Comment by 65

I worked at big newspapers as a software engineer. Please do not blame the engineers for this mess. As the article says news is in a predicament because of the ads business model. Subscriptions alone usually cannot cover all costs and ads will invariably make their way in.

For every 1 engineer it seems like there are 5 PMs who need to improve KPIs somehow and thus decide auto playing video will improve metrics. It does. It also makes people hate using your website.

I would constantly try to push back against the bullshit they'd put on the page but no one really cares what a random engineer thinks.

I don't think there's any real way to solve this unless we either get less intrusive ad tech or news gets a better business model. Many sites don't even try with new business models, like local classifieds or local job boards. And good luck getting PMs to listen to an engineer talking about these things.

For now, the bloat remains.