The Verge: Subscription and Trackers
The Verge now has a subscription offering.
RSS feeds? Great. Fewer ads and trackers? Sounds promising. But how much less annoying is it actually?
To find out, I disabled my fortress of ad and tracker blocking (clean browser profile, no extensions, no Little Snitch, VPN-ed into a naked network). Then, I tested a car review across three setups, scrolling the page in 15 seconds each time.
Here are the very manual, not-at-all scientific results:
| Configuration | Requests | MB Transferred | MB Resources |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Ad Block or Sub | 805 | 8.3 | 43.2 |
| No Ad Block with Sub | 611 | 2.6 | 27.2 |
| Ad Block with Sub | 128 | 0.8 | 7.65 |
TL;DR⌗
Even with a subscription, The Verge still drowns you in ads and trackers—just slightly fewer. Their privacy policy mentions 865 data partners (533 claiming “strictly necessary” cookies).
For that reason, I’d recommend not allow listing them in your ad blocker even if you are a paid customer, but it might make you feel better knowing they get revenue even though you’re blocking the ads?