The 49MB web page
News sites loading tens of megabytes of JavaScript, video, and trackers for a single article are held up as a symptom of a broken ad-driven web, where users endure pop‑ups, autoplaying “sticky” videos, and privacy violations just to access a few kilobytes of text. Commenters argue that this bloat is driven less by engineers and more by business incentives—adtech, marketing pixels, and KPI‑chasing product decisions—while readers increasingly respond with adblockers, RSS, text‑only or “lite” sites, and even disabling JavaScript entirely. Underneath is a broader worry that the traditional advertising model for journalism no longer works, degrading both user experience and content quality, with few convincing alternatives beyond subscriptions, paywalls, or radically simpler, user‑respecting designs.
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.