The 49MB web page

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Web Bloat and User Experience

  • Many commenters see a 49 MB news page as symptomatic of a “website obesity crisis”: excessive JS, trackers, sticky videos, pop‑ups, and “Z‑index warfare” obscuring a few KB of text.
  • Recipe and e‑commerce sites are cited as especially bad: autoplay videos, life‑story preambles, and multiple overlays before revealing content.
  • Some point out that heavy video is a big fraction of the NYT payload; others argue video should not auto‑load at all.
  • Several note that bloated, JS‑heavy pages archive poorly and risk long‑term content loss.

Economics of Journalism and Ads

  • One side: journalism’s ad‑subsidized model broke when classifieds and attention moved online; extreme adtech and tracking are “last‑ditch” attempts to stay profitable.
  • Counterpoint: some outlets (e.g., major newspapers) already get most revenue from subscriptions; they could, in principle, reduce ad bloat but don’t.
  • There’s debate over whether ad blocking is “stealing” or a legitimate response to hostile design and surveillance.

User Countermeasures

  • Common strategies: browser ad blockers, DNS‑level blocking (Pi‑hole, custom lists), disabling JavaScript and/or CSS, RSS readers, text‑only or “lite” sites, alternative YouTube clients.
  • Many say egregious UX leads them to immediately close pages or search for the same story on a more usable site.
  • Some argue widespread ad blocking should be normalized and promoted.

Responsibility: Devs vs. Management/Adtech

  • Repeated theme: individual developers often add one tag‑manager script; marketing then piles in dozens of trackers without code review.
  • Others counter that engineers still have a professional duty to say “no,” propose lazy‑loading, optimize media, and document performance risks.
  • Corporate incentives (KPIs for ad revenue, “growth”) frequently override performance and UX concerns.

Engineering Practices and Alternatives

  • Suggestions: develop/test on slow hardware and throttled networks (“craptop duty”), enforce page‑weight budgets, and use simple HTML/CSS where possible.
  • Examples of good behavior: lightweight news/text sites, RSS feeds, and the 512kb club.
  • Some lament that allowing arbitrary scripting in browsers was a foundational mistake; others argue scripting is essential, and the real issue is unchecked third‑party connections and tracking.