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

[rogerzilla]

Paywalls.
Anti-adblocker techniques.
Ceaseless ads if you can't use an adblocker (e.g. YouTube on TV)
Constant begging from content creators who think they're good enough to give up the day job (very few are).
The Facebookisation of everything, taking it offline for refuseniks.

I almost yearn for the days when you only had to worry about pop-ups and flashing banner ads.

[spesh]

No, it's not just you...

[Beardy]

I use a VPN routinely these days, which helps some. Google are however evil shits and keep throwing up a verify app when I’m on a UK port, and refuses to work if I’m on a foreign port, so I use yahoo instead. So just ads on YouTube to put up with, which I avoid where possible by using alternative ad free platforms that some of my fav content providers use. 

Still, it’s a lot of work.

[Mr Larrington]

Farcebok has a setting for shitvertisers for them to specify a geographical radius for people they want to spam.  Problem is, it doesn’t work.  I and countless others are heartily fed up with getting spammed by businesses from the opposite end of the country, while the shitvertisers really ought to get together, storm Meta's HQ and demand their money back.  Or start shooting hostages.

[rogerzilla]

Facebook's sinister data mining was good enough for them to email me at an address which I never gave them, yet stupid enough to spam my timeline with bizarrely irrelevant ads - donkey rescue and religious cults.

I'm permanently off there now.  I miss the Moulton group, as that's the only active online community for the bikes (the MBC forum is just tumbleweed) but it's worth it not to have Zuckerbot going through my pants draw.

[tom_e]

Definitely noticed this.  I'm guessing that the endless promise of attracting users today for the promise of profits tomorrow is no longer good enough for investors.  They actually need to generate revenue today.

[Wobbly John]

Telly becoming unwatchable and radio unlistenable too.
The danger is that when someone realises that advertising puts people off things instead of wanting to purchase, then society may collapse!…

P.s. sorry, I think I accidentally just reported Rogers post to admin, as my phone is doing random clicks… anybody know how to recall it?

[TheLurker]

Nope.  See also

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification  which refers to  https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Ob. Grauniad link on same topic.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/11/users-advertisers-we-are-all-trapped-in-the-enshittification-of-the-internet

[spesh]

My main gripe with the internet - and Facebook in particular - is that too many web developers assume that everybody has a device which can cope with the browser being made to run a metric fuckton of scripts all at once, and a fast enough connection to handle all the bandwidth-nomming stuff on a page.

There appears to be no incentive to write code that makes efficient use of resources at the user end.

[Kim]

Can I add the creeping assumption that everyone is accessing it via a mobile phone or fondleslab, rather than a real computer.

We're starting to get to the point where websites are less functional than their equivalent app.  Note that Windows is trying to run Android apps, and that OSX is slowly turning into IOS, as a result.  Also, everything's a (vertical) video now.


Meanwhile, extra loud for those at the back:  Discord is not documentation.

(When they come to power, the Democratic Ruthless Bastards Party will no doubt be reëducating Discord for unilaterally redefining the meaning of 'server')

[rogerzilla]

Ah yes.  I'd forgotten how Google search has deteriorated into a marketing tool.  Search results are even worse on the mobile site, where it blithely ignores keywords on the assumption that an easily-led underclass accesses the Internet on a phone.

[Cudzoziemiec]

P.s. sorry, I think I accidentally just reported Rogers post to admin, as my phone is doing random clicks… anybody know how to recall it?

Oh dear. But Roger is admin. This means the whole YACF shuts down while Roger investigates his own alleged misdeeds in a mobius loop of catch 22 situations.

[L CC]

I don't want a video of how to make it, I just want a recipe. Is that so fecking difficult? Clearly yes, I have to scroll through paragraph after paragraph of dross and photos and pop up videos to get to the list of ingredients. After I've painstakingly removed all the cookie agreements.

I don't watch youtube, mostly as it is inhabited by people who shouldn't have given up the day job. I loathe amateurism in entertainment, which is why I struggle with most of Arrivee's content. People are rarely as clever or funny as they think they are (looks in mirror. Damn). Mr Smith has a lower bar and pays for it to be ad-free.

I don't really resent paying for content, as we all know, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Anything free comes at some other cost- enshitification is just the current currency.

[Beardy]

Not to mention search results serving up the same product 57 zillion times FROM THE SAME VENDOR. I want to see options and alternatives, not the same fucking item from the same Tosser who uses the same suspects as couriers.

[Mr Larrington]

Can I add the creeping assumption that everyone is accessing it via a mobile phone or fondleslab, rather than a real computer.

Threads.  Not only not fit for the desktop but inaccessible from the desktop. And the laptop.  Sort it out, Zuckerbot, u muppet

(When they come to power, the Democratic Ruthless Bastards Party will no doubt be reëducating Discord for unilaterally redefining the meaning of 'server')

No, we’re just going to shut Discord down, blow up their offices, use the rubble to make an artificial reef for the fishies, erect solar panels on the site (with Discord's former employees tasked with keeping it free from birb poos) and make people use a tool where it’s actually possible to Find Stuff.

The people behind Reach's multifarious webshites will, however, be summarily shot to DETH.  You can just tell that reëducation won’t work for some people.

[dynamo]

I use a VPN and my beef is with Cloudfare and similar content delivery networks. Any site that uses them, for example, Camelcamelcamel.com, means I cannot visit their website without disabling the VPN. This even occurred to my own website which is hosted on a british based server, the purpose of which is to host photos of items I sell on ebay. Even my webhost is now preventing users of vpns from viewing the photos in my ebay listings. That feature should be my choice whether to enable it or not. I don't care how people are using the internet but I do want them to view my photos. Pain in the arse.

Similarly Google is very anti-vpn but at least there are alternative search engines such as duckduckgo.com, Presearch and Startpage who don't seem to care.....yet.

Conversely to some here I never watch television or listen to radio. Everything I watch is online and I can't remember when I last logged into iPlayer which is the only terrestrial service provided online that I used. I find there's a lot of very useful content on Youtube but it is Google still. There are alternative means of accessing Youtube content which are in many ways better than the web browser experience. Yes they eliminate providing revenue to the content creators but many of those also use alternative channels such as their own websites or streaming sites, e.g. Rumble.com, and for those who repeatedly provide useful, to me, content then I donate directly.

Facebook, Meta, Twitter, TickTock I stay away from so am unaffected by their authoritative measures against privacy advocates. I am a consumer of Reddit though but again there are, for now at least, alternative means to view Reddit hosted content. Once the Reddit API is blocked to third party apps then I'll just stop using it. It's based on user generated content and if less users use it then it will die a gradual death. I guess that is what is happening to Facebook and why Meta is now being offered up. To me it's tarnished by it's links to Facebook so I'll avoid it completely.

There are always alternatives, not always as slick as the established incumbents but people will slowly learn how to find them and change their habits.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The people behind Reach's multifarious webshites will, however, be summarily shot to DETH.  You can just tell that reëducation won’t work for some people.

Recommend use of blunt bullets.

[Kim]

P.s. sorry, I think I accidentally just reported Rogers post to admin, as my phone is doing random clicks… anybody know how to recall it?

Oh dear. But Roger is admin. This means the whole YACF shuts down while Roger investigates his own alleged misdeeds in a mobius loop of catch 22 situations.

There's an xkcd for that.  It turns out that it all gets reported to Wowbagger.

[spesh]

P.s. sorry, I think I accidentally just reported Rogers post to admin, as my phone is doing random clicks… anybody know how to recall it?

Oh dear. But Roger is admin. This means the whole YACF shuts down while Roger investigates his own alleged misdeeds in a mobius loop of catch 22 situations.

There's an xkcd for that.  It turns out that it all gets reported to Wowbagger.

 

[Cudzoziemiec]

 
🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅

[Jaded]

Can I add the fuckers that program the Back button on the borwser to not go anywhere (or just the home page)

What is the point of that?

[Kim]

Can I add the fuckers that program the Back button on the borwser to not go anywhere (or just the home page)

Oh yes.  Chrome on my shitlist, because a few versions ago it decided that a left nudge of the scrollwheel - previously used for horizontal scrolling - would now be interpreted as a 'back' command.  This is not configurable in settings, and the right nudge performs the usual scroll action.

I still regularly find myself scrolling right through the Met Office forecast using the mouse, then inadvertently jumping to whatever site was previously in that tab because my muscle-memory tried to scroll left.

[rogerzilla]

Can I add the fuckers that program the Back button on the borwser to not go anywhere (or just the home page)

What is the point of that?

To keep you on their webshite.  A sure sign of a company you do not want to do business with.

[Beardy]

This brings to mind a thought I was having the other day.

Chrome

I’ve never used it, basically becasue Google. And because I stopped worrying about using a third party browser when we went Apple, and now just use Safari as a good enough browser. Though if I was still using windoz on my work pcI would surely have looked for something to replace that awful Edge win10 shipped with.

Should I be using it? Is it any good as a browser? Or is it as bad as I think it is common as it does from Google.

[rogerzilla]

I've always assumed

1. It's a data-gathering trojan
2. It won't block ads Google wants you to see

YouTube is rather good with an adblocker - atrocious without one.  For this reason, uninstall the YouTube app.  It always shows ads!