Intentionally making sites shit to boost profit is pretty routine.
And not just internet rags that bury a tiny slither of content under dozens of ads and popups.
The classic one is insurance sites. It's an open secret that they make the claims process as difficult as possible. The ideal insurance claim platform for an insurer is basically to register all zeros on Lighthouse, with a session timeout 50% less than the observed time taken to complete the process (which of course has umpteen pages with no progress indicator and a super slow page load).
Similar with government websites related to welfare and services. The harder it is to use, the more people will give up, and the greater the cost savings.
It’s similar to the repairs line on an appliance extended warranty I once got. I set a stopwatch the moment the hold music and “our lines are busy af” messages began: the call connected at the stroke of 30 minutes—not a second more or less. I did this because it was a third call to this service and I suspected there was a mandatory hold time to make people give up filing claims.
And not just internet rags that bury a tiny slither of content under dozens of ads and popups.
The classic one is insurance sites. It's an open secret that they make the claims process as difficult as possible. The ideal insurance claim platform for an insurer is basically to register all zeros on Lighthouse, with a session timeout 50% less than the observed time taken to complete the process (which of course has umpteen pages with no progress indicator and a super slow page load).
Similar with government websites related to welfare and services. The harder it is to use, the more people will give up, and the greater the cost savings.