It’s like they’re trying to show you a party that’s going on in some private location, but you don’t get in, because you don’t have an account. Well then, they say, if the account is free and you still don’t make it, it’s not our fault. So they close you out.
You telling them to “just copy and paste the content” is like telling them to send you a photo/video of the party. It’s not the same as being there.
Yep, whenever people text me an Instagram or TikTok URL, I just scroll past it. I don’t even bother to find out what it’s supposed to be about, it’s completely inconsequential to me.
Haha, so true. I really really miss the “old” interwebz. Imagine the content of back-then with the hardware of today. The dream of yesteryear would come true. A blazingly fast net. Just html with a bit of JS (when really needed). Not 10 frameworks (each used for one function), dozens of mb of graphics, a gazillion of cookies and tracker-scripts and… Jeez.
Today i need so much stuff to fight the other stuff, it’s stuffmageddon.
Oh and if you’re also European you can also fight (for free!) the silly cookie-war.
Not 10 frameworks (each used for one function), dozens of mb of graphics,
Have you seen the old internet?! It would have been even more gifs, music players, and oh the flash websites! Haha I know that’s really not your point but this jumped out at me and made me chuckle.
Point taken. The gifs were rising strongly, and music on websites was worse than a rusty nail in my dingdong. But still. One plugin today would’ve just got ridden of those and it would still load faster 😁
4chan back before the Nazi takeover was like the wild west. My favorite part was “Lithursday,” when we would share images with embedded PDFs of copyrighted content, including rare books, anarchist materials, and military manuals. I often wonder if those unusually large .jpgs are still floating around the internet waiting to be unlocked. I also saw legitimate acts of activism and terrorism unfolding live, without the interpretation and propaganda of the state.
Ha! Recently went to breakfast with a couple of new neighbors (partners).
They were asking me what apps I enjoyed and I told them that I WAS enjoying Apollo. Told them I left Reddit. They sort looked at me. They later said they both worked at home. Their job was creating ad space for the web. One of them gave me the enshitification face. Sigh.
Recently went to breakfast with a couple of new neighbors (partners). They were asking me what apps I enjoyed and I told them that I WAS enjoying Apollo.
Lol at first I interpreted this as the waiter asking you what appetizers you wanted
The browser in my computer at work doesn’t have an ad blocker. I haven’t installed one because I most of the time I’m using it to access our intranet. But when I do happen to use the internet, damn are there so many ads! They literally block the content I’m trying to read, and come back even when I try to close it.
All that to say, due to enshittification I will forever keep my ad blocker on my personal computer.
It’s wild using a browser without a blocker. I’ve had one since they first started appearing so the internet I know is very different to reality. On the rare occassion I use a browser that allows ads, it feels like shit’s broken. It’s so hard to get anything done and a chore to read or view content.
Can’t imagine what the web is like outside of ublock origin…
The few websites I see on pcs by clients are essentially state backed so they don’t have ads as well.
It’s almost as though the overbearing Yahoo/Ask! toolbars that used to plague everyone’s Internet Explorer back in the day have mutated and infected the internet at large. Now most websites feel like one useless, giant malware-riddled toolbar.
Youtube itself, even in a completely blank Chrome browser, runs like i have 20 downloads running and simultaneously stream 4 animes its a absolute disgrace to humanity.
Really? My main reason for still trying to use adblockers instead of NewPipe or another frontend is that every one I’ve tried is slooooow. Is there a setting I should change or something???
Alternative interfaces like NewPipe, FreeTube, etc. work fine for what they are, but I prefer using a web browser because I actually like Youtube keeping track of my watch history and its recommendation algorithm works (reasonably) well for me.
All the alternative interfaces have privacy from Google as a primary design goal, so they want you to import your subscriptions and let them keep track of what you watched locally, but the consequence and downside of that is that it doesn’t synchronize across devices (e.g. FreeTube on my Linux desktop and NewPipe on my phone). At least not without a bunch of extra effort on my part manually importing and exporting, anyway.
The slow erosion of my enjoyment of YouTube inspired me to get Plex set up and start rewatching some classic shows I love. It’s been a great experience. No ads, no wait times, just entertainment.
I’m not internet god, but I have a possible first step forward with a protocol and working implementation ;
Decentralized websites, encrypted and takedown safe. Free, FOSS and based on reciprocal sharing. Nothing very complicated, you need to forward a port and run a program.
I’m just a geek though, not a manager or marketing person so I’d love some people checking it out.
So true. I’d like to add that also because of ads, social media and other websites are full of nonsense clickbait content, and every part of the user experience is designed to keep you scrolling through said content. Even with an adblocker, it’s like wading through a swamp to find anything actually worth looking for. (Of course, there are still websites with no ads, and even the ones with ads aren’t always horrible. But generally, shit sucks.)
I believe you’re referring to “the algorithm”. Which is usually just code for “a bunch of people that view and engage with the content you have viewed/engaged with also viewed/engaged with this”
I understand what they’re doing and I understand why, but sometimes, I just want a reverse chronological feed of my friends activities, so I can keep up to date with their most recent life events.
Web 2.0 desperately clinging to life. FOSS self hosted web is the future. Internet speeds are fast enough on home networks that self hosting is perfectly viable for essentially everything, and for the few things that can’t be self hosted by just anyone, FOSS alternatives and work arounds to existing paid services exist.
Internet is becoming harder to monopolize, and increasing amounts of power and control are being handed back to the working class online. FOSS has become a movement that has grown exponentially over the last few years.
Their next recourse will be attempting to make jail time a thing for piracy. Both for hosting it and downloading it.
That would require every government worldwide to be on board. Then you’ll have a couple holdouts, and they’ll take in the dough from everyone wanting to host their content there. While there is a mile-long wishlist from the powers that be, they’re still going to chase what’s profitable.
Have you ever pirated something? If so, have you ever been sent to jail for it?
I’m not talking about hosting companies. Yes, I am aware that prosecution exists for them and has been a thing a long time. I’m saying they’re going to start pushing for end users to face jail time as well. It’s the only real recourse they have.
It’s not so simple. I’ve been trying to go the foss self-hosted way, as well as help p2p projects, and I got stuck because I’m behind a cgnat, unable to forward ports, and my shitty isp has no ipv6. I can’t afford vpns at the moment, so I got stuck. Besides, all that needed a lot of tech skills most people won’t have. This is a serious barrier of entry for a lot of people.
Lets be real - This isn’t going to change on it’s own. The only way for it to change is if everyone collectively took a stand against it. Which simply just won’t happen. The most reasonable thing to do is to focus your energy on collectives that actively reject such practices. Oh hey, you’re already in one: Lemmy, good job. As long as we work together to create a small corner of the internet that remains true to what the internet should be, we can grow it and create a better internet in the long term.
Back in the day, the GOP was completely controlled by Big Business. A guy named Jerry Falwell saw how Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy had gotten him elected and jumped in. He organized his people at the grassroots level. If there was a local Republican club that got 20 people at the average meeting, Jerry’s church group would show up with fifty. At the start, they were getting dog catchers and county clerks in, but eventually their power grew.
It’s not a solution, but as a mitigation, I’m trying to push the idea of an internet right of way into the public consciousness. Here’s the thesis statement from my write-up:
I propose that if a company wants to grow by allowing open access to its services to the public, then that access should create a legal right of way. Any features that were open to users cannot then be closed off so long as the company remains operational. We need an Internet Rights of Way Act, which enforces digital footpaths. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to create little paths into their sites, only to delete them, forcing guests to pay if they wish to maintain access to the networks that they built, the posts that they wrote, or whatever else it is that they were doing there.
As I explain in the link, rights of way already exist for the physical world, so it’s easily explained to even the less technically inclined, and give us a useful legal framework for how they should work.
I agree but I think it needs to be slightly more practical. Sometimes a line of business just dries up and it would damage the company to try and keep that service going. It wouldn’t make sense to force a company into bankruptcy to keep one line going that few people use anymore.
Earlier today, though, I was thinking about sunsetting guarantees. Companies can and should decommission things when it makes business sense, but the user generated content it has gathered shouldn’t just disappear, and they shouldn’t be allowed to destroy the user experience of things people have bought.
So I would propose rules like:
If a service is being decomissioned or an entry point to that service being shut down, the content available on that service must be made available as a bulk export. Personal data, such as account data, messages, etc should be made available to users individually, while publicly accessible content should be made available publicly.
If a public service is being taken down completely, source code should be made available publicly.
If the service for a device which was physically purchased by consumers is being taken down, an update must be provided to allow users to use a local or alternative backend service. The source code for the service must be released publicly.
If features are being removed from a service which backed a physically purchased device, an update must be offered which allows users to point to a local or alternative service for either all functionality or, at minimum, the removed functionality. Looking at you, Google, keep removing features…
Yeah, as always, the devil is in the details. For now I think that we need a simple and clear articulation of the main idea. In the exceedingly unlikely event that it ever gets traction, I look forward to hammering out the many nuances.
For me the internet is still just about bearable but only because of the following…
Firefox + unlock origin for web browsing.
RedReader for Reddit when I occasionally need to go there.
Lemmy for the best Reddit alternative.
Revanced and NewPipe for YouTube.
Recently moved from Google podcasts to Podcast Republic after Google moved podcasts to you tube music.
Never had Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram.
Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.
It feels like I’m swimming against a strong tide just to maintain a good experience, in no other industry do the major players want to cripple your goods and services if you don’t bend over and accept their increasingly poor goods and services 🤷🏻♂️
I’m actually glad for it. It made me switch to Linux, discover Mullvad Browser and their VPN combo, get a GrapheneOS phone, find an amazing Freetube YT desktop client, and dabble with Home Assistant and PIHole. Plus I migrated to Protonmail and Kagi as my search, and Lemmy instead of reddit is also an amazing change, the discussions I’ve seen so far feel better and more in depth, and I’m enjoying my time here so far. The lack of endless content is also great, to help with implementing Digital Minimalism.
So, while I hate any large corporation and their greed with more and more passion, it has lead me to a nice privacy journey, for which I’m glad.
I almost did the same, just my phone is not a pixel, so i had to resort to some other custom ROM. And I still just use good ol’ firefox with proton VPN most of the time.
P.S. I also blocked our TV from accessing the internet as well. Ex. Codeberg is a GitHub replacement, and on mobile Grayjay/LibreTube works great for youtube.
Looked into Kagi. Seems interesting. Personally, I use either Brave search or Searx. There’s was post over at Linux@lemmy.ml about open source alternatives to ChatGPT and I might look into those. But I definitely keep Kagi in mind. By the way, How good is Kagi for,um… “sailing the high seas”?
I fear that part of the reason is that it isn’t big enough yet for AstroTurf interest groups to care enough to invest into it. Although maybe AstroTurfing isn’t included in the enshittification label?
For social media to work in the future I think there needs to be additional safeguards that keep enshittification at bay. But picking them will be a delicate art.
Speaking of AstroTurf, they certainly are the leaders of synthetic turf. Their artificial turf is not only aesthetically appealing, but is designed to withstand the demands of the game.
between lemmy, mastodon and my own nerd projects, I’m having more fun on the internet than I have since the 90’s. so, while I hate the enshittification, the side effect has been me rediscovering what was so fun in these tubes…
It’s mostly people who refuse to stop using these services who ruin it for those who don’t. I think the solution is to make slick, idiot-proof and easy alternatives with sexy UIs so even the most insta, TikTok, YouTube addicted person wants to switch over. There’s no solution to monetization or ads which doesn’t fuck the experience of the alternative solution. Creating, instilling and appealing to an ideology will also help conversions.
That said, if you like someone’s content, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with you hoping for that person to be paid for it. Forcing ads is such a disgusting move, but any reasonable person wouldn’t mind paying to not to watch ads—there’s a cost to infrastructure maintenance that needs to be met, so it’s understandable. But I’d rather pay to a non-profit or utility.
In general, everyone should oppose big tech monopolies, and ask their politicians to legislate against them. Monopolies are the biggest threats to democracy.
I don’t agree completely - there are a lot of things that are possible without JavaScript, which are improved either due to better UX or improved safety through JS.
Easy examples for better UX is anything to do with forms and multi-step processes. Getting validation errors while typing is massively better than getting them on submit, and it’s easy to store temporary edit states locally to prevent data re-entry. This especially goes for offline-first applications.
IMO more importantly, local JS is always preferable to server-side logic when possible, since it means your data never leaves your browser. Imagine a JSON formatter that processes data server-side - you can never be sure what they are doing with your data! Compared to that local JS is incredibly portable (every platform has a browser) and isn’t reliant on anything else. I build my utility apps both in the usual bundler way, and as single files - meaning I can offer my app as a single HTML file you can download and use however you want.
Of course the security benefits aren’t perfect - it’s always possible data is still sent somewhere. I really hope that one day we’ll get an API that allows a website to limit further network connections to specific URLs. This would give users of such applications real peace of mind.
When all I want to do is read content, no JS is needed. That has been a solved problem for decades. UX is problematic because now you have these huge PC screens and comparatively tiny mobile screens to account for. Most developers go for mobile first and completely ignore the rest, so you have loads of sites that are needlessly displayed like slow powerpoint presentations, autoscrolling to the next anchor because that’s “good UX” somehow.
Form validation with JS goes back decades and no one in their right minds relies entirely on frontend validation. It’s great because it can be immediate, but it’s easier to sidestep either by accident or on purpose. Since a lot of forms nowadays are “autogenerated” from their respective UI libraries, they come with a lot of unnecessary cruft.
meaning I can offer my app as a single HTML file you can download and use however you want
I sure hope that doesn’t need a “local server” of any sort to work. It’s one of the things that baffles me the most, javascript that only works with a npm server to connect to. I also hope it’s not bundled as an electron app, what’s the point of having an entire chrome browser bundled just to run a single page?
When all I want to do is read content, no JS is needed.
I didn’t say otherwise.
UX is problematic because now you have these huge PC screens and comparatively tiny mobile screens to account for. Most developers go for mobile first and completely ignore the rest, so you have loads of sites that are needlessly displayed like slow powerpoint presentations, autoscrolling to the next anchor because that’s “good UX” somehow.
Okay? I’m not sure what you’re arguing against. Some websites have bad UX, and that means the technology used to implement that bad UX is in itself bad?
Form validation with JS goes back decades and no one in their right minds relies entirely on frontend validation.
I didn’t say anyone should rely entirely on frontend validation.
It’s great because it can be immediate, but it’s easier to sidestep either by accident or on purpose. Since a lot of forms nowadays are “autogenerated” from their respective UI libraries, they come with a lot of unnecessary cruft.
Again, what exactly are you arguing for or against? You said “don’t use JavaScript when you don’t need it”. You don’t need frontend validation, it’s a nice to have, but it would be incredibly stupid to say “this form is way better without frontend validation”.
I sure hope that doesn’t need a “local server” of any sort to work. It’s one of the things that baffles me the most, javascript that only works with a npm server to connect to. I also hope it’s not bundled as an electron app, what’s the point of having an entire chrome browser bundled just to run a single page?
No, the single HTML file I’m talking about doesn’t require a server or Electron or anything besides a browser. What are you on about?
You either seem to be willfully misunderstanding me, or you’re projecting a bunch of random webdev grievances onto me. Why?
I just started a personal blog as my small contribution to combat Dead Internet Theory. I’m not going to link it here because I don’t want to doxx myself
Yea, the creation of sites like neocities is such a fun return to oldweb and the joys of relearning html and creating a static site. And tools like Jekyll for generating and maintaining your own blog are great
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