Norvin My adbocker reports four blocked ads on every page I have looked at.
I use two adblockers which target different things they show about 7 hits per page, some of those are gifs with rotation. In long threads there are adverts even between the threads, which is fairly awful. It’s also super difficult to navigate on a mobile (even a desktop) as screen space on a smartphone is precious and it’s cluttered with read this and that thread, which is usually complete garbage onlinking.
Obviously it’s not going to be a great experience, because it is not done with that in mind…it’s done to make the most money possible from google and others ad revenue, site referrals (so they own the back and forward links (helps rankings). The recommendation for posts some, over 7 years ago brings those back to the attention of the webcrawlers, raising rankings when people click on them to be greeted with “ooooh that looks fantastic, for something that was obsolete 5 years previous”.
What will be surprising is if any long term members decide to stick with it, especially after public statements about greedy owners, corporate monetisation, freedom of speech, far too many adverts, owners who know nothing about coffee. I guess there are 3 types of people who will stay.
- Those who want to use the site to make money or promote their businesses, hidden or otherwise
- Those who want to sit on the BIG forum for whatever reason, even though most of the knowledge has left and those running it don’t care about coffee. Or perhaps it’s just inertia for some
- Those who join and never realise there is something better and completely non commercial with zero adverts and a completely clean look.
