They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds, from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than 500 requests to 34.
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Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads removed. The site seemed very fast, so I did a performance audit. How fast the internet could be without all the junk! 
5.2MB → 500KBpic.twitter.com/xwSqqsQR3s
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To the people saying they've had the same fast experience for years because they use ad blockers like uBlock Origin: With uBlock enabled, the performance score improves from 3 to 11/100. 37 JS files are still loaded and loading time is 21sec. The main JS file alone is 399KB.pic.twitter.com/k1jbuEI3Ue
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The Verge shows a tracking-consent message when visiting the site from the EU. Most people will click "I Accept" to make it go away, but if you don't and hide the message via CSS, you won't be tracked and the site is way faster: 32 vs 5 secs load time 61 vs 2 JS files 2 vs 1 MBpic.twitter.com/Wd3ZFj9pNu
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What tool are you using to check the website performance?
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Lighthouse. It’s in Chrome‘s dev tools in the „audit“ tab.
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I found the result interesting until you mentioned lighthouse. We've found it to be amazingly inaccurate for even simple tests. Especially if a site supports mobile responsive layout
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Lighthouse runs the test at 3G speeds, to simulate how it would perform in the real world. You can simply open dev tools on the network tab and watch the page never finish loading because tracking scripts keep coming in.
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Except even when you turn off throttling, or compare what it's doing against an actual mobile in 3g its still wildly inaccurate
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It's not supposed to mimic every single mobile device, it just simulates network speed (and some CPU throttling). It's an indication tool and good starting point. Best is still to do actual device tests, but you can't argue its value because an optimized site is always better.
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I've found I can vary the results significantly depending on the other programs I have open. Guess my PC isn't powerful enough for it. That said, it's still a great tool for reminding you of good practices.
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So run the audit through a few others and you’ll still see a major difference. All the tracking pixels and advertisement code blocks seriously slow down a website’s performance. That’s an undeniable fact. I suggest: Nibbler, Seositecheckup, seoptimer, woorank, & nu HTML checker.
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I have one word for you: uBlock
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is there any way one of you brilliant coders out there could cobble together a Firefox extension that auto-hides/closes GDPR pop-ups without agreeing to the terms? Or redirects users to the alternate/less-tracked versions of various websites? Would be incredible.
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Not really GDP-specific, but I recently got to know uMatrix, a relatively advanced filtering tool for Firefox.
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Would you believe me If I told you that you can have that internet right now:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en …
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There should be a plugin that brings the GDPR compliant version of any website without routing the network to another location.
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Cool idea.
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Or just use the Brave browser.
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Or Firefox with uBlockOrigin :D
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Or
#uMatrix which is more powerful but definitively for experts -
Yeah.... I think you get more features from uMatrix + Firefox than you get out of Brave.
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Kinda a novice here ... But where would Duck Duck Go fit into that conversation?
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For another perspective, DDG promises not to track you and not to selectively promote sites to you. The downside is that search results don't always come back in a way that is easiest to get meaningful information from.
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