Do news sites not realize that their UX is garbage, or do they not care?
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They're clueless.
Also, we're not the customers, their advertisers are their overlords, so everything is geared towards pleasing them. I think the readers/viewers are pretty much irrelevant now.
Advertising is no longer about getting eyeballs, it's about controlling the editorial content.
When DVR's happened, viewers could just skip the commercials, so stations and networks had to figure out another way to hold advertisers. They did that by letting the advertisers say what could appear in their newscasts and other shows.
This is how it works now. It's not about advertising a product to sell, it's about controlling and censoring content.
@Pat Right, but advertisers get less views when people hate the experience. Even from a pragmatic standpoint, they're incentived to do better.