2/27/2010

How to Easily Disable Drudge Report's Excessive Automatic Page Refresh Feature

If you visit the Drudge Report often, you have probably noticed an extremely annoying feature on the site: excessive automatic page refreshing. At some point, some psychotic decision maker at the Drudge Report decided the main page needs to be refreshed every three minutes. It is hard to imagine the news cycle has gotten so hectic that we must be immediately updated on the events of the last three minutes. Can't we wait a full five minutes to find out Barack Obama once gave a speech about the benefits of selling the Washington Monument to China?

The reality of the situation is probably the Drudge Report is just trying to boost their advertising impressions or pump up a page hit count. The sad thing is you are the victim of this annoying profit-generating, prestige-inflating feature. Isn't it annoying when you are just about to click on a sensationalized headline to find out just how much it is misrepresenting the actual content of the linked article and the Drudge Report suddenly auto-refreshes on you? Don't you hate having to wait for the page to reload so you can search for your selection again?

Well, here's how you can stop this irritating nonsense from the Drudge Report:
  1. Open the http://www.drudgereport.com in your browser.
  2. Click on Tools | Internet Options.
  3. The Internet Options screen will appear.
  4. Click on the Security tab.
  5. Click on the Restricted sites icon from the Select a zone to view or change security settings field.
  6. Click on the Sites button.
  7. The Restricted sites screen will appear.
  8. Make sure http://www.drudgereport.com appears in the Add this website to the zone field.
  9. Click the Add button to add the page to your list of restricted sites in the Websites field.
  10. Click the Close button to save your changes.
Once you have followed these easy steps, you will be free from the Drudge Report's annoying and excessive automatic page refresh feature.

By the way, don't trust those exciting and alarming headlines on the Drudge Report. Take the time to actually read the linked articles and get the full story. You will be amazed how much the content of the articles differ from the headlines on the Drudge Report.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

How is it that sanctimonious liberals can't even give technical instructions without giving you a pain in the arse?

Editor said...

Anonymous Visitors from 4/19/2012 and 7/16/2012,

Who are you calling a liberal? In your world, is anyone who finds Drudge's headlines misleading automatically a liberal? Some people who are probably far more conservative than you do not like to have news presented in a deliberately deceptive manner.

Whether the source is conservative or liberal, some people just do not like sneaky news tactics. Some of us just want the truth. Look in to it sometime.

Seriously, click on those links on the Drudge Report. The content of the linked stories is often substantially different from the headlines on Drudge Report. Anyone who can read, visits Drudge Report on a regular basis, and actually reads the linked stories knows this is true. If you doubt this, just click on ten links at random and see what happens.

Biff Jackson said...

Just turn off JavaScript in the browser preferences.

Editor said...

Dear Biff Jackson,

Please elaborate. Are you suggesting turning off Java Script for all sites? Some people need to allow Java Script for some sites.

If you have an easier method for specifically limiting The Drudge Report site's ability to force constant refreshes without limiting functionality on other sites, please provide details.

Anonymous said...

Your whining like a baby about "misleading headlines" is a dead giveaway that you're a liberal. I'm just surprised you didn't include the gratuitous "fauxnews" slam as well.

Editor said...

Dear Anonymous from 8/13/13:

Your logic does not make sense. Are you stating that people who object to "misleading headlines" are automatically labeled as liberals in your world? That seems like a very hardline pro-media position.

One would hope all people, regardless of beliefs, would object to misleading headlines. Are you seriously stating that being against "misleading headlines" (or even daring to use the term) is a quality unique to liberals? Aren't non-liberals also allowed to object to being misled and expose things that are misleading?

Anonymous said...

Many thanks for this tip! Not only does it disable the auto-loading, but it also seems to improve the performance of this page on my (underpowered) computer.

Editor said...

Dear Anonymous from 10/19/13,

You're welcome. Those page refreshes can get so annoying.

MLK said...

I'm what I would call a conservative. I do find many of the Drudge links to be misleading or just plain false. It does irk me and I do have thoughts of just not checking Drudge any more. I still do for now. It's annoying and deceiving.
MK

kdfthe said...

Many of the DrudgeReport headlines are directly from the headline of the newspaper. Most newspapers have misleading headlines. NYT, WAPO, LATimes, are all common offenders on the left.
I find that very often it appears the headlines are misleading because the writers don't really understand their topics and don't understand their headline is misleading.

A common offense is to misunderstand the difference in Risk and Increased Risk. Logic and percentages are something journalists have little understanding.

Editor said...

Dear J WHIT:

No, Drudge Report headlines are often significantly different from the headlines of the linked articles. This is easy to verify. Just go to Drudge Report, click on several headlines, and see what comes up on the linked pages.

Sometimes the Drudge Report headlines will be exact copies. Often Drudge Report headlines will be paraphrased and jazzed up. Sometimes the Drudge Report headlines will refer to one sentence or word in the linked article. In the worst examples, the Drudge Report headline will use ambiguous language and be a clever distortion of the linked article. On occasion, the Drudge Report headline only has a remote relevance to the linked article or is irrelevant all together. Just click on the links. The proof is right there on the Drudge Report 24 hours each day.

By the way, journalist do not often write headlines for their stories, especially in larger operations. Editors, copy editors, etc. commonly write headlines. In print, the headlines have to fit in particular spaces, and journalists are not normally in the room during these layout decisions.

Anonymous said...

I'm a conservative and I constantly find misleading headlines on Drudge. Also, the auto refresh is so annoying I rarely read it anymore.

Anonymous said...

This tip is great!! I had given up on drudge because of my slow internet.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!

bloggerjim said...

The guy's asked a question that you haven't answered. Can't liberals give advice or instruction without sounding like sanctimonious twits? (A sanctimonious twit would want to be certain I have advice about checking headlines against the content of the story. Just as he would want to be certain I'm on the food stamp list because I'm an ethnic liberal. "Now be certain to apply for food stamps, brown boy. Hey, I'm only interested in your welfare."

Editor said...

Dear bloggerjim:

The question--you misunderstood and misquoted--is flawed. It's like asking, "Why is the hippopotamus the most deadly animal in South America?" You see, the question itself is based on an incorrect assumption.

In this case, the assumption being made is that anyone who objects to the way the Drudge Report distorts headlines is automatically a liberal and not simply a person who cares about the truth. You must also be making this incorrect assumption. If you want a question answered, first make sure the question itself is not fundamentally flawed.

Anonymous said...

Editor, enough dodging the fucking question.

Let's try this another way. Can you name some news sources that DON'T mislead? See this is what annoys me about the left (they are most certainly NOT liberal) - they constantly whine about "conservative" news sources and never a word about the other 95% of dishonest left-wing media.

I like the truth as well as anyone. And maybe you do too, it's just that you have a hard time speaking it.

Editor said...

Dear Anonymous from 3/31/15,

You're very hostile but don't have much interesting to say. In the future, try to focus a little more on making your point.

Other media outlets were not mentioned in the original post, but, sadly, it is very common for most media outlets to spice up the news in some fashion to get viewers. Just because the practice is common, that doesn't make it right. (You would agree with that, correct?)

The only media outlet being discussed in this post, however, is The Drudge Report, because The Drudge Report's blatant abuse of the auto-refresh feature is the original focus of this post, and The Drudge Report habitually manipulates or distorts headlines, sometimes to the point of absurdity and occasionally to the point of complete inaccuracy. This claim also happens to be very easy to verify by simply doing some basic research. Just click the links and read.

Isn't it funny how people (including you) are not doing much to dispute the charge that The Drudge Report distorts headlines? Does that mean that almost everyone (including you) realizes this charge is completely fair and accurate?

Anonymous said...

Drudge's headlines are accurate. They either restate the original headline or they pull something out of the story that the original publisher chose not to emphasize or worse chose to bury.

Remember how he got his start. Newsweek and other media outlets had buried the Monica Lewinsky story and he found out and published it. He doesn't just regurgitate the Left-wing media's tripe for a reason.

If his articles were misleading beyond any typical media outlet he wouldn't still be the force he is today.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip to disable the drudge auto-refresh.

Hey, I'm a conservative myself, and I think that drudge's auto-refresh is as corrupt and misleading as the headlines are. They're just auto-refreshing to increase their footprint on the Internet. So they can brag they have x number of hits, when 2/3's of them are just refreshes.

Justin Lawrence said...

Thanks for the walkthrough to disable the excessive Drudge Report auto refresh in Internet Explorer. It worked exactly as expected.

Based on the feedback from many of those before me, it would appear that most who happen upon your walkthrough couldn’t care less about your opinion on Matt Drudge’s site (myself included). Maybe you could edit your sanctimonious walkthrough to stick to the point. You could probably use the space saved (a considerable amount) to include walkthroughs for other browsers.

Anonymous said...

ha ha ha... nice try deuchebag

Anonymous said...

IE11
open development tool (F12)
go to the console tab
paste the following code into the little window at the bottom, minus the //'s:
//
var counterDR = 1;
function autoRefresh(){
$('#app_mainheadline').append(counterDR);
counterDR++;
};
autoRefresh();
//
click the green run arrow,
close the development tool (F12) with the upper right-hand corner X,
enjoy!

Zontash said...

It is 2015 and actually the content of the pages do actually parallel with the drudge report headlines and I am not sure why someone would complain when democrats all have their worldly comedy like daily show making fun of christians with their own half true roman catholic agenda oh is that not fair I think it is. And anyway this method doesn't work for nook tablets since they are mostly made for google chrome. Welcome to the 21 century God is still not dead and His name is Jesus Christ.

Anonymous said...

I'm not a liberal. I'm a libertarian, and I fucking hate the refresh on Drudge AND the sensationalism of his headlines. Unfortunately too many people only get there news from reading the headlines on the Drudgereport without actually reading the articles.

DT said...

To the Editor. You have, not so cleverly, repeatedly dodged the clear issue several commenters have with your article. It's not whether disliking misleading headlines or annoying promotion tactics on drudge makes you a liberal (it doesn't obviously), it's whether you dislike drudge so much because of these reasons or more so because you, the Editor, are a liberal. It sure seems that you are and seem to be afraid to admit it here. Why? I don't need to agree or disagree with your politics to find something you write interesting or useful, but it's off-putting at a minimum when you go so political with your side comments in what is otherwise a non political article yet seem to be trying to hide your clear political preferences.

Editor said...

Dear DT,

The first thing you need to understand is this is not a tech support Web site. This is a media watchdog site. The primary and clearly indicated purpose of the site is to expose media abuses, not to help people with their Web browsers. You are not the first person who seems to have missed this point. Look around the site, and you'll get it.

As for your specific comment, to what political content are you referring in the article? Is sarcastically mocking a media outlet considered "so political" to you? Your prejudices might be leading you to believe you read things that weren't actually there. Please read it again, and expose the specific political content that is so troubling to you.

The astounding thing here is certain people cannot possibly imagine that someone who is not a liberal would have the audacity to call out The Drudge Report on shady media practices. Let's say you stated, "Kanye West is overrated and does not deserve his level of fame." Then someone asked you, "Why are racists always attacking Kanye West?"

You see, the question assumes you are a racist. If you are not a racist, the question is irrelevant to you. How can you explain what racists think about Kanye West if you are not a racist, and you simply think Kanye West is overrated because he is surprisingly famous while lacking substantial talent?

You are just going to have to accept it. Some people other than liberals do not like that The Drudge Report inflates Web stats with excessive auto-refreshes and fabricates buzz with sneaky headlines. This might come as a shock to you, but having conservative beliefs does not automatically require one to bow down and accept 100% of what the conservative icons do. Can't you share beliefs with a person or organization while opposing the unscrupulous methods that person or organization uses to promote those views?