Rubenerd

Recommended For You links are the latest in a proud tradition of web annoyances. They don’t interrupt us like Web 1.0 popups or CSS lightboxes asking for newsletter subscriptions, but they’re just as disrepectful and tasteless.

Taboola and Outbrain were the most common sources of these, but there are a few new services to add to the blocklists. Today I found out about Revcontent on an enterprise tech site which will remain nameless.

No, not that Rev. Which reminds me, RIP Iomega. Click click click! That needs a post.

But I digress. Revcontent’s site purports to believe in “user experience”, “trust” and “people driven technology”, advertised with imagery of Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s the dream he had in mind!

It bears (bares?) repeating though that these services are symptoms of a larger issue; that online monetisation and race-to-the-bottom journalism are not sustainable for the services we want or expect. I’m not smart enough to offer an alternative, so I just pay for news sites I read.