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Comment by lobster_johnson | Hacker News Reader

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load.

These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typically I've seen a single newspaper use 3-4 different vendors for the exact same thing, such as analytics. They don't actually use all of them; who knows why they have multiple overlapping ones.

Scripts are often badly written, and it's common to see lots of nonsensical errors spewed to the console. It's very annoying to debug your own stuff when you have that crap loaded, which typically comes from a header/footer combo provided by the customer.

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The worst type of ad on newspaper sites are the disgusting "chumboxes" (by scumsuckers like "taboola" or "outbrain") that orbit at the bottom of pages and serve up images meant to be as simultaneously repulsive and fascinating as possible:

https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b...

As long as these pages have ads that display utterly gross images (if you doubt me, click the above link) that make goatse look like pure mindbleach, i'll keep blocking JS and ads.

It made me sad when boingboing put one of those ad boxes on the site.

I work in digital media. I get why publishers do it. But, sheesh, if you're resorting these ads that insult your audience in exchange for pennies, I think you need to reexamine your approach.

It's less then pennies per view. All of those trackers also pay less than pennies per view. Basically, if you have a legit business with any ability whatsoever to make decent revenue, there's no reason to have chumboxes or paying trackers on your site.

Let's not beat around the bush: some publishers do that kind of thing because they are scumbags.

I don't really agree. I don't think that's fair.

It's presenting your audience with misinformation, false hope, and scams. It's incredibly scummy. Those type of ads prey on people's desperation and gullibility, and there are actually people who will fall for them and waste time and money in the process.

Probably some exec is standing in the middle of the war room screaming at the top of his lungs that revenue is down and so people get desperate not to lose their jobs and start sticking this crap at the bottom of the page. Some money is better than no money they think.

And they wonder why people believe fake news when they link to it in their ads.

You must be in an NSFW ad bubble. I only see tame clickbait from the Taboola links.

> You must be in an NSFW ad bubble.

No, i get the trypophobia-triggering (DON'T GOOGLE THAT WORD) chumbox images when browsing in incognito mode, without pre-existing cookies or anything else. This has nothing to do with my ad bubble, https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b... has mentioned that the chumboxes very often carry those images.

Also i'm not the only one, there's lots of other people who attest to the fact that chumboxes specifically use those kinds of images: http://ask.metafilter.com/247987/How-can-I-avoid-seeing-rela...

It's sad that I know immediately which ads are "trypophobia" tiggerers... now that i know what that phobia means...

Totally anecdotal, but I think I see worse stuff in incognito mode than otherwise. Perhaps the default is bad, but with tracking you can get into a less bad bubble?

That makes sense; you'll get the cheapest, crappiest ads, when the prospective revenue is lowest (i.e. no other related tracking data)

The thing that finally made me switch to scorched-earth adblocking was a Taboola ad for "Top 10 Most Gruesome Tortures in History", with illustration.

I left that article more confused than when I went in. I guess that's the logical conclusion of tabloid content.

> Chumbox

Had no idea there was a name for this shit! But of course there is. It's really sad that the most rotten apples have spoiled it for everybody. I was thinking recently about trying to set up a passive income website that makes money on Adsense, but got discouraged when I remembered that Adblockers are a thing.

You're decrying the amount of crap on the internet and then saying that it impedes your ability to set up a 'passive income' site whose sole purpose is to make money through Adsense?

Yeah, Adsense ads are generally very tolerable, but they are blocked by adblockers that are adopted by people to get rid of "Chumboxes". There's a big difference.

I frankly don't mind ads as long as they don't use up more CPU/network as the content i'm already viewing (battery isn't free) -- so no video ads if i'm reading text.

Proper honest advertisements for actual products and services is something I have no issue with -- hell, I've actually managed to save money on car insurance because of a bloody online car insurance ad.

I despise stuff that autoplays video/audio, or moves around on the page, or displays creepy, pseudo-anatomical images engineered to trigger revulsion/fascination (trypophobia stuff or shit like those weird toenail images in those "heart attack" ads or whatever else).

My browser blocks JS by default because I don't enjoy seeing those kinds of shock images. Hell, goatse is less distressing for me to look at than the images in your average chumbox.

I nearly got tricked into closing that article after the first paragraph; the chumbox subconsciously indicated to me the end of the article and I had to consciously think "wait, this is an article about these ad grids." In fact it happened for every example they showed.

It's crazy to think I probably exercise way, way more restraint on clicking that kind of junk than most, and even I can recall a time in the past year I just couldn't help myself. They're so psychologically predatory.

I work in IT for TRONC (parent company of LA Times), and can vouch for this. Some of the ad scripts are horrendously bad. Open firebug or chrome dev tools and load the page, watch all those errors pour in. We pay very close attention to our own code, but all those js bugs that are happening are related to external ad networks with terrible javascript.

We have something in the neighborhood of 30+ ad partners. Some of those partners have decent code, others are really terrible. The IT team only adds the code to allow ad networks to inject their advertisements.

Because of the performance issues and the disreputable nature of some of the ad networks we have discussed the possibility of building our own ad server. However this takes time and money, I don't know the ROI of such an endeavor. Ultimately sale's job is to generate revenue so we partner with nearly every single ad network that can generate money. It's not desirable to deal with all these different ad providers, but you don't need me to tell you about the challenges the newspaper industry is dealing with. We need to bring in money on the digital side to make up the downward trajectory of print ads.

The LA Times popup says: "To read today's stories, please turn off your ad blocker or subscribe". That "or" implies a subscription should allow you to browse ad-free. Is that intended to be true?

I actually purchased a subscription because I do want to support the paper but not deal with the nightmarish ads that make the site basically unusable. However after logging in, the site immediately demands that I disable blocking third party cookies. I've been in touch with the subscription department without luck, so at this point I am looking to cancel my subscription. Pity - I really wanted to support the paper, but they make it basically impossible to do so.

One data point to the contrary; I subscribed, and I can now view the site without ads. ObDetails: I use ghostery, and I don't block Google Analytics. All other trackers blocked, according to Ghostery. I do see Ad Council ads.. things like Smokey the Bear. I don't find those problematic.

I am very grateful that you're honest and open. I'd give you a respectful bow in person on that basis alone.

That being said, I believe the media companies should start accepting the inevitable fact that people don't care about their financial struggles or hardships in finding ways to monetize content. As long as the said content is visibly free (even if it comes with strings attached as invisible tracking) then the people will continue to believe it's free and the more technical users like myself will go the extra mile to actively impede your tracking. You can't escape from that.

I would actually pay for good journalism. But as a possible consumer of the theoretical good journalism, I can't trust anyone. Every month there are news about very shady ads or nasty ransomware snuck through ad networks. How can I trust anyone who is after making money in the industry?

Both the ad and publisher industry have repeteadly shown their profits are their most important priority, not the readers safety. This is never gonna change, they must make money.

I can understand their motives but I have zero sympathy for them due to the methods they employ.

If they are smart business people, they have to sit and actively think of new and non-intrusive ways to monetize content, like right now. The current publishing and monetization models golden days are long behind them, all of the companies are fighting over scraps (obviously I can't prove this but I believe it's a legit theory, judging by the desperate methods) and the bean-counters should stop trying to beat this game and rather look for a new game.

You are writing a lot of stuff about wanting to pay for good journalism. Why not just simply subscribe to the Economist? Nobody's going to track you when you're reading a PDF. Probably especially not when you go completely offline. You could also listen to the ad free CDs.

There's also still physical newspapers. You could go up to your nearest little shop and, for just a few dollars really, try out a couple of the newspapers. You can get a different one every day, see how they compare, then you can subscribe to that one!

There, now you can pay for good journalism, and support that radical new monetization model.

Whatever one thinks of the Economist, they can't be the newspaper for the whole Earth. A broad view is important, but far from enough if one wishes to keep abreast of what's happening around them.

As for physical newspapers, I hear they were decent once, but nowadays they're all so shitty around here that I believe one is better informed by not reading them, as at least it's easier to keep an open mind on issues, than after having been fed heavily distorted facts.

You know, I am actively considering it for a while now. I'll definitely try out several -- but as another sub-poster adequately put it, I don't want to put myself in a bubble.

Thank you for replying. I'm the author of the article and have felt bad sniping at the engineers at the LA Times. It helps to know you understand the technical problem. It must be very frustrating to see the ad networks' code wrecking your website.

Your ad sales and IT team are killing your company. They are taking your good product, the journalism and your well written Javascript, and they are smearing a thick paste of shit all over it. Some of this shit is visible, like the grocery circular popover and the auto-loading video ads. Some of it is invisible, like the 10 megabytes/minute I blogged about. But that shit has a smell. Readers don't like getting shit on their hands when reading the newspaper. They don't like smelling shit. They will stop going to your website.

The ROI on cleaning up the ads tech mess will not be immediate. It will probably be negative in the short term. But in the long term it's the only way to save the newspaper. I'm anxious about the future of the newspaper business too and don't know what the solution is. But I'm sure it's not this ad escalation.

> They will stop going to your website.

Exactly. Ever since the LA Times started blocking ad blockers, I do not visit it. If I accidentally click on a LAT link, I'm quickly reminded that I don't want to be there and close the tab.

This might be worst in the news industry, but it is not uncommon on other sites too. And even without a tag manager, as a web developer, I still get requests to blindly add all sorts of scripts. Often they're requested by a marketing partner of the client, or because the client has seen something at a conference that they believe they must have.

Wherever possible, I make it clear that this cruft comes at a cost, but I cannot recall a single client being swayed by those arguments. In the case of overlap between trackers (Analytics, Facebook, etc), from the perspective of the client, they solve their "problem" in a quick request. Either it appeases the marketing company or it gives them that little extra feature they think they need but will never use.

Increasingly, it can be miserable developing for anything other than my own projects because of how much time is spent implementing bad ideas requested by other people.

So true it hurts. All of your comment.

That's why I am thinking actively about starting my own small business lately. Or simply refuse to do web development at all and go into data science / A.I. / pattern extraction areas.

It seems like either of those would be excruciatingly hard to transition to (work inertia can be a blessing and a curse) but I want to do either -- or both -- because web development is in my eyes in its worst decline ever. I don't buy the optimistic BS from inexperienced JS devs or the promises of new tech. People still have to use user agent sniffing for their website to work best. Just lol.

> who knows why they have multiple overlapping ones.

Different ad networks use different provider's numbers to determine how much to charge for ads based on which traffic tier you're in. If you don't use them all, then you can't sell on that network, or you get a really bad CPM. And none of them seem to trust Google's numbers except Google, even though those are far more accurate than any other provider.

+1 on this.

I'm dealing with Ensighten right now. A wonderful tag-manager (sarcasm) that lets anyone add any random 3rd-party script to all the pages.

Am finding services being loaded twice. From different URLs too so its not just a cache hit.

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