1) Consider installing an adblock plugin into the headless browser you're using for screenshots. Sometimes the ad banner takes half of the thumbnail image, e.g. NYT.
2) The thumbnail images oftentimes just repeat the title, consider reducing the size of thumbnails to fit more text.
3) In the spirit of HN, consider removing all images from thumbnails to give readers a feel for the text.
Why do screenshots at all? Just parse the open graph metadata and get the meta image the site wants to display rather than screenshotting it.
Most sites these days have a meta tag for images they want to display which is likely optimized for exactly this usage. Can always fallback to screenshots if those don't exist, but I'm pretty certain it'd be more pleasing.
You could implement this in less 10 minutes with micro-open-graph[0] (disclaimer: I made that). Runs on now.sh, so it's free to host too. (depending on how much traffic you send to it)
> Consider installing an adblock plugin into the headless browser you're using for screenshots. Sometimes the ad banner takes half of the thumbnail image, e.g. NYT.
Lots of news sites don't allow ad blockers these days. This means that all you'll see in the screenshot is some popup.
It will only actually be "bad" if the costs (losing some people with ad-blockers which are like dead weight to them anyway) outweighs the benefits (being able to force their ads to regular visitors and discourage them from adopting ad-blockers).
Otherwise, it's mostly "don't let the door hit you on your way out" case.
I suspect there are network effects of pushing out users who use ad blockers. These people, who will feel frustrated with their experience on your site, might not share your articles to other users, who in turn might not have those ad blockers installed.
I kinda like the lack of adblocker actually. It lets me avoid promoting sites with excessive advertising without having to really expose myself to any advertising (since you can't really read the text in the images, especially not accidentally).
2) The thumbnail images oftentimes just repeat the title, consider reducing the size of thumbnails to fit more text.
3) In the spirit of HN, consider removing all images from thumbnails to give readers a feel for the text.