Shubham Bose delivers a devastating critique of modern web publishing in a Hacker News essay, exposing how publishers like The New York Times and The Guardian prioritize ad revenue over user experience. Bose details how visiting the NYT homepage triggers 422 network requests and delivers a staggering 49 megabytes of data, taking two minutes to settle. He argues this aggressive monetization strategy, driven by viewability and time-on-page metrics, fundamentally degrades the reading experience. Only 11 percent of screen space on The Guardian's mobile site typically displays article text, forcing readers to scroll through intrusive ads and modals.

Bose contends that these practices, which would be unacceptable in print, are not only adversarial but also unsustainable, driving users away despite publishers' attempts to dig themselves deeper into a hole of reader-hostility.