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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 🤷🏻♂️
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.
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.
Lemmy is getting pretty good. I’m optimistic that more of the internet will be like this in the future.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Personally i’m using Librewolf browser and not experiencing any of that. I do belive that even vanilla Firefox would do.
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Yes, you just set a Firefox account. You can also easily import your saved favourites.
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Is quicker to search a tutorial
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.
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.
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.
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
Man, what are you talking about? YouTube has always been slow. It got even worse when they forced everyone to use dash playback, and that was over a decade ago.
Listen here my dude my brain is still stuck to the time when YouTube allowed you to make a fancy fully customized channel page which was later culled go make way for the bland mobile friendly interface ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
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.
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.
