this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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British Problems

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It seems like nearly every regional newspaper website uses Reach. I swear that nobody who actually works at these places actually uses their own sites.

  • Usually loaded with an insane number of "partners" on the cookie banner (I've seen some well into the thousands)
  • You can't read the content because the page keeps jumping about as it's loading ads in
  • Ads overlay the content with a close button so small that even a tardigrade would get pissed off over it
  • Any scroll action on your phone that isn't perfectly straight swipes you to the next article
  • Because your device has to load 26TB of ads, it takes forever to go back to the previous article
  • There's an ad between each sentence.
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They don't use Reach; they are Reach. That's the name of the company that owns them all (plus The Mirror, The Daily Express and The Star). That's why they all have the same website.

Most of the ones that aren't Reach are Newsquest. Their website is also pretty terrible, but at least it doesn't do that annoying swipe/scroll thing that Reach does.

[–] hellothere 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sorry, but you appear to have made the same typo a few times.

It's spelt Retch.

Hope that helps!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Found the Private Eye reader

[–] hellothere 2 points 1 week ago

There are nearly eight dozen of us!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Other than the ads, there's also the issue of them posting local articles for other towns on all of their linked websites, without necessarily specifying what town it relates to.

Especially "fun" if they have an article about a really interesting local project or a shock workplace closure etc, and get everyone excited/worried but the newspaper website doesn't reveal it's actually from an unrelated town 300 miles away.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

uBlock + Firefox.

Problem solved.

🦜☠️🏴‍☠️

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

As you can imagine, I frequent a lot of similar news sites (or ad delivery sites that use news to space the ads out) and that makes it bearable.