Methodology

How we measure the hidden cost of reading the news.

The Lab Environment

Every site is evaluated inside a headless Chromium browser running Playwright. The browser emulates a Pixel 5 smartphone connected via a throttled 3G Fast network profile. We originate the requests from a US-based IP address with no prior cookies or login state (a clean "pre-consent" profile).

The Four Pillars

Intrusion (30%)

Measures visual disruption. We deduct points for full-screen cookie consent walls, modal overlays, autoplaying video or audio, and sticky headers that consume more than 20% of the mobile viewport. Extra penalties apply for "dark patterns" (e.g., an Accept button is present, but Reject is hidden).

Privacy (30%)

Measures non-consensual tracking. We cross-reference every network request against the community-maintained EasyList and EasyPrivacy blocklists. Sites are penalized heavily if they fire advertising or tracking pixels before the reader has clicked "Accept" on a consent banner.

Performance (20%)

Derived directly from a programmatic Lighthouse performance audit. We measure Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Total Blocking Time (TBT).

Accessibility (20%)

Derived from the Lighthouse accessibility audit. Measures critical WCAG violations that prevent screen readers, keyboard users, and low-vision readers from consuming the content.