Semafor, a global news publication that launched in late 2022, originally focussed on publishing e-mail newsletters. The rise of the newsletter was another strategy for building loyal audiences without relying on social media: rather than try to get readers to visit your Web site, you deliver your content straight to their in-boxes. But over time Semafor’s site has become more important. “It actually felt like a slightly counterintuitive choice to say, ‘We’re going to invest in building a Web page,’ ” Ben Smith, the co-founder of Semafor, told me. Smith was the long-running editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, a publication built to distribute content through social media. “We were convinced that home pages were dead. In fact, they were just resting,” he said. (The New Yorker launched a redesigned home page in late 2023, having reached a similar conclusion.)
Home pages? Can we please have the
⟨blink⟩tag and the “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” .gif again? Those were of utmost importance!Okay, serious now. I might be wrong but I think that the whole internet is going full circle, and that what the link describes towards homepages is part of a bigger process, of re-decentralisation. It isn’t just about getting news from homepages instead of social media; it’s also about how we find content (again, through human recommendation) and who owns it (individuals or small groups, as the ad “industry” is going kaput). It don’t think that’ll be exactly the same as the 90s/00s internet but similar in spirit.
Well yes, social media sucks. But so does Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed News did not suck.
Indeed they are, but every single site wants my email and birthday before I can view content now. I don’t knock them for trying to make money from ads but I don’t need them selling my email address on the side too.
Block both javascript and CSS. Most of those nags are implemented via some combination of the two.
How bad does this break websites in general?
The New Yorker launched a redesigned home page in late 2023, having reached a similar conclusion.
Oh boy let’s check it out.
newyorker.com attempts to load js and frames from eight third party domains. Among them;
“conde.digital” – I am assuming that means conde as in conde nast AKA reddit DNA… and we all know what happens to anything reddit touches.
“condenast.digital” above confirmed. I can almost feel the bile welling in my throat.
“cookielaw.org” - probably to serve cookie consent notices to the plebs who fail to block cookies and other trash.
“doubleclick.net” - known malware
“googletagmanager.com” - so that google can keep track of all their cattle.
And yet all of their articles are perfectly readable in plain HTML formatting, as expected. Not that I would ever spend any time reading articles from whatever this place is.
