"24 ads and other trackers from The Verge attempted to load on that page alone; usually much more if those are allowed to succeed."

None attempted to load with the browser I am using. I was able to read the text of the article and follow any links on the page no problem.

One could hope that "web developers" will stop accepting money in return for putting this garbage into pages. IMHO this is unlikely to happen.

Alternatively, for recreational web use, one can stop using the browsers that auto-load the garbage by default. I did this and has worked better and better for over 20 years.

The popular browsers supplied by so-called "tech" companies have many "features" but they do not allow users to disable auto-loading.

I use ad blocking for decades thus am completely out of touch with how the internet is supposed to look like.

But the other day I used a clean browser to search for something in a store and the first search result was for a competing store! Very sneaky. It's all so fascinating.

Amazon also has an ad network. A fast growing one.

I’m well aware of that and that’s my employer (AWS). But I’m not tsk tsking on a moral high ground and clutching my pearls about what the web developers are doing

It does reflect badly on the trust you can put in AWS though. Also true for browsers like Chrome and Edge.

ublock origin. i refuse to visit any website that tries to make it difficult for me.

The way internet is made, you either go onlyfans style paid only model where every "consumer" pays or like wikipedia where everything is open. Ads don't work, tracking doesn't work. What i mean by not working is that with tools like ublock origin, these "one trick pony" fail so then they make the appeal "but think about the creator".

If you are so concerned about your revenues, go do onlyfans. otherwise assume you will not get any revenue ads.

Amen brother. Also, windows, especially server, used to ship with everything enabled by default but MS learned it was a security nightmare. I wish a basic browser would ship with this stuff opt-in or add-in only. Keeping up with this kind of bloat is exhausting.

uBlock origin says it blocked 16. Firefox may have blocked more before uBlock got to run?

But that's expected from a website that derives all of its revenue from advertising. That is NOT expected from one's operating system.

That is unacceptable. When your operating system can't be trusted, it's time to move to a different platform.

This is such a weird gotcha. It's like telling a communist that they should just stop using money. We're all subject to forces beyond our control. The journalists writing these articles do not control what executives and business people at Vox Media do.

Well yes, but they also could write another article - theverge leaks whatever you're doing on their site to all interested parties.