Why do certain website pages come up blank?

January 29, 2021 8:09 AM

I subscribe to the New Yorker online. Lately, when I click any aritcle in the email feed the page is blank, solid white, when it opens in Firefox. If I switch to my wife's account on the same computer, the content of the page is visible. This also happens in Ebay but in no other website. How can I fix this? I've contacted the New Yorker but they can't help. I'm running MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 on a MacBook Pro.
posted by partner to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Do you have any ad blockers installed?
posted by mskyle at 8:23 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I would try the following troubleshooting steps in this order:

1. Quit and reopen Firefox (if you haven't already)
2. Start Firefox in Safe Mode which will disable all ad blockers and other add-ons -- these are often the cause of display issues
3. Clear the Firefox cache
4. Restart your computer (I KNOW, I KNOW, but worth trying if you haven't yet)
5. Upgrade to the latest Firefox version
6. Clear all cookies (be aware this will log you out of all websites you're logged into)

posted by mekily at 8:25 AM on January 29, 2021

I assume you have some extensions installed, so go turn them all off, then go back to the page, turning them on, one by one. You will find that one of them is the culprit, I bet.
Probably an ad blocker, or some other privacy oriented plug-in.
They can keep you safe, but they can also bork websites.
posted by Bill Watches Movies Podcast at 8:38 AM on January 29, 2021

Privacy Badger and Adblock both can do this.
posted by leslies at 9:06 AM on January 29, 2021

Nthing that this is something adblockers sometimes do. Mine just helpfully rendered one of the intermediate stages of an online purchase as a completely blank screen.

If that's the culprit, there'll be a way of disabling it selectively for the affected sites (fixing the problem without having to lose the adblocker altogether).
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 10:00 AM on January 29, 2021