I just don't look at it if I have to make an account.
Same. Those sites simply don't exist to me. If it's so important that I see it, then copy/paste the content.
Right? If your message is important, then set it free. If it's not, then I'm not gonna care.
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.
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.
My thought exactly, and I don't feel like missing out either
Which is 100% fine by them.
They've created a situation where we HAVE to use ad-blockers for security, so they instead have to sell our data.
If they can't make money off ads OR selling our data AND we won't pay to view the content, all we're really doing is using up their bandwidth.
You're missing nothing on Instagram.
Disagree. There are many amazing creators on the app creating beautiful art and music.
just ask them to send a screenshot
I have told my wife and several of my friends stop sending me things from ________, ________, and _________. I can't see them and I refuse to do what is required.
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.
some of our clients are on what the telco calls 'extended' dsl. they're waaaay tf out at the 'end of the line' where speeds can be as shitty as 250-500kbps; there's even a couple still on dialup. so we definitely consider the weight of a page and how many connections are made for each when we do our own sites.
I'd love that... The weight-considered-site that is. Not the 500k line 😁
Today i need so much stuff to fight the other stuff, it's stuffmageddon.
The most relatable statement of the year so far. It's so exhausting ;-;
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.
They would have regretted asking me this. They'd be opening an F-droid can of worms they couldn't stop and my autistic ass wouldn't be able to gauge if it made them uncomfortable.
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.
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.Scary world I am not eager to experience.
I'm baffled when companies that self-host DNS don't have DNS-level adblocking.
It's because there's websites out there that will entirely break, and for really dumb fucking reasons. I've seen some sites not even load due to google tag manager being blocked. Most of the time it's a signal to me that I don't want to have anything to do with that domain.
However, if this was at work, that would be a call to IT. Multiply that by potentially hundreds of calls on the regular, and that could get really expensive.
The better solution here I think, is to default the browser install with uBlock Origin already there. Then allow the user the power to toggle the addon to their own liking. Then last, train your employees to know what the addon is, and how to use it.
Then it's the best of both worlds: websites aren't necessarily breaking for all users, ads are absent as a default state, and users are empowered to control their own experience. (And yes there's still going to be Jims and Karens calling for support, but they're going to regardless, those types will always find a reason.)
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.
I see ads for the company I work at on my work computer, because I don't have admin privileges to install ad blockers.
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.
Cornerstones of the internet:
- social media
- content sharing (video, audio media)
- websites
Internet resources ruined by ads/corporate greed:
- social media (full of ads, borderline unusable without ad block)
- content sharing (account sharing blocks (Netflix) war on adblockers (YouTube) etc)
- e-mail (spam)
- websites (ads, borderline unusable without adblockers, refuses to load with adblockers)
gg everyone. Time to reinvent everything.
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.
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.
Valmond
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.
There's certainly a bubble bursting. You only have to look at all the layoffs.fyi since COVID. I'm just hoping it's happening in a slow enough way that it's not going to take more legitimate companies with it.
AI is the next bubble. It will hit a brick wall either legally or just on functionality (maybe both). I can see uses for targeted models, bespoke to a use case, but training those is too expensive right now. General models are just toys IMHO. Unfortunately it's going to get a few years for everyone to realise.
The brick wall on AI is not functionality. It's cost of running the neural networks. It's simply not financially realistic to integrate ChatGPT into everything.
Ha, yeah sure, and trains will never go faster than 15mph.
Natural language computing is huge at the moment because it's a huge and significant development in computing - yes there are lots of shitty ai girlfriend apps and the same goes for generative ai there are lots of shitty art apps but human language interfaces aren't going away nor are generative design tools.
Even just the coding tools already available for free are a game changer, every single programmer I know and all the coding communities I'm in are using chatGPT regularly. When generative design gets into other areas such as cad and cam with natural language and problem solving (as in task based algorithms like the Go solver) then you'll start to see the how ubiquitous and significant these technologies are.
I understand why you'd look at the first commercial computers and think that no normal person will ever have a use for them but look at where we are now. The same is true for ai, current stuff is amazing when carefully worked and it takes a lot to get it all wired in but as the ecosystem of code grows and training sets become better established everything becomes much easier which enables more effective use cases.
You are going to train the AI that replaces you. They aren't going to tell you that though. I'm starting comprehensive plans so that any future work I do can't be fed into AI. Making hardware that just dumps random input when I'm not using it. Isolating and containing any human input that does happen. Distributing my work across as many devices as possible to only give each it's single app use worth of data.
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.
It does seem like FLOSS is experiencing a renaissance due to rampant commercialization of the web
Some one will say something offensive or a slight threat and the government will charge you for a crime like you did it.
They want the Internet to be HR speak only.
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.
Until ISPs start cracking down harder than they already are.
Jail time already is a thing for piracy. Seriously investigate the history of TPB if you dont already known it, or refresh your memory of it if you do
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.
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.
Or people could stop thinking small.
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.
Amen, ClamDrinker! Thanks for speaking the truth.
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 🤷🏻♂️
Add ghostery to that browser plugin list if you're in the EU.
You have to "accept" a lot of crap (cookies, data collection, ...), or jump through hoops every time you don't want to. Illegal here and infuriating.
No. Ghostery sold out years ago. Also uBlockOrigin can do the same, but apparently no one knows that you easily subscribe to additional block lists (one of them just for cookie banners).
Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.
I what way? Are you talking about email lists or something like that? Please share some wisdom so I can think of email as of something more than just annoying spambox that corportations and governments use to spy on me.
I've always had a real email and a spam email. I only give companies the spam email. That thing is overloaded with garbage. My real email is actually pretty clean as a result. Unfortunately, my wife has on occasion gave my email out when signing up for things, so a few junk emails still get to me usually from that. I would highly recommend this practice.
Email is essentially only useful now when used with aliases. Even having a "spam email" can get your digital footprint linked to your identity and real contact info.
But otherwise, it's still necessary for longform written communication.
All sorts of things are still useful with email, for instance my work sends my duty rosters to my personal email address (my preference so I don't have to log into work when I'm off duty) I get a reminder for my car service, confirmation that my online grocery shopping has been picked and when to expect delivery, confirmation of orders I've made and delivery dates times, where I live we have a management company and they communicate to residents by email, some 2FA checks come by email, I still find these things useful & prefer an email rather than endless push notifications on my mobile if that's an alternative, I don't allow email to notify my mobile either, I just check the inbox a couple of times a day.
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.
Wow, are you me?? :D
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 [email protected] 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"?
Yes but thats a lot of work, what if all this was already setup
I'd suggest the Firefox extension libredirect. Automatically redirects Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and more to alternative front-ends.
I've just blocked YT in my browser, and use https://freetubeapp.io/ instead. It's a desktop app, so I don't have to deal with cookies and storage being deleted after every session, just as i can do subscriptions to channels without requiring an account.
So far, it has been an amazing experience, I totally recommend it. And I second the point about Nano AdBlcoker, since I've also been one of the victims, since at the time Nano Defender was one of the alternatives pretty well recommended on Reddit, that was better at avoiding anti-adblock scripts. Plus, any extension you have only makes you easier to fingerprint, thus defeating the point of VPN or privacy focused browser. Especially with Mullvad browser + VPN, which is especially build on the idea of sharing the exact same fingerprint with every other Mullvad VPN user.
I'm very wary of installing more extensions since I heard how many lucrative requests extension devs get from third parties for allowing them to enshittify their software.
It's FOSS. You can verify that the code doesn't make any malicious requests. The only requests it should make are to GitHub/Codeberg to update the list of instances.
I haven't noticed any slowdowns with Firefox and Ublock Origin.
And if it does slow down, I'm downloading the whole video before watching it.
My next plan will probably be switching to my Linux computer, then just downloading the video. That sucks for me though b/c I enjoy a live show I subscribe to.
Ads, on a live show I pay to watch, WTF? I keep the chat open in Chrome but leave the video muted and laugh at how far behind the video becomes after ads start popping up.
You're lucky. I run FF and uBlock and get the pause sometimes. Still better than using YT without uBlock, though.
I take a 2min pause of silence over 30 seconds of ads any day.
I've noticed YT seems to be loading a bit slower than normal, but it still takes less than a few seconds so I don't really mind.
I got a popup "Adblockers are not allowed on YouTube" on Firefox running both Ublock Origin and Adblock, not signed in two days ago. I don't know what to do with that information.
Hahaha good edit. Could you imagine?!
(Checks for myself)
...Oh...
It's sensible that maintaining a current up to date dictionary is worthy of compensation, but I think the tragedy is that such endeavors as "maintaining current information on human language" aren't just publicly funded, so here they are panhandling for "Dictionary plus" lol.
The OED has been like this for at least 15 years (possibly longer but that’s when I first encountered it). So I wouldn’t consider this an appropriate example of the enshittification that’s been taking place of late.
Ooh I didn't realize that, I was just Googling -oidal & this was the first result
I believe it has charged a fee from the day they first offered the dictionary for online use.
I'm surprised people still use commercial dictionaries when Wiktionary exists. Is there a reason more people don't use it?
As far as I know the OED is a very specific dictionary that's way beyond what most people need and mostly for people dealing with language in their work. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ would be the more personal variant from what I've heard.
Not to mention sites blacklisting VPN IPs
my own site for my very small business gets about 10 legit visitors a week, none of which have ever connected via a known vpn address (dating back some 15 years). another 100 page views a week on average from legit bots (msn, google, etc).
the rest (and well over 95% of overall traffic) is bots, scrapers, and hackers, many of which use addresses linked to vpn services and pound the sites on the server looking for exploitable scripts (wordpress related, usually; which we've never run here), login and contact forms. if i could simply 'flip a switch' and redirect all vpn traffic to a separate landing page, i would seriously consider doing so. it wouldn't affect site availability to our legit users and our target audience. but for now, mod_security is doing a stellar job and is the mvp.
Lemmy is getting pretty good. I'm optimistic that more of the internet will be like this in the future.
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..
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.
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 watch YouTube any more.
Firefox still runs fine.
Most of my online reading is RSS feeds scraped into one place which is generally concise info.
My friends know not to send me Reddit, TikTok, or Insta shit.
Welcome to the New Web
What sort of RSS feed aggregator do you use? It seems like a really useful system I might want to try.
I use RSS a lot too. It's particularly useful for things that update only sporadically, like a personal blog or a slow-running webcomic. The updates show up in the RSS reader, and so you don't have to spend time checking low-traffic sites (or abandon them). You can also use RSS to get updates from youTube channels if you want, without needing an account.
I use theoldreader.com as my RSS reader. But I'm thinking that I might just switch to using Thunderbird instead at some point. I'm happy with theoldreader, but I figure that if Thunderbird works just as well, then that might be better for reducing information leakage. (Which isn't a big deal in this case, but it's just a good general principle to minimise it.)
It’s fantastic. I use a free website called Feedly. Sign up for an account then browse categories you like and add them. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds you find elsewhere, and all your subscriptions can be exported to a file that can be pulled into any other reader if you want try new RSS readers. Highly recommend!
Browsers are leading slower and slower
That's because of heavy use of JavaScript and frameworks like React. Websites like Facebook are a nightmare to deal with.
++ social media has killed personal blogs. Which is one of the biggest losses to me.
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
Same here. Maybe post it on feddit.de/c/blogging under a different account? :)
Peak internet was like 10-15 years ago
I don't really miss when even getting stable 100KBps is considered lucky
Facebook was the real "eternal September."
Facebook opening up to non-students was the turning point IMHO. Myspace was big, but everybody knew it was trash so not being on it was fine. If you wanted "a profile" otherwise, you needed your own page. That took effort, so only people with something to say bothered with it. Even Twitter was still SMS based and so only for hardcore addicts.
Facebook gave everyone an effortless voice and lordy, do people talk crap.
I think the iPhone was, that's when every person went online not just the nerds. Initial Facebook was actually pretty awesome before everyone had a smartphone
It's time for a new Internet with some guidelines. Like your content isn't viewable without account, you get kicked out of the DNS.
It’s gotta be less general than that; I don’t want my bank account on the open web for example.
You want a bank BBS?
Honestly, I just use the internet less. I'm never going to pay. I can't be bothered with the loopholes anymore. If it bugs me to pay or subscribe, I leave. I'm fine with them not wanting me as a user, and I hope they're fine with me not wanting them as a supplier. They don't have anything that I actually need that badly.
Oddly enough I probably use the internet more than ever. It's just not that internet.
If youtube was a reasonable price I'd pay it. But being google, they not only charge a ridiculous price, but even if you pay that, they'll STILL sell your data on top.
Furthermore, it being a public company no profit will ever be enough. It doesn't matter if I paid 30$ a month, the next quarter the 30 billion profit won't be enough because it didn't grow from the previous quarter...
Fuck all that.
Weirdly, the only parts of the Internet that I'm really liking these days are Hacker News, Lemmy and the one part that I do pay for, which is Kagi Ultimate. It is very refreshing not to be the product and I do occasionally need to use a search engine for something.
Yeah YouTube brings me a ton of value and I wouldn't mind paying a bit for it.
Not $14 a month though.
I'm so done with "browsing" YouTube. I also hardly ever click the links anymore when people post them here, and that is because of the ads.
There are some good channels that I occasionally checkout whenever I'm really bored, and I absolutely don't mind them getting the ad revenue like any other free tv show, but it's nothing that I can't do without.
In my opinion, good YT channels who make quality content ought to apply for other mean of distribution that doesn't scare away viewers. Let's say that f.i. Numberphile, Veritasium or Primitive Technology were on Netflix or even Disney+, I'd prefer to watch it there. That's how bad YouTube is.
If YouTube managed to get part of the all-in deals that I have on the other "real" streaming services, then they'd get some fraction of whatever my cellphone carrier pays to those. Right now I just don't want to bother with it.
It's actually making me go outside
I'm disgusted XD
Thing is, most people don't want to pay for services that to them seemed to be free since forever. And this creates collective social pressure to follow suit. Nothing a big company offers is ever free. You're just paying in alternate currency.
Screw em companies, only Lemmy devs get my money.
It's also reasonable to donate to your instance admin (although in your case for lemmy.ml, that's the same people).
It's gross though. Say you started to pay, they would still force ads into their product because they're greedy and demanding more money. We're seeing this with streaming sites now.
The funny thing is with youtube, for example, I am a premium user. I deactivated all tracking of my habits on there. Now I am greeted, as a homepage, with nothing else than a call to action to reactivate said tracking. As a paying customer I see less (as in none at all) content on the homepage than an anonymous user would. I am subbed to 170+ channels. Yet they tell me they cannot come up with suggestions unless they can track my every step on their platform. sus. And when saying funny I mean extremely aggravating.
Well...Twitter is trying it.
No.1 Apparently not present on uBlock Origin, which makes it not a problem for me (though it's shite that they are doing it anyway). I don't use YouTube that often anyways.
No.2 You are not loosing a lot - it's most likely some crappy video about a guy slipping on a banana peel or some shit like this - 99.9% you are not missing on much :D
Yeah, the developers of AdBlock Plus have come out stating the problem is on their side.
https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919
If you haven't switched to uBlock Origin, then now is the time.
See as much as I dislike the company, I can see how it would make sense from a business and logic point of view. They are paying for the servers and, to some extent and form, for the content, and by using any ad blocking content you sabotage their earnings from this platform. I'm surprised they are not blocking browsers with said plugins, but that would cause a major uproar. But then again, not much competition around...
I look at Lemmy far less than I did Reddit.
I read only one subreddit still and it is Am I The Asshole, it is very easy to spot the ads because only one add matches the format of the posts. Anything that doesn't start with AITA is an ad.
That gives me way more time to read books that I have been putting off. Starting with a few books by Cory Doctorow who coined that term enshittification.
It is a lot easier to make time for reading when watching a video will mean an ad before, during, and after every 5 minute clip. I subscribe to a few news shows so I can listen to them as podcasts while I work to support without having ads.
Maybe this is why I’ve been so ready to fully embrace Lemmy for my internetting. It’s the opposite of enshittified, as FOSS often is.
I’ll admit though, I pay for YouTube and get more bang for the buck than any other money I spend on entertainment. I’ve had it for a while though, and did not sign up because of their renewed war on ad blocking. Plus it’s nice that the creators get paid from my view, even though it’s not much.
Direct revenue is logically a better model for creators, but I don't like that the share of youtube premium revenue is determined by a black box. If it's distributed according to my total monthly watch time, how can anyone say for sure whether the direct revenue split for a given channel >= potential advertising revenue had I watched without premium or adblock? I don't think even creators could tell you based on the analytics available to them via Youtube.
I canceled and set up memberships on a few channels instead. That way I actually get something out of it (member perks), and I know that at least my favourite creators get 70% of those amounts. Also, sponsorblock
I pay for YouTube as well, it's worth it bc of YouTube music which I like better than Spotify, I just need podcasts to get on board and we will be good to go. I will add YouTube is the only media I pay for (other than peacock for 1 month a year to watch tour de France)
I mean, it's unavoidable. Everyone draws their own line in the sand based on what they think is "right" and "wrong", using whatever best tools and ideas are available to them, picked from the avalanche of options.
The line will not stay put from generation to generation, that's not a reasonable thing to ask for. If we go back 50 years when tv was king, it's not like all the tv shows were equally good, or stayed good.
So, it's kinda just on us to seek out and pick the right things to support, and be prepared in case those change too. It's kinda the whole reason I'm personally here on the Fediverse. I mean, back in the stone age our ancestors had to do the same things, its not like their environments always just stayed perfect. If something changes and you don't want to starve to death, you gotta just do something. Can't just wish it away.
Death is unavoidable.
Doesn’t mean I stand in a ditch waiting to die.
I’ll rage against the dying light thank you very much.
I wasn't saying it was actually, genuinely unavoidable. They need customers. Without customers, they shift or die out.
edit to elaborate on what I meant. I realize I spoke in error.
I've come to the same terms.
other day I decided to open reddit.com and noticed that almost every other (re)post was from a bot. even the top comments were from bots.
since then I've added reddit to my growing blocklist.I now spend more time on feeder, an RSS reader app.
I haven't been to reddit much since the api fiasco. If it's not too much trouble can you point me to some obvious bots so i can get a feel for what that looks like?
And whenever you want to search for information about something the result page gets flooded with AI generated garbage pages with misleading titles and that provide bullshit information.
Top resultTop ten results are always things like:"You are right to question these days indeed, 'why is the Internet enshittified and Ai is stupid'? Certainly, the world would like to know and you are not alone in wondering why is the internet enshittifed and Ai is stupid.
Today we will be looking at 17 ways the enshittified why is Ai stupid and internet.
[Table of contents (?!?!!)]
- What is an internet? "
The ad stuff is just an adblock+ error apparently, the throttling is non-existent on ublock origin.
YouTube in general just became slower due to bloat :,)
It's just more noticable when there isn't even longer ads to take away the attention
I definitely think there's room to invent some other social websites like Lemmy; things that can A) Monetize themselves in some way other than ads, B) Formulate the way users use them so that they're resistant to bots, C) Promote well-thought discussion points instead of just regurgitation.
I'm seriously considering something like say, a site that requires users to record a short webcam video introducing themselves before they can post. Obviously, that wouldn't be a good venue for anyone very privacy-focused, but perhaps you get the idea.
Monetizing through ads isn't the problem: The problem is that the companies keep getting greedier and seeing the new ways they can exploit the userbase.
Remember when ads were just those animated gif boxes on either side of the content you actually consumed? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Then they became annoying popups, to the point that EVERY browser ships with popups blocked by default. Now it's all javascript occupying your screen everywhere. Plus all those invasive "Notifications"
Greed isn't the problem, per se -- it's that outside of the biggest sites, which could hoover up ad targeting data of hundreds of millions to billions and sell that data through their own internal ad platform -- the model was never viable to begin with. Notice that the enshittification really took off all soon as interest rates jumped? Tech startups have all been floating along on easy money, but now that loans aren't basically free, VC dollars are drying up. Companies that could previously offset their capital burn with yet another round of investment now suddenly need to make money on their own merit, and are finding that they have to cut service to the bone and monetize the bejeezus out of what's left if they have any chance of survival.
Monetize
And this is exactly why we won't actually get any new special projects, because anything which can't be easily monetized will be treated as competition and ruined deliberately, and anything which can be easily monetized will be purchased and worn like a skin suit by greedy corpos the way the current Internet is being used.
I miss forums. Not that they disappeared completely but that used to be the go-to for good info. Still is maybe, cause I've read through a lot of garbage trying to learn about something pretty simple and then hit a forum post that's like "well it depends if it's early- or late-season blight". What? The twenty garden blog posts I studied never mention such a distinction. But there's Jimmy in Mt Carmel Indiana breaking it down.
One thing that's actually better for all that's worse is the Discord means one login for everything. Back then you had to register to every forum even if you only needed one file and never came back again.
It is trivial to replace them. The only difficult part is killing them because they're sucking all the air out of the internet.
There cannot be a facebook replacement as long as facebook exists. There will not be more than one center of the internet.
What I don't get is how most places, people get mad at us for not being able to read an article due to the paywall. I mean, I'm not going to subscribe to 50 shitty news sites just so I can read someone's damn random shit.
This is my biggest gripe with lemmy. A MASSIVE amount of links I try to follow is just paywalls or so damn bloated with garbage it isn't worth the effort
For real tho, I'm not paying Netflix money for a single damn news outlet. The prices are absurd.
I've heard something to the effect that approximately 80% of all internet traffic passes through Facebook and Google. Unfortunately I can't find anything to substantiate that claim but it's sounds plausible.
I remember the early internet. It was a wild place but at least it was fair and balanced. Now every click on every page is designed to serve the for profit attention economy. Kinda sucks in comparison.
Do not cave. Be strong bratan. Either they cut the shit, or you leave that part of the internet.
Ha ha ha! This is a problem for you? I WAS BORN IN IT MOLDED BY IT
Maybe it's time we all go back to living like it's the 80s. Watch OTA broadcast TV and read more books and call people on the phone instead of text them. And use computers to do taxes and word process and play simple games.
Have you seen broadcast TV? It was enshittified before the web even existed.
Why? Did you not like 8 minutes of ads in a 30 minute block of TV? What are you? A communist? /s
I know, but at least it's honest about it and you don't have to pay a fee to watch it.
Time to go Amish ig
Just go Fedish instead.
Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the peaceful bliss of Memmy loading everything in reader mode
Newpipe Lads rejoice
Use Invidious/yewtu.be instead of Youtube itself
Switch to either Brave or Librewolf
Use archive.is (or archive.ph) to view websites locked behind a paywall or email block
Tell friends and family to share said content in person
Fear not my friend! We can take back the Internet by refusing Big Tech's services.
Capitalism does this to itself due to the profit motive. Where once is innovation and brand new disruption becomes petty iteration as this new frontier slowly but surely becomes a well-oiled profit machine. The upside is that FOSS makes replacing this profit-generating soul-sucking bloatware with better alternatives very easy.
Replacing the existing infrastructure of Capitalism by building up parallel structures is a valid means of weakening Capital itself.
True and very annoying in the same time! The web is ruined :(
Agreed. It is urgent that we teach Neil Postman's "media ecology". The junk noise garbage shit Internet sucks, and enough is enough!
The real problem with YouTube is the censorship, both of creators and commenters, when they aren't saying anything offensive or problematic but simply referencing different companies, corporations, governments, countries or industries.
I'm in favor of censorship in some cases - which is why it really takes an insane amount of ridiculous nonsensical censorship that actually hinders constructive online communication for me to be saying there's a problem with censorship. I thought I'd never say there was a censorship problem, but there really is now, although it seems mostly restricted to YouTube. Elon Musk's Twitter has some stupid censorship too, though. It takes away accountability when things can't even be criticised anymore, and misinformation/disinformation is allowed but can't be corrected, for example.
That's why I just stick to old school chat rooms, forums, etc.
And those are unfortunately 90% dead as compared to 10 years ago.
Back then I could easily find multiple chatrooms for any fandom all incredibly active. Now I'm lucky to find a singular one that isn't dead. Fandoms mostly moved on to the big monolithic sites like reddit where interactions and conversation are incredibly artificial
eh, I don't mess for fandoms unless you count tech, then in that case, IRC and Matrix are super busy. same with general chats usually.
There are tools for everything mentioned, to make it a good user experience. Just need to ask.
I'm 100% feeling YouTube's throttling. It has already led me to watch fewer videos.
Absolutely. But momma didn't raise no coward. Will keep watching ad free.
If you’re using Safari on macOS or iOS, download Vinegar for YouTube (and Baking Soda for other websites). It switches videos to the native player and skips ads (and autoplay). It also sets the quality to whatever you prefer (Best, in my case). Makes mobile YouTube so much better.
Yarrrrrrrrr brother.
Or just start paying for content to people / orgs deserving of it
If the prices weren't so ridiculously high, i would consider paying
Freetube
Bypass Paywalls Clean
Use Ublock Origin and you'll be fine.
oh, i'm totally over it. it's so liberating to not care about their shitty little digital hell they've created. this and discord are literally the only places I interact with people on the internet.
There are solutions for all of these issues. You can use alternative frontends like Invidious or Piped, dedicated desktop apps like FreeTube or NewPipe and Libretube on Android to access YouTube without ads or tracking. You can also use throwaway email addresses to access websites that demand your email and there are privacy frontends for most social media sites (e.g. Libreddit for the site that shouldn't be named, Nitter for the other site that shouldn't be named, Proxitok for Tiktok, Proxigram for Instagram, etc.)
web 2 alienation
freetube, libretube (on fdroid), nitter, and there's others for services owned by facebook
YouTube ads have evolved since the block. The two ads you get, you have to individually skip them, when it lets you. And the ads are now like 5 minutes each, so if you're doing dishes or something while watching, you can't skip. Or ads that end, but then the ad banner just stays there until you manually skip. I told my daughter that if she wants to experience what tv was like for me when I was a kid, to just use YouTube without Adblock.
No such problems, I don't use pages which need an account to see the content, or I skip the account Popup, YT without ads and trackers, with extensions or front-ends, fast page loading because blocking all this crap. But yes, free internet is becoming more and more distant since large corporations dominate it with their conditions, if they continue like this, soon you will only be browsing the internet with your ID and credit card and the webcam on.
It was like this in the late 90s...early 2000s, late 2000s,early 2010s...late 2010s...early 2020s....fuck
Hm
I'm over this word enshitification. There are far simpler ways to say it, but everyone online has latched on to this moronic term.
Honest question: What are the alternstives?
I agree that enshittification is a, well, shitty term, but I know obly it to describe the problem at hand.
Alternstives I think of are walled gardens, collapse of the internet as we know it, lockdown of social media sites, etc. - none of them all that simple and miss the point enshittification has.
It's a good term, but so often people use it to mean "got bad" when Cory's definition was much more specific in regards to platforms abusing monopoly power on their users and businesses.
And I'm over the word "impactful" but people keep using that clunky ass word when they mean 'significant'.
I hate it too and don't deny it's happening but I hate that phrase. It's so crass and juvenile and seeing it repeated ad nauseam has shed any critical meaning it had.
This is a siege. You're being terrorized.
And you know what would fix it? Building your own website that doesn't do those things and making the people around you engage with it instead of you capitulating to them, but why put effort into anything when you can sit around and complain about it and do nothing about it?
Oh no, you'll have to pay for the services you use!
I've seen you a bit on a few of these posts, always defending these companies' behavior. I tend to disagree with your stance. While I do understand that the infrastructure behind the sites I use is not free (trust me, I run some sites myself and my pitiful little things are expensive), I also do not think punishing users for adblock is justified. Neither is scraping as much data as can be gathered for further sale. Advertising can be very intrusive anymore and data collection from sites is no different. It's not that the sites want to make money; it's their insistence that the user is the product. Just pay walling the service would be much less scummy and unjustifiable than this nonsense.
I am not paying hostage takers. I don't negociate with terrorists. You will let me call grandma OR ELSE.
This loser again. Hello, moron.
