It would be interesting to hear what people outside of the HN bubble (or outside of tech in general) think about this. I bet a lot of people like seeing the news right after starting the browser because that's exactly why the opened the browser in the first place.
> I bet a lot of people like seeing the news right after starting the browser because that's exactly why the opened the browser in the first place.
Does anyone, besides maybe the elderly (out of habit), use a desktop computer to read (clickbait, low-quality) news instead of their phone?
As an anecdote, I know a non-technical Windows user who unlocks their machine by clicking the "like what you see?" prompt on the lockscreen backgrounds as a way to dismiss the (stupid) lockscreen and get to the password prompt.
Doing so opens a Bing search for some bullshit (in Edge obviously) which she just leaves in the background as she moves onto her actual work-related application. I bet this looks great in metrics and "engagement", while being totally fake engagement and not actually representative of the usefulness of this "feature". I wonder how many other useless features are misused by non-technical users where all the "engagement" is actually just accidental clicks.
Even if the main purpose of people powering on their desktop PCs is not reading the news, I'm sure many (if not most) will still go through the news before, during and/or after they do the main activity they set out to do.
I wonder how many of the clicks on online ads in general are just accidental clicks. Especially clicks from phones where it is extremely easy to accidentally load the ads. This question will probably never be answered because it is a vital business interest of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and every company that makes phone apps that it not be answered.
My phone has recently started to randomly detect taps in a specific segment of the screen, the placement is just right to trigger ads if im not careful
My normal tolerance for ads is basically 0, so I expect a change on what gets shown to me until I replace my phone, which will be interesting, because ads I get shown are targeted to me pretty accurately
From the location and other problems, I'm guessing the battery has swollen, so it will have to be pretty soon
