I wanted to try reader mode, so I went to a random Atlantic article (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/better-of...) and hit ctrl-alt-r. The graph related to the story was dropped. Would that be a bug, or is that how reader mode is supposed to work?
I don't have the equivalent Evernote plug-in anymore (I'm trying to get away from Evernote), so I have nothing to compare it to.
You can report a bug in Firefox Reader Mode here. Identifying the "important" content on a page is a hard problem. :) FWIW, Safari's Reader Mode doesn't include the article's graphs or pictures either.
I've noticed this behavior with things like Pocket as well.
Is there any evidence you've found of any publishers intentionally trying to load assets in a way that would break with this because it is stripping some ad impressions?
I don't think so. Medium, for example, loads images on demand. So if you never scroll down, I don't think it ever renders the bottom of an article. I don't think it's malicious, just conflicting goals.
I don't have the equivalent Evernote plug-in anymore (I'm trying to get away from Evernote), so I have nothing to compare it to.