as opposed to trying desperately to find your article as you scroll and having pop ups and other things interrupt you as you read

Joke’s on the websites, as I run Cromite, so no pop ups or anything.

…But also, most of the written web is trash now.

:(

the YouTube experience is far less annoying on average.

Are you sure about that?

I opened YT links without premium on a new browsers and holy moly! I got 1-3 minute unskippable ads every time.

I immediately clicked them off, of course.

GN is indeed a rare outlier. They’re like an oldschool tech site that rose at the exact right time to grow up on YouTube.

And our site was like the opposite. Uh… let’s just say many Lemmy users wouldn’t like its editor, but he did not hold back gut punches, and refused to watch his site turn into a clickbait farm.

I briefly wrote articles for an oldschool PC hardware outlet (HardOCP if anyone remembers)… And I’m surprised any such sites are still alive. Mine shut down, and not because they wanted to.

Why?

Who reads written text over their favorite YouTube personality, or the SEO garbage that pops up first on their search, or first party articles/recs on steam, and so on? No one, except me apparently, as their journalistic integrity aside, I’m way too impatient for youtube videos, and am apparently the only person on the planet that believes influencers as far as I can throw them.

And that was before Discord, Tiktok, and ChatGPT really started eating everything. And before a whole generation barely knew what a website is.

They cited Eurogamer as an offender here, and thats an outstanding/upstanding site. I’m surprised they can even afford to pay that much as a business.

And I’m not sure what anyone is supposed to do about it.

Bread.