Made me angrier than it should have.

I wonder how much more they need to do before more people start using tools like uBlock and such. The internet is practically unusable without it, and I'm not using hyperbole--most websites have so much garbage on them that you literally can't read them without an ad blocker and/or reading mode.

Since Google removed support for ad blockers, I convinced my wife to switch to Firefox. She noticed a huge improvement immediately, especially on mobile.

Original from xkcd

@CurlyWurlies4All Relevant essay from Ed Zitron. It's well-worth a read, for those who haven't already.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

The picture I am trying to paint is one of terror and abuse. The average person’s experience of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in a shoddy, sludge-like frame, and as the wider internet opens up to said user, already battered by a horrible user experience, they’re immediately thrown into heavily-algorithmic feeds each built to con them, feeding whatever holds their attention and chucking ads in as best they can. As they browse the web, websites like NBCnews.com feature stories from companies like “WorldTrending.com” with advertisements for bizarre toys written in the style of a blog, so intentional in their deceit that the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the bottom saying it’s an ad.

I'm reading Cory Doctorow's latest book, Enshittification. As Ed Zitron said, never forgive them for what they did to the internet...

Normally i don't read a wall of text in post images, but damn. Every sentence is true.

Reject consumerism, embrace FOSS.

Many of the reasons OSS and OSH are so critical to a post-information world.

Our governments' failure to protect our rights from corporations is monumental. And when politicians are captured by money and not the people, we have no choice but to do things ourselves.

Hence dbzer0's mission and vision! Come join!

A lot of this I'm on board with, and I know Patreon is a shitty company with its own problems, but including "join my Patreon" in this list is silly.

Creative people deserve to be supported by the people enjoying what they've created. If the complaint is strictly about Patreon or about how Patreon has monopolised the "creator support" space then I agree, but the wording makes it seem that there's something wrong with artists who have Patreon memberships.

It would be better of them to encourage direct donations or something ofc but 🤷‍♂️ I just felt that one item missed the mark!

The internet used to be anything we wanted it to be

It's the wild west all over again until they establish law and order in the tech world. No standards, just everyone trying to make their millions (billions nowadays?). I can' help but think the end result of all this is an empty husk of a planet, floating dead through space because people wanted to collect money tokens of various values and denominations.

I FUCKING HATE HAVING TO DELETE MY ACCOUNT BY SENDING EMAILS IN A LENGTHY AND UNNECESSARY SUPPORT TICKET EMAIL CHAIN

give me a button. give. me. a. delete. acount. button. I am asking this not of the corporations, but of the government. Right to be forgotten should mandate making it convenient. When I want to delete my account I click Delete Account and recieve a confirmation email. I click the link in the email. My account gets deleted right then and there.

What the fuck is with that write an email to cancel your account by the way? Seriously what the fuck is that? I ran into that a few months ago and I was so fucking furious.

Spot on summary

Embrace free software and piracy. No account needed. No ads. No spam.

Youtube is full of ads?

Unlock Origin for browsers (mobile and desktop)

NextDNS or PiHole (for everything)

FOSS apps for ad free apps that do exactly what the ad-full and premium apps do but free

And minimize usage of software that sells your data wherever possible

Everyone needs to be doing these things. Corporations gaslight folks into thinking they need ads and your info to upkeep and improve their services, but it isn't true. They pocket the revenue while making their products shittier and shittier.

Don't support shitty buisinesses

There are people who are building and participating in alternatives. They deserve support. But people have also become accustomed to getting a lot for free.

Now I'm not defending YouTube, but they have to store billions of hours of videos and serve millions of people at a time, just so you (and me) can stream 10hrs of video a day just to listen to lo fi study music or watch let's plays. that's very expensive. The whole model is ass-backwards, that content creators exist to get paid. YouTube should be charging content creators for storing their videos, and if the creator wants to saturate their shit with ads and e-begging, then it be their choice.

uses proprietary crap and wonders why it sucks

We do not ask for this capitalist Internet. We were good at year 2.000 where most of the content were made by and for fans because they love what they were doing.

Youtube is not full of ads.

This comment was brought to you by Invidious gang.

It's all so tiring, honestly...

You know, if ads actually worked, I wouldn't mind them. We have AAAAALL this tech to try to find the exact thing I might want to buy, and they still can't do it. If the ads in my feed were 100% things I would buy, I wouldn't actually mind them because it's things I like and either have bought or would want to buy. Instead, I hate ads because it's all things I don't and never would buy!

When I was growing up watching Cartoon Network, obviously there were ads, and those ads actually were suited to me, because I was a child watching children's programming. When they advertised a toy, I saw it and I thought "Ooh I want that!"; I didn't always get it, but I definitely wanted it. That was in the late 90s, with 1000x less information on me personally than they have now.

This is why I'm angry and weirdly into Cybersecurity practices.

Steal what you can, live without the rest. Its shockingly easy to unplug from the majority of platforms.

I'm sorry, but this is kinda epic.

I think I encounter at least one of these phrases daily. The internet is so fucking gross.

The shit that really killed me is when my favorite card game, Magic the Gathering, went all in on making cross-promotional sets. Who knew fucking card games could have ads too? Had to cut that shit out of my life.

Yeah, it's not looking great right now. For spotify on pc I use blockify, which makes the ads silent and about one second long. It does just kind of break whenever this one ad tries to play, but you just have to reload the site. For the visual ads on pc, I use ublock origin, which works well. On mobile, I use this app called newpipe instead of youtube. Patreons and memberships are so that the creators get more money. Some of them need the money, some of them obviously don't. Ai features and dogshit updates are everywhere, and I hate it. I don't personally have any workarounds for them. Shows and movies can just be pirated using one of the sites on yarrlist and an adblocker. Only being able to play games with wifi, yeah, that's pretty annoying. The account stuff sucks ass. Things are in fact, shit.

What I do, eschew as much shit as possible. Download books and vids for free and read and watch those.