Is it just me, or is the Internet becoming less usable?

[rogerzilla]

YouTube Premium is now £12.99.  Bastards.  I shall hook up my laptop to the TV to enable ad blocking, I think.  Or pay for NordVPN and subscribe to YT via Turkey, which costs next to nothing.

[woollypigs]

As for youtube; chrome + privacy badger + ublock origin = only ads that are within the video not what YT adds extra.

Got a spare laptop or raspberry pi then install Pihole along with the above extensions this cut down on ads and trackers.

Internet archive and 12 foot ladder jump most paywalls. Bit of searching you can get another news website writing/posting the same article or commenting on it so you can read it that way.

If I use the website enough I will pay/sign up to said website.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

The internet is disappearing, study says

Almost 40% of webpages from 2013 no longer exist a decade on, research finds

The effect means that vast amounts of news and important reference content are disappearing. Some 23 per cent of news pages include at least one broken link, and 21 per cent of government websites, it said – and 54 per cent of Wikipedia pages include a link in their references that no longer exists.

I no longer rely on links for stuff I want to keep as references. I assume it is not permanent and download it.  And I prefer printed books to e-books.

[Pingu]

The internet is disappearing, study says

Almost 40% of webpages from 2013 no longer exist a decade on, research finds

The effect means that vast amounts of news and important reference content are disappearing. Some 23 per cent of news pages include at least one broken link, and 21 per cent of government websites, it said – and 54 per cent of Wikipedia pages include a link in their references that no longer exists.

I no longer rely on links for stuff I want to keep as references. I assume it is not permanent and download it.  And I prefer printed books to e-books.

I saw this yesterday: Linkrot.

[rogerzilla]

The internet is disappearing, study says

Almost 40% of webpages from 2013 no longer exist a decade on, research finds

The effect means that vast amounts of news and important reference content are disappearing. Some 23 per cent of news pages include at least one broken link, and 21 per cent of government websites, it said – and 54 per cent of Wikipedia pages include a link in their references that no longer exists.

I no longer rely on links for stuff I want to keep as references. I assume it is not permanent and download it.  And I prefer printed books to e-books.

It must be far worse for images, as free image hosting has gradually been withdrawn.

[Kim]

It must be far worse for images, as free image hosting has gradually been withdrawn.

It only lasted long enough for everyone to forget what FTP^[1] and web servers are.


_{[1] More sensible protocols are available.}

[rogerzilla]

Most ISPs stopped giving free web space years ago.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

The enshittiffication of Google..

Does it really matter whether there is competition to Google’s search engine? Doctorow believes it does. He coined the memorable term “enshittification” to explain the state of big tech companies in the modern age: “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” He calls Google “the poster-child for enshittification”.

[Kim]

That article conspicuously fails to mention &udm=14, which is the secret sauce for turning google back into a search engine.  Someone's made a simple interface for adding it at https://udm14.com/, but it's better to add it to your own page/browser settings.

I have a theory that the feature was sneaked in there by a rogue google employee who wanted to get some work done.

[Mr Larrington]

If there’s a way of doing that on FruitCo's version of Chrome it’s thus far eluded this Unit.

[Kim]

Presumably you could create your own default home page^[1] with something like this on it:

Code: [Select]

<form action="https://www.google.co.uk/search" name=f><input type=text maxLength=256 size=45 name=q value="">&nbsp;&nbsp;<input name=hl type=hidden value=en><input type="hidden" name="udm" value="14"><input type=submit value="Google Search" name=btnG></form>
I have my browsers use the index of a local wiki containing useful stuffs for a home page, so including a udm-14 google search box was a no-brainer.


_{[1] May require the use of extensions.}

[Mr Larrington]

AFAICT Chrome in iOS eschews the very concept of a “home page” and opening a new tab lands you on the page of your chosen FWSE.  And it only lets you have Google, Bing, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo or Ecosia.

[Kim]

Well that's a rubbish.  The Android version has a 'Homepage' setting under settings that lets you set an arbitrary URL, or enable its self-generated homepage.

[Mr Larrington]

Confirmed by the Chocolate Factory's deeply rubbish "Help" pages:

You can only set your homepage when you use Chrome on a computer or Android device.

[Kim]

Apparently it doesn't support extensions, either?  WTF?

[Mr Larrington]

IIRC FruitCo extends its Nanny-knows-best approach to iOS browsers because they’re [“disagreeable people” – The Invigilator]

[barakta]

Google blocked extensions recently, to stop people using ad blockers and the like. It's partly why I keep using FireFox despite it being annoying at times.

[Kim]

After watching Mrs-Barakta's-Mum using her iPhone, I started to wonder whether the massive usability win of IOS for the stereotypical technophobic parent demographic wasn't so much a function of clear UI design, as a matter of setting things out so that a user prodding things at random inna infinite-monkey style will frequently produce an approximation of the desired result.

Not sure that's a good idea when you let them loose on the web, thobut.

[rogerzilla]

Google blocked extensions recently, to stop people using ad blockers and the like. It's partly why I keep using FireFox despite it being annoying at times.

I've never used Chrome as I always assumed it was a data harvesting, ad-enabling browser.  Google are Very Evil these days.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Google have always been evil!

[FifeingEejit]

do no evil is the perfit mantra for an evil doing org

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