I feel like the worst offenders of this are pretty much every mainstream news website.

A little while back I visited one of the bigger ones without my ad blocker on and it was completely unusable. Autoplay videos, banners, ads between every paragraph of the article, sponsored links, popups, and the list goes on.

If the news industry is in fact struggling and laying off writers, I'm not sure making people want to leave your site as quickly as possible is really the best strategy.

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themafia 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They don't care about return visitors or "loyal viewers."

It's a shotgun strategy. Every once in a while a story will hit. So they maximize value for the rarest event.

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analogpixel 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh hi, I noticed you closed the live video window I opened up, let me open that up again for you.

Oh, looks like you closed that live video window again, let me get that back up for you again.

Ooops, looks like your clumsy fingers accidentally closed that live video again, let me just get that opened back up for you.

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afavour 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> If the news industry is in fact struggling and laying off writers, I'm not sure making people want to leave your site as quickly as possible is really the best strategy.

It definitely isn’t but I think it’s all they have left. Subscriptions just don’t work any more. And less tech savvy users just battle through it, presumably through gritted teeth.

	▲	wolvoleo 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I kinda see the opposite, all sites seem to be going to subscription models. Obviously it doesn't work because I'm not going to subscribe to every news site I see a link from on HN. So I tend to use archive.ph . I wish there was a plugin to open a page in that more easily though. Luckily most HN posts have a reader contributing a link in the comments.
	▲	wat10000 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Declining industries can get into a death spiral where they can’t find a way to stop bleeding customers, so they focus on extracting more money from the customers who remain. Which then drives away even more of them. It’s not a good strategy, but there may not be a good strategy.