It’s as if everyone designed their website around the KPI of irritating your visitors and getting them to leave ASAP.
For every 1 engineer it seems like there are 5 PMs who need to improve KPIs somehow and thus decide auto playing video will improve metrics. It does. It also makes people hate using your website.
I would constantly try to push back against the bullshit they'd put on the page but no one really cares what a random engineer thinks.
I don't think there's any real way to solve this unless we either get less intrusive ad tech or news gets a better business model. Many sites don't even try with new business models, like local classifieds or local job boards. And good luck getting PMs to listen to an engineer talking about these things.
For now, the bloat remains.
I’m afraid someone who wants to support professional journalism and agrees to pay ~$300/yr for an NYT subscription still gets most (all?) of this nonsense?
You should probably tell someone so the knowledge doesn't die with you.
Bear in mind that any cut that reduces their CPM or rate of conversation to paid will have to also include an equivalent reduction in their staff.
I mean, they can absolutely try. That doesn't mean they should succeed.