Readability

There are only two scenarios in which I use a form of special reading view:

• On my phone when I read previously saved articles in Instapaper. This happens less than once a week; I find reading on the iPhone cumbersome. I usually like to read on a large screen and in the actual design context.
• On crappy websites: full of obtrusive ads, poor legibility. Then, I use the reader function in Safari and that’s that. I don’t rob the author of my page view as I am already on the website

So, a service like Readability appears. They give money to websites that have been saved for later reading. I fully support paying for content and I believe that the intentions of Arc90, the creators of Readability, are good.

But this service is only good on paper. While I want to give something more than some eyeballs to authors that make my day better, this is not how it works. Maybe my usage patterns are different, but there is no way I will support websites that make consuming their content a pain. Those will profit much more from my money than sensible ones, which is a shame.