Why can’t we have a text only newspaper with text only ads?
Advertisement in modern world is so insanely rotten to the core, it is disgusting. These people have made the web unbearable.
I really think there is a place for text only ads on a sites such as text.npr.org, even though they’re not as “eye catching”. Where is the innovation in advertisement? It’s the same bullshit banners, eye catching gifs and insanely long loading times with custom fonts and what not. Yes, it is “eye catching” but I am also convinced that there is a place for text only ads (such as on Google.com). Visual bandwidth of the human brain is obviously much higher than auditory (language and reading) pathways, but I might just click a text only ad if it’s relevant and “vetted” - I.e. no shady companies, no scams, etc.
May be we could see a growth in independent journalism with text only sites and ads: low startup costs, low bandwidth and server infrastructure and high click rates on their ads.
Just thinking about the advertisement industry, the people that work in it and the kind of dark patterns they employ makes me infuriated. You know, I don’t want to be friends with these kind of professionals.
I'm really glad to hear that. This lightweight design is great.
Maybe it shouldn't be for the news sites only. I make http://wordsandbuttons.online in this spirit, too. It's not text only, it has interactive plots, and quizzes, and everything. But the core idea: give people only what they come for, - works well for it as well. Since the pages are in tenths of KB, I pay for the cheapest hosting possible and it still holds "slashdot effect".
The images don't appear in Firefox reader mode. Not that reader mode is much needed on that site but it's useful if someone's got a preference on formatting.
I recently made the switch back to firefox and discovered their reader view. I tested this with some articles but wasn't impressed. Then a few days ago there was some interesting inuit article about child education from npr and I chose that plain text option. I remembered the reader view and used those two features in combination and it synergizes perfectly. Also the narrate feature within that view (previously missed that completely) works flawlessly without the usual clutter.
Good news. I've been looking for text news for years now in order to be able to access a purer news source than what is available ( and the tired old 'all news is biased' argument doesn't change the fact that most MSM long ago gave up any pretence of impartiality on particular topics), and even thought about writing my own aggregator. Even text + careful use of images would be preferable - I remember the BBC news website circa 2001 which was a reasonably sensibly presented and objective news source, and contrast it to the absolutely disastrous (both in presentation and content) pseudo-news destination it has become in 2019.
It would be nice to have a media query like "@print" that a browser could prefer ("@accessible" or "@text"... Is this a thing?).
This runs counter to bring able to easily display ads, perform cro tests, collect analytics, etc.
I think offering full, text only, RSS feeds that a browser could check for first if in "text mode" is a better approach that would also use existing channels. If bandwidth was limited, check for /feed.xml, or something.
On Safari you can set individual domains to always open in reader mode. That helps me eliminate most of the noise when I visit news sites that are out of control. (I’m looking at you, mercurynews.com)
Also, it helps to never ever visit a local TV station site. The ads on those things get approved by the same type of people who approve shouting local car ads on television.
I use that and http://lite.cnn.com/en for a good chunk of my daily news. Very Raspberry Pi friendly, whereas CNN's regular site crashes it much too often, and the speed is unbearable.
I've built and been running https://dailypopulous.com/ for the last year or two for precisely the reasons mentioned in the article. It generates a static, downloadable "edition" every 4 hours from what's popular on social media as a snapshot. Small images, no video, summary content and no JS.
I like this. It got me to thinking about creating a text-only version of my website, but so much of what I publish relies on pictures that without them there wouldn't be a whole lot of interest left.
Publish it with lower-res versions of the pictures, perhaps clickable if someone really wants the higher-res version. The no-frills, no-JS, no-bloat reading experience is still useful even if your content is mostly picture-centric.
[+] [-] spectramax|7 years ago|reply
Advertisement in modern world is so insanely rotten to the core, it is disgusting. These people have made the web unbearable.
I really think there is a place for text only ads on a sites such as text.npr.org, even though they’re not as “eye catching”. Where is the innovation in advertisement? It’s the same bullshit banners, eye catching gifs and insanely long loading times with custom fonts and what not. Yes, it is “eye catching” but I am also convinced that there is a place for text only ads (such as on Google.com). Visual bandwidth of the human brain is obviously much higher than auditory (language and reading) pathways, but I might just click a text only ad if it’s relevant and “vetted” - I.e. no shady companies, no scams, etc.
May be we could see a growth in independent journalism with text only sites and ads: low startup costs, low bandwidth and server infrastructure and high click rates on their ads.
Just thinking about the advertisement industry, the people that work in it and the kind of dark patterns they employ makes me infuriated. You know, I don’t want to be friends with these kind of professionals.
[+] [-] okaleniuk|7 years ago|reply
Maybe it shouldn't be for the news sites only. I make http://wordsandbuttons.online in this spirit, too. It's not text only, it has interactive plots, and quizzes, and everything. But the core idea: give people only what they come for, - works well for it as well. Since the pages are in tenths of KB, I pay for the cheapest hosting possible and it still holds "slashdot effect".
[+] [-] stephen82|7 years ago|reply
Question: how are you producing the code, with a static website generator such as Hugo or Pelican, or are you typing it manually?
[+] [-] chacha2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1011_1101|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] growlist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zikzak|7 years ago|reply
This runs counter to bring able to easily display ads, perform cro tests, collect analytics, etc.
I think offering full, text only, RSS feeds that a browser could check for first if in "text mode" is a better approach that would also use existing channels. If bandwidth was limited, check for /feed.xml, or something.
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
Also, it helps to never ever visit a local TV station site. The ads on those things get approved by the same type of people who approve shouting local car ads on television.
[+] [-] deca6cda37d0|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksaj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] propter_hoc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meeb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
If you have time, maybe add a version that is news only, without the social media stuff.
[+] [-] bookofjoe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moreira|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irq-1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woofcat|7 years ago|reply