Internet has become too slow - I can't open many websites (especially news)

[MrMagoo]

I personally use a HOSTs file(from SomeoneWhoCares). Combine that with uBlock and Ghostery and you've got a pretty decent way to speed things up. You can also use a user agent switcher on desktop to identify as mobile. Mobile pages generally have less junk in them, because phones can't handle all of that stuff.

If that's still not enough, your computer is a potato and you just need a new one.

 

[zigZag]

OP: What are the specs of the computer you're using to browse the web? What browser, Processor, Memory, HD etc....

 

[Mercenary]

OP: What are the specs of the computer you're using to browse the web? What browser, Processor, Memory, HD etc....

As I mentioned in my 2nd post (number 31 on page 2) this issue isn't linked to a specific computer or smartphone, but rather is an overall complaint that websites over the last 5 to 10 years are getting slower or harder to open regardless of what device I use or what country I am in.

Also, another important aspect of this....when I travel abroad where bandwidth and internet connections are weaker, no amount of modern devices, add-ons and script blockers is going to help me get access to the websites I want. So we live in a world where even in countries with men that have the relevant tech knowledge, still cannot access a lot of the information out there.

What does this mean? Most sites I know that provide important information are not the ones clinging to advertising-based revenue streams. The reason mainstream media sites are slow is that they're packed full of spyware, adware, and social media, which are their main revenue sources today. That they are dying is a positive in my opinion.

I'm talking mostly about various news websites both in English speaking countries and abroad. I have to get my mainstream information from more than 1 source and in different languages (even if it is horribly biased and manipulated) but if almost all news websites have such horrible load times, then that means I can't be properly informed about current events.

However, it isn't just the news. Very often I might be researching health information, cooking information, travel information, flight and hotel information....whatever...and the number of websites that have so much crap on them and so slow to load are becoming more and more each year. Somewhere between 30% to 60% of search engine results to my queries lead me to websites that have this issue.

Have you ever noticed that gmail still today has a button with the option when logging in to "use basic HTML for slow connections" ? Why do you think that is ?

There have been times where I was in a hotel in another country and tried to access their own booking website loyalty program and could not open the page in the computer of the lobby in the same hotel I was staying in. It's real ironic to have to go to reception and say..."I want to stay another night at your hotel, but your computer here can't open your own website."

While the established powers have not been able to undo net neutrality in a "de-jure" sense (by law) they are destroying it in a "de-facto" sense (in reality).

Net neutrality is about ISPs and/or governments blocking, rate limiting ('shaping'), or providing preferential access to certain resources. Is that what you had in mind? Nothing in this thread has demonstrated any interference of that nature.

I understand what you mean, and the onus is of course on websites to put LESS junk on their websites in order to get them to load faster....but it seems they're making internet subscribers pay for faster internet access and bigger bandwidth, rather than making the websites pay more for adding more shit to their pages.

If I was running an international business where clients clicked on my website from all over the world, then I want it simple so it loads fast regardless of their low bandwidth, outdated browser or lack of ad and script blocking software. If a potential client in China, Morocco or Brazil has to download a bunch of add-ons, update their browser every year and defrag their computer just to see my website then they will quickly lose patience and take their business elsewhere.

 

[DaveR]

There's no question that pages are growing in size and the amount of crapware: https://www.keycdn.com/support/the-growth-of-web-page-size/
In any kind of product development, one sure way to produce trash is to put accountants and marketing in charge rather than engineers and designers. I think that's what you're seeing on the news sites. Wikipedia doesn't suffer that kind of meddling, and it shows.

After saying that, I haven't seen the issues you're referring to. Can you give a specific example of a site which you have problems with?

I just tested a few major news sites on an 8-year-old laptop (2GHz Core2 duo, 2GB RAM) running Chrome. I used my phone's 2G so it would be plenty slow. WaPo, NY Times, FT and a few others all seem to be working fine, but load quite slowly - it takes about 30-40 seconds to load their front pages (lots of images). Article text is readable after about 10 seconds and the images download slowly after that. Wikipedia's mobile version is very useable and isn't much slower than on a new PC, to be honest.

Opera did a better job than Chrome on my 2G connection, probably because of its built-in ad blocker and Turbo feature (proxy with server-side compression and image downsampling)... it's popular in the third world because of those features.

 

[Valentine]

Why has the internet gotten slow: bloated websites with copious use of scripts, analytics and ads.

Unfortunately this isn't a trend that is going to reverse any time soon. People want shiny websites and the ability to maximise the money they can get out of readers.

Most likely we'll see a proliferation of native ad-blocking within browsers (which is currently being implemented in Brave and Firefox) and of course increased computer/internet speed to help mitigate this.

Other than that though you'll need to actively get savvy about how to speed it up yourself:

Speeding Up Webpage Loading

Get a decent browser: Firefox, or Opera.
Download ublock origin and either privacy badger or disconnect.

This is the 80/20 method.

A level above that: NoScript.
Another level above that: uMatrix.

You can get most of these as addons in Firefox for Android also.

The real booster however would be setting up a Pi-Hole - which is a Raspberry Pi that basically blocks ads from even being downloaded to your network.

Advantages overview
For me the biggest advantage is ad blocking on all devices on the network (phones, tablets, all computers). It blocks in app ads on iOS, android and WP.
Beside that, it caches DNS queries, which makes DNS lookups faster (for example once you lookup the address for reddit.com (which may take 50ms) from your desktop, the Pi will remember it, and next time you ask for resdit.com from your phone, the DNS request will only take 2ms, because its already cached on the Pi).
The third advantage is faster loading times of web pages, because it doesn't have to load all the ads (and lookup their addresses again!). The Pi is actually also a small web server, which serves a very tiny blank web page, and this tiny web page (lets say 1 byte) is loaded instead of 100kB ad banner on your phone, actual deciding what is ad and what isn't is already processed on the Pi, leaving your phones resources to display the actual content instead of wasting it on ads.

 

[churros]

As others have said, uBlock Origin and Disconnect together take care of a lot of the issues.

But wait – do both these add-ons do exactly the same thing, or are they doing something different?

 

[DaveR]

As others have said, uBlock Origin and Disconnect together take care of a lot of the issues.

But wait – do both these add-ons do exactly the same thing, or are they doing something different?

They do the same thing, but use different lists by default. In other words, there's a lot of overlap. They both eat quite a lot of resources, so it would probably be better to use uBlock Origin and check the three Disconnect lists in uBlock preferences (Basic, Malvertising, Malware). It won't cover 100% of what Disconnect and uBlock Origin together would, but it will get very close to it.

If you need more comprehensive blocking than what a single add-on provides, a better solution would be to use uMatrix, which blocks almost everything by default. However, it requires a high level of technical knowledge to understand what needs to be unblocked on each site.

 

[weambulance]

The real booster however would be setting up a Pi-Hole - which is a Raspberry Pi that basically blocks ads from even being downloaded to your network.

Advantages overview
For me the biggest advantage is ad blocking on all devices on the network (phones, tablets, all computers). It blocks in app ads on iOS, android and WP.
Beside that, it caches DNS queries, which makes DNS lookups faster (for example once you lookup the address for reddit.com (which may take 50ms) from your desktop, the Pi will remember it, and next time you ask for resdit.com from your phone, the DNS request will only take 2ms, because its already cached on the Pi).
The third advantage is faster loading times of web pages, because it doesn't have to load all the ads (and lookup their addresses again!). The Pi is actually also a small web server, which serves a very tiny blank web page, and this tiny web page (lets say 1 byte) is loaded instead of 100kB ad banner on your phone, actual deciding what is ad and what isn't is already processed on the Pi, leaving your phones resources to display the actual content instead of wasting it on ads.

I got around to trying out this Pi-hole thing yesterday, with one of my spare RPis that's been gathering dust. Pretty minimal effort to get it going since I already had Raspbian installed on it, and loading times immediately improved at a handful of sites I frequent which usually take 30-40 seconds to become usable. The pages still load a bunch of shit for a long time if I check what the network is doing, but whereas before the tabs would just be frozen, now I can start scrolling and reading right away.

The improvement I'm seeing is on my laptop. On my tablet, I can't tell the difference so far, but I also never had the loading issues with the pages in question on my Android devices. I think some news sites look cleaner, as in less cluttered with bullshit all over the place, but I'm too lazy to switch my DNS settings back to check.

I don't see any downsides so far.

 

[weambulance]

^

Okay, I found a downside. My pihole is blocking the google analytics admin page by default. I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on when I was trying to set up analytics on a new site, and I ended up using my cell phone hot spot to do it. I didn't get any kind of useful error message; the page just wouldn't load at all.

Theoretically I'll be able to whitelist the google analytics site, but I haven't tried that yet. It seems odd that the actual analytics.google.com site is entirely blocked by default, since there's probably a fair bit of overlap between nerds who build websites with analytics and nerds who use piholes.

 

[Valentine]

Google analytics runs as a 3rd party script on a ton of websites and tracks you, I'm surprised they'd block it when you're accessing it as the 1st party site though. There should be a way to block it 3rd party on random sites and allow it when accessing 1st party to see your own analytics.

 

[DaveR]

^

Okay, I found a downside. My pihole is blocking the google analytics admin page by default. I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on when I was trying to set up analytics on a new site, and I ended up using my cell phone hot spot to do it. I didn't get any kind of useful error message; the page just wouldn't load at all.

Theoretically I'll be able to whitelist the google analytics site, but I haven't tried that yet. It seems odd that the actual analytics.google.com site is entirely blocked by default, since there's probably a fair bit of overlap between nerds who build websites with analytics and nerds who use piholes.

You can use a browser-based VPN (technically a proxy server) to get around it. Maybe set up a second browser specifically for testing or working on sites that are blacklisted. Opera comes with its own VPN for free, otherwise use Zenmate, Tunnelbear, or another free one.

 

[Valentine]

Another simple way could be to whitelist Google Analytics and then use a browser-based extension like uMatrix set to selectively block Google Analytics globally but enabled when you go on the site itself.

 

[RexImperator]

Recently I've noticed a change in the ads on sites. They've been redesigned so they're now harder to quickly scroll past on my phone. It's slowed things down so much a lot of the web simply bogs down and is just useless.

 

[LeeEnfield303]

You sure it's not the Russians? Apparently everything else is. :angel: