seen as the final insult.

Search Engines and AI Slop

  • Strong dissatisfaction with Google: heavy ad load, “all above-the-fold results are ads” cases, “use Chrome” nags, location prompts, and AI summaries of low-quality content.
  • Some report switching to Kagi (paid), Brave Search, or Bing; others question whether enough people will pay for search.
  • Nostalgia for early Google as a clean, ad-free search engine; removal of features like the cache button is resented.

Ad Blocking, Paying for Content, and Ethics

  • One camp argues: if you block ads and don’t pay, you’re undermining creators; they personally subscribe to news sites, YouTube Premium, etc.
  • Others counter:
    • The ad ecosystem is abusive (tracking, dark patterns, malware risk).
    • Many paid services still enshittify later; paying feels like “negotiating with terrorists.”
    • If content disappears because ads stop working, they’ll just do something else.
  • Some propose “enough people pay” models, patronage (Patreon, donations), or static, non-tracking, contextual ads like the early 2000s.
  • Several emphasize that offering “free” ad-supported content does not create a moral debt for visitors.

Structural Causes and Regulation

  • Multiple comments blame not “bad design” but a badly regulated, ad-dominated market and lack of built-in payments/identity in browsers.
  • There are calls for antitrust action (e.g., against Google), more diverse monetization models, and less reliance on manipulative display ads.

Tools, Workarounds, and Alternative Webs

  • Heavy use of uBlock Origin, DNS-level blocking (Pi-hole, NextDNS), Brave, Vivaldi, LibreWolf, and Safari’s “Hide Distracting Items.”
  • Mixed views on reader mode: helpful but incomplete, sometimes broken by sites, and may bypass blockers.
  • Some advocate simply abandoning hostile sites: instant tab-close as a filter for low-quality content.
  • Interest in the “Small Web,” Gemini, Gopher, local-first and decentralization as escapes from the ad-driven mainstream web.

Ideas for Better Browser Behavior

  • Suggestions include a “quiet mode” that suppresses overlays/prompts, stronger handling of top-level DOM abuse, and better, harder-to-break reader modes.