Hacker News Reader

Comment by infinityplus1 | Hacker News Reader

Why can't they just give a simple setting which lets users disable AMP? This is the most annoying about being forced to use AMP.

View on HN

You being able to opt out of AMP would defeat the purpose of AMP.

The best way to opt-out is to switch to another search provider like DuckDuckGo.

You'd also have to switch to another internet, where people weren't constantly posting AMP link landmines to dodge on forums and social media.

There are browser add-ons that do exactly this for you.

Not for mobile.

Firefox Android doesn't do AMP so that's the mobile fix.

Firefox Mobile can do this.

Check out Firefox focus for the ultimate zen browsing experience too.

Firefox focus has an emphasis on privacy. That means no history and no bookmarks. No history means no cache. No cache means I have to refetch all resources every time I open it--if this is, say, a list of articles from a limited selection of websites, this is incredibly inefficient and will eat my limited data. No bookmarks or history means I can't use it as a primary browser to open common sites without typing them in--I can save shortcuts to pages in the launcher, but this causes usability issues (can't see entire title or URL; no horizontal view; my folders on Nova launcher are hierarchically organized drawer groups, which doesn't support shortcuts; can't search shortcuts only, results include deep phone search).

Firefox focus is a very good browser for opening links on WiFi or unlimited data when using another app. It's not very good at all at being a primary browser.

Yes for Firefox mobile.

How do you get AMP pages? Do they appear in Google search results when you look stuff up on a mobile phone?

Yes, being AMP also grants you priority ranking in certain parts of their UI

Who's being forced to use AMP? The user? Remember, the user is the product.

Basically, Google is penalizing webmasters who do NOT support AMP (also by rewarding competitors who DO support it); if you depend on Google search results for a significant portion of your traffic, not having AMP will impact your business.

Problem here is twofold. First Google being anticompetitive. Second being companies thinking they need Google for their income.

The companies are mostly right though.

And the Department of Justice is investigating whether this results in higher prices for consumers, if so their business conduct will deserve antitrust restraint under the current consumer welfare standard.

And the publishers are somewhat coerced into implementing it, at the cost of being downranked if they don't.

The product is being forced to use AMP.

Is it? I was under the impression that AMP is opt-in.

It is for the website developer. But if a website offers the AMP page, the user cannot skip it

The user is the product. The user doesn't get a say in how the product works. Don't like it? Don't use the site.

Or, you know, ask the site to stop using Google.

Opt in like HTTP/S was? Look what happened when Google decided to threaten the ad/ranking tap if websites refused to move to HTTPS.

I don't think so. I personally don't use sites that don't have HTTPS. I don't have any interest whatsoever in making it easy for third parties to see my traffic.

I've recently started using this[0] setting and haven't noticed any limitation to my browsing experience.

[0] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/03/27/firefox-76-will-...

I personally don't use sites that don't have HTTPS.

Then you have chosen to exclude yourself from knowing a large chunk of interesting information that was posted on web sites before the web went fully corporate.

Another problem is that you can't even find those websites anymore. They're at the absolute bottom of search-engine rankings for whatever reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com