Hacker News Reader

Given that browsers can already do that (CSS off, reading mode, etc.) I don't think that would be a popular idea. Usually it's "pay to get more content that wouldn't be accessible freely".

I might pay $5-10 one time for a browser plugin that intercepts requests and redirects me from the heavyweight versions to the lightweight ones on this list...

I wouldn’t pay for that but I would pay a hell of a lot more than 2 a month to have all major websites I visit properly redesigned to render in terminal based browsers (such as links or w3m) as first class citizens without weird formatting bugs or UX.

What's wrong with the various reader modes that Safari and FF already have? They're great at de-formatting a page to it's base article. No cruft. It's very newspaper style. (Chrome has reader plugins that can doing this too)

Not sure what your $2 would be doing another than adding an actor between me and the page I wish to read. For privacy purposes, I'll be keeping well clear of such "solutions".

Dont you normally have to wait for the heavy site to load before switching to reader?