The 'Fuck You' Pattern(cedwards.xyz)
cedwards.xyz
The 'Fuck You' Pattern
https://cedwards.xyz/the-fuck-you-pattern/
618 comments
So how does this explain why Windows 10, which I have paid like $150 for per license, is now infested with ads, tracking and online presence - and close to impossible to buy without that. They aren't even trying to put a $ figure on what they think it's worth - because they can't be stopped from doing it.
There is no implied agreement, it's exactly as stated.
There is no implied agreement, it's exactly as stated.
What I don't undestand, even Win 10 Pro has XBox and candys all over the place .. serious in a pro version?!? With the terrible EULA it all felt just like a joke to me and I deleted all my Windows installations and I'm Linux only now at home. I'm not using Linux because it is free. I have 4 unused Win10 Pro licenses at home now. But I just can't say yes to the EULA. So I dumped them all. In the late 90s I also bought Linux distros, because I was not able to donwload those over a 33.4kb modem. So it is not because it free or it cost something. It is about freedom.
The XBox game bar is useful for work actually - it is easy to make videos of bugs or how to use app with it.
I can do the same thing on linux and macos without the app being an ad.
I like using Nvidia Shadowplay to do any video recording on my screen.
Is there anything specific in EULA that stands out or overall it's bad for their users?
> I have 4 unused Win10 Pro licenses at home now.
Why don't you sell them?
Why don't you sell them?
Windows license forbids to resell them (or was, last time I checked). Fortunately due to the local law I can ignore this paragraph but not everyone can.
Because it's not about the money. And who knows I might wanna use one on a VM in future. The last new notebook I made flat without even save the installed Windows first.
Get Win LTSB. That's the most sane version.
You have to almost cheat to get an LTSB license as private person. This would be an option, if I could buy a such license official.
I guess someone could argue that it only costs $150 because of the ads. Windows 95 cost well over twice that when it was launched (inflation adjusted). Maybe in the same way that airfares are way cheaper than they were in the 90s, but with much crappier included service.
Ok, so why isn't there an option to just buy the thing at its actual cost without the subsidy and without ads? Are they unable to put a $ value on how much the ads will garner them over, say, a 3-year period?
FWIW, I have Linux Mint on all laptops at home, including the ones used by the kids and the elderly, even though I've already paid for the Windows 10 license by virtue of having purchased them default installed.
FWIW, I have Linux Mint on all laptops at home, including the ones used by the kids and the elderly, even though I've already paid for the Windows 10 license by virtue of having purchased them default installed.
> Ok, so why isn't there an option to just buy the thing at its actual cost without the subsidy and without ads? Are they unable to put a $ value on how much the ads will garner them over, say, a 3-year period?
That's the classical problem with ad-free subscription models: You remove all the people with cash to spare from your advertising pool, thus decreasing its value. At that point you might as well make the product ad-free for the people not paying as well.
That's the classical problem with ad-free subscription models: You remove all the people with cash to spare from your advertising pool, thus decreasing its value. At that point you might as well make the product ad-free for the people not paying as well.
Certainly the costs in the 90s were tied directly to physical distribution and comparatively lesser market demand. Whereas nowadays digital distribution is king and market demand is ubiquitous. I'd consider those factors to be responsible for driving prices down before I'd give a multinational corporation credit for allowing me to use their product (that I paid for) in return for pervasive advertising.
Windows 95 had a suggested retail price of $209.95
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950607&slug...
This magazine from 1995 had a CD full of stock images for sale for $18.98
https://the-avocado.org/2018/03/16/lets-read-pc-magazine-jul...
So I don't think the physical distribution was a large percent of the price.
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950607&slug...
This magazine from 1995 had a CD full of stock images for sale for $18.98
https://the-avocado.org/2018/03/16/lets-read-pc-magazine-jul...
So I don't think the physical distribution was a large percent of the price.
Maybe I attribute too much value to the costs of physical distribution. Either way, my point is that I don't think in-app advertising is the sole driver of the price point we see for Windows today compared to the price point we saw in the 90s.
I find it hard to accept the explanation that in-app advertising is the tradeoff I get when buying a tech product at a given price. Either it's free and it serves me ads, or I pay for it and I get to opt-in to ads if I choose.
It's the same argument for Smart TVs. These companies know they can have their cake and eat it too.
I find it hard to accept the explanation that in-app advertising is the tradeoff I get when buying a tech product at a given price. Either it's free and it serves me ads, or I pay for it and I get to opt-in to ads if I choose.
It's the same argument for Smart TVs. These companies know they can have their cake and eat it too.
> This magazine from 1995 had a CD full of stock images for sale for $18.98
..."for 100 stunning photos on each CD-ROM. $18.98 each" [1], just in case anyone else wanted to square the comparison in proper context.
[1] https://i0.wp.com/the-avocado.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03...
..."for 100 stunning photos on each CD-ROM. $18.98 each" [1], just in case anyone else wanted to square the comparison in proper context.
[1] https://i0.wp.com/the-avocado.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03...
A music CD has very similar physical distribution costs, and those often sold for less than 20$ if memory serves.
They're = being leaches. Sure Windows 95 is expensive, but so were PCs. If you look at inflation adjusted OS prices, you'll see significant declines that reflect a lot of competition:
- Windows 95 was $210 in 1995: $370.94 in today's dollars.
- Windows XP was $199 in 2002: $297.78 in today's dollars.
- Windows 7 was $159.99 in 2009: $200.75 in today's dollars.
- Windows 95 was $210 in 1995: $370.94 in today's dollars.
- Windows XP was $199 in 2002: $297.78 in today's dollars.
- Windows 7 was $159.99 in 2009: $200.75 in today's dollars.
pretty sure I gave like $50 for a license for win95
Let’s be honest though. Windows is supported through OEM licenses. M$ (yeah, I’m dusting this off here, due to the context) isn’t strapped for cash.
How many more copies of windows 10 were sold compared to Windows 95?
How many more engineers work on Windows 10 compared to Windows 95?
I don't think that many. Afaik they closed some teams and replaced them with some automated Tests and stuff. So it's not unthinkable that there were eben less engineers on win10 than on winXP.
Windows 11 is more invasive than 10. Why? Because all the anti-privacy bullshit on Windows 10 worked and nobody complained...
We can call this situation the "Fuck yourself" pattern, where you give money to companies so they can innovate in new ways of fucking you.
We can call this situation the "Fuck yourself" pattern, where you give money to companies so they can innovate in new ways of fucking you.
They pay for it but they aren't able to connect the dots. Have you looked at the developer community of MS frameworks lately? Seems like a ghost town. Of course this is not the only reason, but for quite a few developers it is. I dropped .net completely because it isn't worth developing against a badly behaving OS. I am very sure the ad income doesn't recoup the loss in trust at all.
Or my $1600 LG OLED which takes screen captures by default and sends them to ad tracking cloud servers.
I'd be sandboxing that shit real quick.
Get one from EU (or with EU firmware) and it does not by default. Good side effect of GDPR.
That's the real fuck you pattern right there. When they make you pay for it handsomely, build a moat with questionable practices so third parties have a hard time, make it part of the cultural context so that people expect it to be the "normal" or "baseline" system, and then there's still ads.
While I don't like Windows 10 telemetry and other shady diagnostics services that lurk in the background, I've never seen any ads "infesting" the OS at all, and I'm online almost all day. Which part of Windows displays ads?
The company you purchased from decided to do it that way. If you don’t agree just don’t buy into it, or create a competitor.
Did the license you bought said it would have no ads?
What part of windows is infested with ads?
Most of those are manageable or can be disabled, but it can become annoying:
- Start Menu showing suggested apps (the infamous Candy Crush)
- Task bar shown weather and news
- Lock screen sometimes showing ads
- Sometimes, with updates, new things are installed that auto-launch and prompt you to, e.g., buy an Office subscription.
- Start Menu showing suggested apps (the infamous Candy Crush)
- Task bar shown weather and news
- Lock screen sometimes showing ads
- Sometimes, with updates, new things are installed that auto-launch and prompt you to, e.g., buy an Office subscription.
Don't forget:
- Constantly nagging about using browsers other than Edge
- Constantly nagging about using browsers other than Edge
Facebook and/or Microsoft can choose to charge you for their content as well as serve you ads. Serving you ads doesn't exclude you from paying for content if that's that's what they choose to do. I believe there's versions of Kindle and other such devices that are cheaper because they have ads. Windows would be more expensive if they didn't serve ads.
The single killer feature of windows, unrivaled by Mac or Linux, is playing video-games.
Expensive professional software is often available on Mac.
Probably the target market for windows evolved to become people who tolerate advertising (or at least that's what PMs at M$ think).
Half the price is paid in the license fee. The other half is a lifetime of ads exposure.
Expensive professional software is often available on Mac.
Probably the target market for windows evolved to become people who tolerate advertising (or at least that's what PMs at M$ think).
Half the price is paid in the license fee. The other half is a lifetime of ads exposure.
The killer feature of Ryan Air is that it costs £10 to get to a stag party in Malaga, for people who are too blitzed to care about comfort, basic customer service, getting hijacked by foreign governments, etc. The difference is, there are still professional-grade alternatives to Ryan Air, and the company you work for isn't going to make you fly them for business every day. (If they do, you should really quit).
Blaming Ryanair for getting hijacked? That is harsh.
Personally, besides the dark patterns during booking, I find little functional difference between Ryanair and the likes of Aer lingus when traveling .
The difference being air travel is highly regulated, as should be surveillance marketing.
The difference being air travel is highly regulated, as should be surveillance marketing.
Ryan Air makes their seats out of recycled portapotties. The owner repeatedly lobbied for standing room in the back,
coin slots on the toilets, and to remove the requirement for seatbelts since "if it goes down, they're all dead anyway." The one time I flew Aer Lingus (in coach, NYC to Dublin via Shannon) I had a fantastic breakfast that still ranks as one of my favorite airplane meals. Sure it cost hundreds of dollars more but once you're in the hands of an airline unfit to transport animals, you wish you'd spent the money.
I am no cheerleader for Ryanair... But most of your arguments don't really hold.
1. What's wrong with recycled seats? If you live in a city you are drinking recycled water.
2. Comparing a trans-atlantic flight to a short-haul one (which all Ryanair flights are) is not correct. Short-haul Aer Lingus is not discernably different to Ryanair.
3. Michael O'Leary is the king of free publicity. The fact that you heard about his "coin operated toilet" plan says it all. No-one ever seriously entertained standing room on airplanes etc...
And none of this has any bearing on the recent hijacking. I've flown many times with Ryanair and otherairlines, with small kids in tow, and there is little difference, because most of the hassle is down to security theatre at the airports.
1. What's wrong with recycled seats? If you live in a city you are drinking recycled water.
2. Comparing a trans-atlantic flight to a short-haul one (which all Ryanair flights are) is not correct. Short-haul Aer Lingus is not discernably different to Ryanair.
3. Michael O'Leary is the king of free publicity. The fact that you heard about his "coin operated toilet" plan says it all. No-one ever seriously entertained standing room on airplanes etc...
And none of this has any bearing on the recent hijacking. I've flown many times with Ryanair and otherairlines, with small kids in tow, and there is little difference, because most of the hassle is down to security theatre at the airports.
1. The problem with recycled seats is that they're incredibly, intentionally uncomfortable. If the airline spent a little money to upholster them to the level of say an intercity bus, it would be grand.
2. I've never been on a short Aer Lingus flight so can't comment. But I've been on lots of short Iberia and Air France flights and never dealt with the discomfort of Ryan.
3. Same reason I don't buy a Tesla.
4. I'd hope a pilot of the Irish flag carrier would have phoned in to ask whether diverting several hundred miles to Minsk was the wisest idea. Glassdoor shows the average Ryan Air pilot making €66k/year versus €91k for an Aer Lingus pilot. And no doubt the hours and schedules are hideous. If you choose to entrust your family members' lives to a company that requires defense with all the above caveats to save a few quid - I hope you're spending it on a decent hotel.
2. I've never been on a short Aer Lingus flight so can't comment. But I've been on lots of short Iberia and Air France flights and never dealt with the discomfort of Ryan.
3. Same reason I don't buy a Tesla.
4. I'd hope a pilot of the Irish flag carrier would have phoned in to ask whether diverting several hundred miles to Minsk was the wisest idea. Glassdoor shows the average Ryan Air pilot making €66k/year versus €91k for an Aer Lingus pilot. And no doubt the hours and schedules are hideous. If you choose to entrust your family members' lives to a company that requires defense with all the above caveats to save a few quid - I hope you're spending it on a decent hotel.
> remove the requirement for seatbelts since "if it goes down, they're all dead anyway."
I mean, he's got a point here. Surely if we actually wanted plane passengers to survive crashes they'd have something more substantial than lap belts? I'd have thought, as a simple laymen, facing the seats backwards would make any impact far more survivable than crouching in the insane way that the "safety pamphlet" suggests?
I mean, he's got a point here. Surely if we actually wanted plane passengers to survive crashes they'd have something more substantial than lap belts? I'd have thought, as a simple laymen, facing the seats backwards would make any impact far more survivable than crouching in the insane way that the "safety pamphlet" suggests?
Consider that people survive in some crashes where the plane structure fails. There are no crashes where the plane looks fine, but people inside are dead. This means lap belts + bracing is actually a good approach. A more involved restrain means no bracing, which means more forces on the neck. It also means it's harder to get free, and quick evacuation is one of the main factors that save lives during an accident.
> A more involved restrain means no bracing, which means more forces on the neck.
Did you miss the GPs bit about facing the seats backwards? Then the whole backrest becomes your restraint. (I mean, most airplane crashes are forwards, right -- they don't get rear-ended all that often?)
Did you miss the GPs bit about facing the seats backwards? Then the whole backrest becomes your restraint. (I mean, most airplane crashes are forwards, right -- they don't get rear-ended all that often?)
I mean, no one's said he was technically wrong about the crash situation. Although lap belts do occasionally stop people from fracturing their skulls on the ceiling of the plane or flying into the passenger beside them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/ryanair-ceo-seat-bel...
I just want my corporate overlords to at least pretend not to have a wanton disregard for human life. Is that so much to ask?
[edit] on the other hand, the best thing for the Spanish about having a standing section on Ryan Air flights would be the passengers would get their brawling out of the way before they make it to the pub.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/ryanair-ceo-seat-bel...
I just want my corporate overlords to at least pretend not to have a wanton disregard for human life. Is that so much to ask?
[edit] on the other hand, the best thing for the Spanish about having a standing section on Ryan Air flights would be the passengers would get their brawling out of the way before they make it to the pub.
Airliner seatbelts primarily exist to restrain passengers during turbulence.
This is the correct answer. Lap belts are there because under unexpected conditions planes can and have[1] suddenly hit turbulence pockets where they plummet 10 or so meters in an instant. The effect is anyone unbuckled gets slammed into the ceiling.
It's why if you're seated, it's recommended to be buckled in - the difference between one person slamming into the ceiling and 300 is pretty substantial.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7391144&page=1
It's why if you're seated, it's recommended to be buckled in - the difference between one person slamming into the ceiling and 300 is pretty substantial.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7391144&page=1
To be fair, Windows 10 has been surprisingly satisfying in ways that I never imagined. Sure, Explorer still lacks tabs and a real bash is nonexistant, but macOS has gone downhill in other aspects anyway. I have an early 2015 MBP and I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that every time it threw a problem at me I tried to find a workaround and fix it, even though I could easily switch to my Windows laptop. But the sheer number of problems that required weird workarounds ruined macOS for me. From simple problems like Bluetooth interfering with Wi-Fi and causing mouse cursor lags, to the OS not being capable of driving my 2k external monitor as fast as my Windows machine. At one point, I just said enough is enough, and switched back to Windows after 5 years. None of those problems exist on my Windows machine, and if anything, I've come to appreciate the effort MS put into creating a rock solid OS that just works and is not limited to any specific HW.
I read stuff like this but I've had zero problems with MacOS since I bought a mac pro a few back. Am I doing something wrong? How did you hit all these issues? I'm primarily a linux user but it's not like I'm hitting any problem with MacOS on my laptop or my "new" M1 mini.
I would pay twice as much upfront but that's not an option. So instead I pirate Windows 10 Enterprise which is an absolute dream OS for a prosumer.
I'd buy it but I haven't been able to figure out how to.
I'd buy it but I haven't been able to figure out how to.
That's exactly what you do. Find a guide on buying LTSC through a Microsoft partner. It's expensive but you can effectively install it many times.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
This is honestly wonderful news. $300 is entirely reasonable for a "clean", full-featured windows OS!
I'm on version 21H1 -- is this offered with the 2019 LTSC license? Or stuck with version 1909? I'm not sure that really matters for me personally - but sometimes it's confusing how this all works compared to the consumer editions. By confusing I just really just mean they don't seem offer this information upfront.
I'm on version 21H1 -- is this offered with the 2019 LTSC license? Or stuck with version 1909? I'm not sure that really matters for me personally - but sometimes it's confusing how this all works compared to the consumer editions. By confusing I just really just mean they don't seem offer this information upfront.
You'll have to reinstall anyway, since you can't "uninstall" the Store and stuff, it needs to not be there to begin with. LTSC ISOs are downloadable from MS. Its very similar to Server 2019.
Wait, you can actually do this legitimately??!?!?!
TIL how I'm going to be buying Windows from now on. I had no idea this was actually this accessible.
Pirating can sometimes be the simplest technical solution to some situations, but at the end of the day being able to point at a (set of) legitimately-acquired license key(s) is a bit like having a PhD, it squares everything off in a way that opens doors (or keeps doors open) that would otherwise be shut.
TIL how I'm going to be buying Windows from now on. I had no idea this was actually this accessible.
Pirating can sometimes be the simplest technical solution to some situations, but at the end of the day being able to point at a (set of) legitimately-acquired license key(s) is a bit like having a PhD, it squares everything off in a way that opens doors (or keeps doors open) that would otherwise be shut.
What advertising is there?
Googling "ads in windows 10" shows lots of examples.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ads+in+windows+10&tbm=isch
Does that answer your question?
https://www.google.com/search?q=ads+in+windows+10&tbm=isch
Does that answer your question?
Also googling how to remove ads in Windows 10 shows a bunch of solutions.
From your link, it seems most ads are on live tiles. It's really easy to turn that feature off. (No one likes live tiles anyway)
From your link, it seems most ads are on live tiles. It's really easy to turn that feature off. (No one likes live tiles anyway)
Why do I see no ads in windows 10? Have you tried using WPD?
> You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who will pay for it.
"The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs millions. That's the irony.
"The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs millions. That's the irony.
Go an and run a site that serves massive amounts of cat pictures for peanuts!
Well, yes, serving static HTML is easy. Serving images is kind of not hard either, because you have free unlimited traffic, don't you? Some hosting plans offer it. They just limit the egress bandwidth. So maybe you need a few more servers to cope with it, just like $50 a pop. You're not gonna need any CDN, people further away from your DC will just wait longer. Or run your servers from two regions, it just takes duplicating your collection of cat pictures, should be peanuts.
Then, you need to store these terabytes of cats. On rather fast disks because else the disks will be the bottleneck, and cats will load very slowly for some users. It would be terrible were something to happen to the collection, so you need some backup for peanuts, like some Backblaze, and maybe a second copy because Backblaze has no^W limited redundancy.
Then, well, you need to monitor all that and sometimes fix issues, because cloud infra is highly available but not highly reliable.
Then, where do the cat pictures come from? Allow anonymous uploads! Or register users and allow uploads.
Now analyze each picture so that it's an actual cat picture and not child porn or a warez archive. Resize them to match your standards. Yes, this is simple, just run a RNN that detects cats.
Then, curate the incoming pictures so that they are actually reasonably interesting. Just maybe hire a few people to do that for peanuts somewhere in Africa.
Ah yes, you want to also deduplicate images; run some image hashing algorithms; use maybe just one or two GPU instances to do that efficiently. And you gonna need a DB, a simple one, that will never need any administering or fixing, won't it?
Well, yes, now you can run that site for just several grand a month, making it your day job, because you're well-qualified to maintain every part of it. Enjoy the peanuts.
Well, yes, serving static HTML is easy. Serving images is kind of not hard either, because you have free unlimited traffic, don't you? Some hosting plans offer it. They just limit the egress bandwidth. So maybe you need a few more servers to cope with it, just like $50 a pop. You're not gonna need any CDN, people further away from your DC will just wait longer. Or run your servers from two regions, it just takes duplicating your collection of cat pictures, should be peanuts.
Then, you need to store these terabytes of cats. On rather fast disks because else the disks will be the bottleneck, and cats will load very slowly for some users. It would be terrible were something to happen to the collection, so you need some backup for peanuts, like some Backblaze, and maybe a second copy because Backblaze has no^W limited redundancy.
Then, well, you need to monitor all that and sometimes fix issues, because cloud infra is highly available but not highly reliable.
Then, where do the cat pictures come from? Allow anonymous uploads! Or register users and allow uploads.
Now analyze each picture so that it's an actual cat picture and not child porn or a warez archive. Resize them to match your standards. Yes, this is simple, just run a RNN that detects cats.
Then, curate the incoming pictures so that they are actually reasonably interesting. Just maybe hire a few people to do that for peanuts somewhere in Africa.
Ah yes, you want to also deduplicate images; run some image hashing algorithms; use maybe just one or two GPU instances to do that efficiently. And you gonna need a DB, a simple one, that will never need any administering or fixing, won't it?
Well, yes, now you can run that site for just several grand a month, making it your day job, because you're well-qualified to maintain every part of it. Enjoy the peanuts.
Hi. I run imgflip.com, a fine purveyor of cat pictures, among others. It serves ~100TB of bandwidth and hundreds of millions of image views per month with total infrastructure cost below 5k per month. I believe Imgflip completely avoids dark patterns because I abhor them and strive to provide positive value to humanity, although I would love for you to share your opinions to the contrary. Imgflip is also 80% profit. It employs several of the techniques you mention, but efficiently, rather than bloated and inefficient like many companies. Curious to hear your take
So I turned off adblock, but I see no ads, even though you have some ad domains. Is imgflip pro the way you make money only? I tried again and all I saw is one banner ad, sometimes. Do you have more ads more frequently, or is it just a relatively minimal amount in general? What is the revenue split between pro & ads? For linus for example, it's about %26 youtube ads, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zt57TWkTF4
How do you deal with moderation? Is it automated, I see you even have comments? Or is it just report buttons and your takedown form? How is the support load?
What is your tech stack? PHP? Python? C#? Java? Golang?
How do you deal with moderation? Is it automated, I see you even have comments? Or is it just report buttons and your takedown form? How is the support load?
What is your tech stack? PHP? Python? C#? Java? Golang?
What’s the business-model for image-hosting like thesedays?
Years ago everyone had to use an image-host (Photobucket, lol…) because all those phpBB instances on shared hosting accounts didn’t support direct image uploads or greatly limited attachments and most people didn’t have their own web hosting account to use instead.
With the rise of Web 2.0, it became important for sites to control their content - I remember the days of hotlinked images being swapped-out with obscene or vomit-inducing content as an act of revenge on bandwidth leeches - and cheap storage meant it wasn’t a problem to host hundreds of gigabytes of content by oneself. Can you image if Facebook and Instagram didn’t host the images posted to them?
It’s 2021 now, web-forums are dead - if people want to share photos to a small circle they’ll likely use Dropbox or OneDrive - or just copy+paste between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp…
Do guide question: who uses your service and where’s the opportunity for profit? Serving images directly means people can’t see any ads, and browsers now block more and more third-party cookies (until all of them by 2023, I understand) so using image-hosting as a way to track users across the web is gone - is your frontpage traffic enough? Savvy users who use image hosts also tend to the ones to adblock too, even on mobile.
Years ago everyone had to use an image-host (Photobucket, lol…) because all those phpBB instances on shared hosting accounts didn’t support direct image uploads or greatly limited attachments and most people didn’t have their own web hosting account to use instead.
With the rise of Web 2.0, it became important for sites to control their content - I remember the days of hotlinked images being swapped-out with obscene or vomit-inducing content as an act of revenge on bandwidth leeches - and cheap storage meant it wasn’t a problem to host hundreds of gigabytes of content by oneself. Can you image if Facebook and Instagram didn’t host the images posted to them?
It’s 2021 now, web-forums are dead - if people want to share photos to a small circle they’ll likely use Dropbox or OneDrive - or just copy+paste between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp…
Do guide question: who uses your service and where’s the opportunity for profit? Serving images directly means people can’t see any ads, and browsers now block more and more third-party cookies (until all of them by 2023, I understand) so using image-hosting as a way to track users across the web is gone - is your frontpage traffic enough? Savvy users who use image hosts also tend to the ones to adblock too, even on mobile.
Thank you for the reality check!
So, well, my estimate of a few grand a month was not completely off.
So, well, my estimate of a few grand a month was not completely off.
It would be really interesting reading an article on what you do different on what each part costs. Effectively how image hosting services work nowadays or if nothing changed in the past 15 years.
That's an amusing reductio ad absurdum, but most people don't have that much of an objection to ad-supported media in principle, it is a time-honored business model.
But being an asshole about insisting that everyone log in so you can target them individually isn't actually a requirement for the business model to work and be profitable.
At most, you can justify being an asshole about insisting that the user not be using an ad-blocker (with the user having the option of logging in with a paid account for an ad-free experience).
But being an asshole about insisting that everyone log in so you can target them individually isn't actually a requirement for the business model to work and be profitable.
At most, you can justify being an asshole about insisting that the user not be using an ad-blocker (with the user having the option of logging in with a paid account for an ad-free experience).
This sounds like a great case for a decentralized web infrastructure like Mastodon uses. Each cat server can be exactly as reliable as the owner feels like making it, and each user can choose a cat server based on their needs, and the whole thing is federated because it's based on open source and open standards.
p2p cats for teh win
p2p cats for teh win
mastodon also downloads remote media from all known accounts with no real way to manage it, making it a nightmare to administer disk usage for any decent sized instance. they go the route of your instance being responsible for all remote media, not the other way around
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/9567
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/9567
Each server could have an address that you type into a browser. We could have a 'domain name server' that keeps a list of which address should match to which server.
Then people could easily navigate to cat pictures.
Then people could easily navigate to cat pictures.
> Backblaze has no redundancy.
That does not seem to be the case.
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217667468-B2-Se...
That does not seem to be the case.
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217667468-B2-Se...
Indeed. They have redundancy within a DC, like you would expect from a NAS or SAN.
They don't have the cross-DC redundancy like S3 does. If a DC goes offline, so does your data.
I'm updating my comment.
They don't have the cross-DC redundancy like S3 does. If a DC goes offline, so does your data.
I'm updating my comment.
How often do entire DCs suffer catastrophic loss? Not just an hour or two of connectivity outage, but “meteor-strike”-type scenarios - or more likely: a fire that takes out an entire rack or row of racks? How often does it happen in developed countries (where fire fighting infrastructure is in-place and building fire-codes are enforced) vs worldwide average? Has it ever happened to a brand-name cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP)? How does it compare to self-managed co-lo?
OVH suffered a fatal DC loss quite recently [0]. It's not an everyday event, but it's not something that never happens, either. Also, don't overestimate our fire fighting capabilities: Once a fire breaks out, severe damage to the DC is very likely - if the fire doesn't kill the server, water, temperature or shock will easily do so. Especially if we're on a scale as small as a rack.
Don't put data you don't want to loose in a single location.
[0] https://www.ovh.com/world/news/press/cpl1787.fire-our-strasb...
Don't put data you don't want to loose in a single location.
[0] https://www.ovh.com/world/news/press/cpl1787.fire-our-strasb...
A power or connectivity loss may happen. A DC does not need to be destroyed or something, just a backhoe acting up somewhere.
You’re overblowing an imageboard checklist into a pack of elephants. I wonder how much I’d earn if I disaggregated every “make us another site quick” in my company in such a way. Well, writing html is easy. But then webpack… and then you want editable content… postgres/orm… and browser coverage, .babelrc… and of course we don’t serve it from our office, now it’s vps management and deployment configuration… and version control, do you know how hard is to remember all git essentials? We have to register a plan on gitlab and enter a card into it!
Smells like seven figures already.
Smells like seven figures already.
> Go an and run a site that serves massive amounts of cat pictures for peanuts!
Well, I was responding to "millions", so maybe "a handful of peanuts" might be more accurate...
I belive there was an open company/OCI post by neocities.org a good while back, detailing their budget - but I can't seem to find it again.
Well, I was responding to "millions", so maybe "a handful of peanuts" might be more accurate...
I belive there was an open company/OCI post by neocities.org a good while back, detailing their budget - but I can't seem to find it again.
Looks like Kyle dropped out of the open company initiative at some point, or let that one blog post drop off the site?
http://web.archive.org/web/20160310015118/https://blog.neoci...
> Our (rough) budget for 2015
(...)
> We have upgraded a lot of our infrastructure to provide for faster, more reliable service with more features, space, and bandwidth capabilities, which has pushed our operating bill to around $300/month (...) To prevent unexpected costs, we have made agreements with our providers to make this a fixed rate, so a sudden flood of traffic shouldn't change this dramatically.
(...)
> In order to become self sustaining with the current system, we will require approximately $3600 in annual recurring revenue. I think this is an achievable goal with our new site (we're almost 1/3 of the way there), and we have plenty of runway incase this takes longer than expected. We also have the ability to scale back on some of our expenses, as I believe I can shave off at least $100-150 from our monthly recurring expenses should we need to without too many problems.
> (...) We can scale a lot (~500k+ sites) with what we have now, and the scaling options we have are simple, predictable and affordable.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160310015118/https://blog.neoci...
> Our (rough) budget for 2015
(...)
> We have upgraded a lot of our infrastructure to provide for faster, more reliable service with more features, space, and bandwidth capabilities, which has pushed our operating bill to around $300/month (...) To prevent unexpected costs, we have made agreements with our providers to make this a fixed rate, so a sudden flood of traffic shouldn't change this dramatically.
(...)
> In order to become self sustaining with the current system, we will require approximately $3600 in annual recurring revenue. I think this is an achievable goal with our new site (we're almost 1/3 of the way there), and we have plenty of runway incase this takes longer than expected. We also have the ability to scale back on some of our expenses, as I believe I can shave off at least $100-150 from our monthly recurring expenses should we need to without too many problems.
> (...) We can scale a lot (~500k+ sites) with what we have now, and the scaling options we have are simple, predictable and affordable.
We just need a standardized cat and picture thereof - perhaps even expand the standard to cover one of each breed.
Then you can have a local copy and be sure you have every standard cat in existence!
Then you can have a local copy and be sure you have every standard cat in existence!
No, we just need to train a neural network to generate cat pictures from a small set of inputs (like a uint8 for pose, a uint8 for breed, etc.) and then just transmit those parameters instead of the entire picture.
[deleted]
This guy infrastructures.
Sounds like overkill, mate. I’ll go with your comments parent. Maybe 5 peanuts. In all seriousness, I’ll agree on cdn at 20 a month plus 3 @ 15 dollar nodes running out app and db, let’s go multimaster with a local db node on each app server, screw the c go for a and p, and yeah a single haproxy hardware thread, ha, so make that 2 single core nodes 1gb will do fine for 300k connections per second, um you mentioned staff? For what exactly?
Anyway, you can do anything the hard way, but what’s your point? That serving millions of cats per second requires big investment that must be recouped? I see most of this as rent seeking, and the infrastructure is economy of scale. Maybe you use tensor flow and Kafka inside Kubernetes, I dunno…
I agree that one can expect lame websites to act lame, but it’s out of sheer churlishness rather than necessity
Anyway, you can do anything the hard way, but what’s your point? That serving millions of cats per second requires big investment that must be recouped? I see most of this as rent seeking, and the infrastructure is economy of scale. Maybe you use tensor flow and Kafka inside Kubernetes, I dunno…
I agree that one can expect lame websites to act lame, but it’s out of sheer churlishness rather than necessity
Indeed, serving is the easy part, once it's set up. Going offline when the DC goes offline can be completely acceptable.
It's the picture intake pipeline that eats most of the resources. If you only want to serve the same collection, or a collection you personally increase by 1-2 cats a day, then it's fine.
It's the picture intake pipeline that eats most of the resources. If you only want to serve the same collection, or a collection you personally increase by 1-2 cats a day, then it's fine.
> It's the picture intake pipeline that eats most of the resources.
How so? Let's say you want to be somewhat competitive with imgur and handle a million images per day, and also that the peak rate is 4x your average. That comes out to 50 images per second. A thumbnail or few shouldn't really take more than a CPU-second, so you can handle that with 2-6 cheap servers. Let alone using spare cores on storage-optimized servers. And it's next to zero database load.
How so? Let's say you want to be somewhat competitive with imgur and handle a million images per day, and also that the peak rate is 4x your average. That comes out to 50 images per second. A thumbnail or few shouldn't really take more than a CPU-second, so you can handle that with 2-6 cheap servers. Let alone using spare cores on storage-optimized servers. And it's next to zero database load.
You think that Facebook and Google build these huge warehouse-size data centers all over the world for fun?
You think they wouldn’t rather have the cash?
You think they wouldn’t rather have the cash?
You do realize that their data includes half of humanities personal lives, if you count WhatsApp and tinder. It ain’t all cat pictures, I’m afraid
You make a great point that I hadn't considered before.
It's like rocket fuel! The faster you want to go, the more fuel you need. Which adds weight, so now you go slower, so you need more fuel...
I want to serve a cat picture, which would cost 1/100 of a cent. But at scale, it adds up. So now I show adds that generate 1.2/100 of a cent in revenue but add .5/100 cents in serving cost, which I can optimize with user data to add an additional .7/100 cents in revenue, but which adds .4/100 cents in serving costs....
It's like rocket fuel! The faster you want to go, the more fuel you need. Which adds weight, so now you go slower, so you need more fuel...
I want to serve a cat picture, which would cost 1/100 of a cent. But at scale, it adds up. So now I show adds that generate 1.2/100 of a cent in revenue but add .5/100 cents in serving cost, which I can optimize with user data to add an additional .7/100 cents in revenue, but which adds .4/100 cents in serving costs....
Shouldnt you include engineers compensation in "The infrastructure" thats where a lot of money goes.
A bloated payroll to support a bloated advertising platform with a bloated AI-based recommendation algorithm when all it should be doing is loading a descending-order list of most recent submissions meeting the category criteria....
Don't talk about costs, this crap is self-inflicted
Don't talk about costs, this crap is self-inflicted
The hosting and bandwidth costs of images and especially video is non-trivial. I agree that the vast majority of the costs of these overly-large companies comes from what happens while trying to make them profitable, and then all of the engineering work that goes into that... but that all starts because running the site in the first place wasn't free and you have to do something to make them at least sustainable, with your "obvious" options being to either: 1) ask for donations (which likely won't pay for the site if you get popular: I know this from experience); 2) require people to pay some small subscription fee (which will make the site less fun for everyone); 3) pray ubiquitous micropayments eventually happens (i work on this problem as part of Orchid, but it still hasn't happened ;P); 4) sell "something else" to whales, like t-shirts or the ability to "guild" messages (the strategies reddit was trying to do as they resisted ads for a long time... maybe these work well enough?); or 5) start trying to sell ads and become the thing you hate. The only other strategies I have seen tend to either drag you towards #5 or simply cause other dark patterns, such as taking a cut of "tips" (what TikTok and Twitch do), which at bare minimum incentivizes the "don't you dare talk about alternative payment systems in our ecosystem: all payments must go through us" model sin (which can be fought against if you have a lot of willpower and remain private--I never required this with Cydia as I considered it the original sin my entire market existed to undermine--but I see the motivation and it feels kind of inevitable). I personally bet the only real "correct" solution is essentially #3... if we ever get to the point where the fees for that are as easy to pay and as low as the fees you pay for electricity (which works on a similar model).
How about running ads but not letting them dominate your product? I see nothing wrong with running a costs-plus business model but VC comes in and demand all these stupid companies dominate the world so they can get their 500x return or whatever. Then they go public and now the only thing that matters is shareholder value, fuck the users and OG supporters...
Every one of these companies start with a nice mission and it ends up getting perverted into the hellscape that is tech today. Every damn time.
Every one of these companies start with a nice mission and it ends up getting perverted into the hellscape that is tech today. Every damn time.
Its really really hard for a company whose ultimate goal is profit, to give up opportunities to do so. Its just not gonna happen. You can have all the ethical people you want, but people change and it takes just one "smart" engineer/product manager to realize how much money is on the table, then use that to grab power and get the same changes everywhere.
Relying on people doing the right thing is an unstable equilibrium. IMO the only way to really ensure this is with regulations and compliance controls. Laws like GDPR and CCPA have to be followed by the business.
Relying on people doing the right thing is an unstable equilibrium. IMO the only way to really ensure this is with regulations and compliance controls. Laws like GDPR and CCPA have to be followed by the business.
I don't think it's hard per-se. I think it's hard if you have investors.
I know plenty of founders who would be happy with lower constant profits, less employees, in order to have a company which doesn't actively psychologically harm its users, a less stressful working environment.
Gumroad is the perfect example of this.
The problems come from VC money, which force a company to chase 500x returns or die trying. More in general, whenever there is centralisation of resources, problems ensue at some point later on.
Regulations are not the answer - established companies find a way to arginate them (look at Google playing with cookies), smaller companies trying to go live and compete have a slower time to market and die, benefiting the established companies.
On top of this regulations introduce a different set of problems. What if I'm okay being on a website which doesn't respect my privacy? What if I care more about reading a news article and never visit that website again more than I care about them respecting some rules regarding what kind of tracking they do?
Instead of assuming we, the lawmakers, are omniscient and perfect, I think we should just get out of the way of the market and limit governmental influence to reduce the number of monopolies and corruption that gets into the real world - and then bubbles up in various ways, chasing infinte growth being one of them.
To 100 more Gumroads.
I know plenty of founders who would be happy with lower constant profits, less employees, in order to have a company which doesn't actively psychologically harm its users, a less stressful working environment.
Gumroad is the perfect example of this.
The problems come from VC money, which force a company to chase 500x returns or die trying. More in general, whenever there is centralisation of resources, problems ensue at some point later on.
Regulations are not the answer - established companies find a way to arginate them (look at Google playing with cookies), smaller companies trying to go live and compete have a slower time to market and die, benefiting the established companies.
On top of this regulations introduce a different set of problems. What if I'm okay being on a website which doesn't respect my privacy? What if I care more about reading a news article and never visit that website again more than I care about them respecting some rules regarding what kind of tracking they do?
Instead of assuming we, the lawmakers, are omniscient and perfect, I think we should just get out of the way of the market and limit governmental influence to reduce the number of monopolies and corruption that gets into the real world - and then bubbles up in various ways, chasing infinte growth being one of them.
To 100 more Gumroads.
> Relying on people doing the right thing is an unstable equilibrium. IMO the only way to really ensure this is with regulations and compliance controls.
Isn’t this ironic? The government is people. I guess this just moves the onus of people doing the right thing, up to government. If you’re right, that destabilizes government. Which I guess is what happens when it stops corps; corps then need to take it over.
Isn’t this ironic? The government is people. I guess this just moves the onus of people doing the right thing, up to government. If you’re right, that destabilizes government. Which I guess is what happens when it stops corps; corps then need to take it over.
I get that, but there is something very wrong with business culture if that is the only outcome guaranteed. There are lots of examples of successful companies whose business model is not based around the unrestrained pursuit of pure profit at the expense of customers... look at Nintendo, for example, or Disney.
Shhh! Some people are trying to justify their jobs as a service to mankind.
> "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts
lol at this. Go setup that infrastructure and see how far you get for peanuts.
lol at this. Go setup that infrastructure and see how far you get for peanuts.
A single server can host an awful lot of cat pictures. Especially if you apply a little compression.
In fact: I'm sure there are many cat image sharing sites out there. A random search landed me here: https://www.funnycatpix.com/_pics/Hmmmmmm890.htm
Seems like a high-quality HN-like website, hehe :)
In fact: I'm sure there are many cat image sharing sites out there. A random search landed me here: https://www.funnycatpix.com/_pics/Hmmmmmm890.htm
Seems like a high-quality HN-like website, hehe :)
Considering that pof.com used to run on a single server and handled more dating traffic than all of its competitors combined, you can go pretty damn far for peanuts.
Folks that come from over funded and over engineered companies don’t know this. Because they haven’t experienced it, it’s simply not possible to them. If you have money to burn, you do so.
My company has grown 15x in the last few years and our total infra costs continue to go down, because we pay attention to them.
My company has grown 15x in the last few years and our total infra costs continue to go down, because we pay attention to them.
Every posting about one of the larger scale companies have to have a “why does it cost x / take y engineers to run this thing?” comment. It’s like everyone at google / Facebook / Amazon are too stupid to realize they can run the entire thing out of a server in the basement maintained by 5 engineers.
If it was so simple to host Instagram for peanuts I wonder why no one has done it.
If it was so simple to host Instagram for peanuts I wonder why no one has done it.
I honestly don’t think it would be hard, especially with AWS abstracting away all scaling issues from you.
Hard to abstract away the money that it'll cost - which is the original point here. They're doing something that costs money, and people want to use that something, so they're doing what it takes to make money from it.
If your business isn’t scaling with users, it’s a business model problem not a technical one
AWS makes around 26% margins (not broken out, it’s markets best guess). At a medium size it can make more cost effect sense to run your own……with the understanding that you have to build a cattle farm, and pets are forbidden. If you every allow a pet, then just go to AWS, et.al.
You need content, which means you need to become popular.
This drives up complexity of the business operation overall, not just the infrastructure.
This drives up complexity of the business operation overall, not just the infrastructure.
> What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free?
Is that really fair? Would there be nowhere to see pictures of cats without their millions of dollars in infrastructure and staffing? Or could it be that their millions of dollars in infrastructure and staffing for selling ads is the reason the goto place for pictures of cats is BigTechCo instead of a ton of smaller forums and communities each of which is relatively inexpensive to operate.
Is that really fair? Would there be nowhere to see pictures of cats without their millions of dollars in infrastructure and staffing? Or could it be that their millions of dollars in infrastructure and staffing for selling ads is the reason the goto place for pictures of cats is BigTechCo instead of a ton of smaller forums and communities each of which is relatively inexpensive to operate.
Ahhh, I remember the good old days of forums where people would "hotlink" an image into a thread, and after enough people started viewing/forwarding that link around it would break because the image hoster's account would get suspended by their host for going over their bandwidth limit, or the original hoster would panic at their bandwidth costs and delete it and/or try to block hotlinking going forward. Maybe something like IPFS could solve this problem soon, but right now freely available image hosting on these centralized providers is the most reliable it's ever been.
On Discourse (open source forum software) we default new install to downloading hotlinked images so we can prevent this very specific problem.
But isn’t that copyright infringement?
Maybe? I'm not a lawyer and I would be surprised if they consulted one before implementing that feature. But unless the license for the file limits access it seems like they're just acting as an almost-proxy for these images, and not misrepresenting their ownership over them.
I'm not a lawyer, either, and have an honest question: how would a download of the image to cache it differ than a download to view it? They're performing the same action (downloading the bits). But, one stores it for later download by others, the second displays it (and maybe gets cached locally in a browser cache, making it look sort of like the first case...). Does intent matter? Is there an implied protection in that you can download for personal use, but cannot distribute? Does that break down on a multi-user computer? i.e. what if I download the image and my computer shows the cached image another user?
Well I believe it's a difference of redirection vs redistribution.
Say you're talking to someone who can teleport instantly across the globe. If you tell him where he can see the Mona Lisa, that's OK. If you grab the Mona Lisa and wave it in his face, that is very un-OK.
Before someone replies with the "but digital items can be copied, it's not stealing", that's the argument most piracy enabling forums and websites are able to get away with. If you host, EG, Nintendo ROMs on your website, you'll get shut down quickly. If you just save links (URL or Magnet), you might get a DMCA for a specific item maybe, but won't get shut down entirely, probably.
As always, there are a lots of exceptions and alternative interpretations though.
Say you're talking to someone who can teleport instantly across the globe. If you tell him where he can see the Mona Lisa, that's OK. If you grab the Mona Lisa and wave it in his face, that is very un-OK.
Before someone replies with the "but digital items can be copied, it's not stealing", that's the argument most piracy enabling forums and websites are able to get away with. If you host, EG, Nintendo ROMs on your website, you'll get shut down quickly. If you just save links (URL or Magnet), you might get a DMCA for a specific item maybe, but won't get shut down entirely, probably.
As always, there are a lots of exceptions and alternative interpretations though.
No. It’s called hot linking.
I always loved it when someone hotlinked to an image on someone else’s server and instead of taking the image down, they’d replace it with something funny (or more frequently, horrible).
Even with IPFS, you're pushing off infrastructure to someone who probably has some hidden incentive to provide that infrastructure.
Why not just charge the 100th visitor per minute or something? Someone will be motivated to pay the cost. And, if people don't want to pay? Well, even those with less motivation will find a way to the content somehow.
Why not just charge the 100th visitor per minute or something? Someone will be motivated to pay the cost. And, if people don't want to pay? Well, even those with less motivation will find a way to the content somehow.
Aggregation and distribution are virtues of large communities, not small ones.
The sophistication of Facebok's business is what allows the creation and distribution of content. I agree that if Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit, Nextdoor, Twitter etc, didn't exist, small communities would fill that void...
But they would do through a fragmented and siloed user experience that is hardly discoverable for the majority of the connected world.
This is the equivalent of running a taxi business vs running an airline. Sure, a taxi can fulfill several transportation needs but it could never replace what an airline does.
This is the equivalent of running a taxi business vs running an airline. Sure, a taxi can fulfill several transportation needs but it could never replace what an airline does.
> ...small communities would fill that void.
For a short time, and the overwhelming majority of people would have no idea that content exists. Then some enterprising startup founder would realize that there's a huge market for those exact services, and history would slowly repeat (rhyme with?) itself.
This free content, sans big tech pipedream is just that. Sorry if that makes you sad.
For a short time, and the overwhelming majority of people would have no idea that content exists. Then some enterprising startup founder would realize that there's a huge market for those exact services, and history would slowly repeat (rhyme with?) itself.
This free content, sans big tech pipedream is just that. Sorry if that makes you sad.
Once upon a time Google Search was there to help you find those small online communities.
You're moving the centralization problem to google, then.
[deleted]
So, which do you want? A go-to place to see <insert arbitrary interest here>, or a ton of smaller forums and communities?
Have many smaller ones and aggregate them by yourself with RSS feeds.
And the vast majority of the internet-using populace, who will never figure this out, can just go screw themselves?
Yeah, it's incredible complex to figure out. (/s)
People on this site continually underestimate the ability of users.
People on this site continually underestimate the ability of users.
I mean, yea it is.
My mother is not going to set up a RSS feed for herself of a list of forums that interest her. She does know how to log on to Facebook and look at the feed.
My mother is not going to set up a RSS feed for herself of a list of forums that interest her. She does know how to log on to Facebook and look at the feed.
With decent RSS support at the browser level, the experience isn't meaningfully different.
- See interesting page -> click the Facebook follow button to get it added to your FB feed
- See interesting page -> click the RSS button to get it added to your RSS feed
- See interesting page -> click the Facebook follow button to get it added to your FB feed
- See interesting page -> click the RSS button to get it added to your RSS feed
You're wrong. That exact thing existed before, and that's not what happened.
[deleted]
They can still have ads for people that don't create an account.
I think the point you are trying to make is that people are demanding free (as in beer) content, a la WinAmp of the 1990's. In the past 20 years, we've come around out of that greedy phase and have come to accept a certain amount of advertising for content. But when the non-free content dominates the free content (e.g. pinterest's SEO), it's a fuck you pattern and not consumer greed.
EDIT: IMHO
I think the point you are trying to make is that people are demanding free (as in beer) content, a la WinAmp of the 1990's. In the past 20 years, we've come around out of that greedy phase and have come to accept a certain amount of advertising for content. But when the non-free content dominates the free content (e.g. pinterest's SEO), it's a fuck you pattern and not consumer greed.
EDIT: IMHO
An important point is that WinAmp was not hosting content, so the cost was limited to the relatively small development cost. And there's still lots of that around.
Once you get into actual hosting, it's very hard to get past a small number of users without a lot of funding. And since a lot of users don't want to pay, well...
Once you get into actual hosting, it's very hard to get past a small number of users without a lot of funding. And since a lot of users don't want to pay, well...
That's a good point. I was referring to the sentiment at the time where people thought there was nothing wrong with sharing music files that one person paid for and then millions copied, rather than buy. Putting aside the ethics of $1/song as good or bad, there was a sense of entitlement that I think has been tempered. Maybe?
Kinda offtopic but Instagram's ads changed my attitude towards ads, and my attitude towards Facebook's creepy level of insight into my life and personality. If they have that data anyway -- and hundreds of companies do -- I might as well benefit from it, and Instagram's ads were the first ones that I actually found interesting. First of all, it was obvious when something was an ad. Second, they weren't intrusive or obnoxious. And third, they showed me cool stuff I actually wanted to buy! It was actually an enjoyable experience and that's so weird to say about ads.
The surveillance part still creeps me the hell out, but if they're gonna do it anyway they might as well use that data to benefit my life.
(On that note, I often find myself wishing I could ask the NSA for a copy of an old message or photo...)
The surveillance part still creeps me the hell out, but if they're gonna do it anyway they might as well use that data to benefit my life.
(On that note, I often find myself wishing I could ask the NSA for a copy of an old message or photo...)
Personally, I don't particularly care if companies have my data. However, I vehemently don't want them to use it for algorithmic recommendations—including ads—because it puts me in a filter bubble.
All these technology companies are making assumptions about the type of person I am, and then molding me into that person. I can't learn about topics I don't see, so if the tech giants are convinced I like technology and computers, that's all I will ever learn about.
Maybe I'd be happier if I took up ballet dancing, or basket-weaving, or something else I can't begin to imagine. That seems much less likely to happen when I'm trapped in an algorithmic box, that assumes my past will dictate my future.
All these technology companies are making assumptions about the type of person I am, and then molding me into that person. I can't learn about topics I don't see, so if the tech giants are convinced I like technology and computers, that's all I will ever learn about.
Maybe I'd be happier if I took up ballet dancing, or basket-weaving, or something else I can't begin to imagine. That seems much less likely to happen when I'm trapped in an algorithmic box, that assumes my past will dictate my future.
My recent Amazon experience when I bought a stereo audio mixer: "Here, look at 50 other stereo audio mixers even though we know you already bought one! And also have data showing you viewed all of these and didn't buy them!"
On some level the way company's advertise is basically an argument against them having my data being a threat, because they can't manage to come up with anything better then that, in a product space where there's a whole massive ecosystem of technology which might be useful to me.
And thats...really just me complaining about the ads not targeting well. Like, I am quite interested in knowing if my nascent desktop audio management could be better! I don't know what's out there, and I've given you a price range estimate through how long I searched before spending!
On some level the way company's advertise is basically an argument against them having my data being a threat, because they can't manage to come up with anything better then that, in a product space where there's a whole massive ecosystem of technology which might be useful to me.
And thats...really just me complaining about the ads not targeting well. Like, I am quite interested in knowing if my nascent desktop audio management could be better! I don't know what's out there, and I've given you a price range estimate through how long I searched before spending!
But see, they're still putting you in a box! Now you will be more likely to encounter stereo mixers than other types of products. Sure, it's obvious and on a small scale, but when every website is doing it, what's the cumulative affect?
Choice is good. I've certainly groaned at my share of ads on traditional television, and so I can understand why someone might find targeted ads preferable. I just don't share that desire!
Amazon in particular irks me because they don't give you a choice, no matter how deep you dig into settings! You can turn off browsing history, but it's stored in a cookie per-device and also seems to randomly come back on sometimes. Even then, they'll still use your purchase history for recommendations. I used to manually go through and mark everything I bought as a gift, and this worked for a while—but then Amazon apparently decided I'd given to many gifts and started ignoring the signal.
Choice is good. I've certainly groaned at my share of ads on traditional television, and so I can understand why someone might find targeted ads preferable. I just don't share that desire!
Amazon in particular irks me because they don't give you a choice, no matter how deep you dig into settings! You can turn off browsing history, but it's stored in a cookie per-device and also seems to randomly come back on sometimes. Even then, they'll still use your purchase history for recommendations. I used to manually go through and mark everything I bought as a gift, and this worked for a while—but then Amazon apparently decided I'd given to many gifts and started ignoring the signal.
Precisely why I tend to look for inspiration in real life rather than social media. Facebook keeps showing me ads for synths and other electronic music related stuff, while in real life I have already moved on to classical music.
I think life in a big city can be your "social feed" without any bias. A big city can offer so many things and ideas if you just go out, meet random people and listen to what they say.
I think life in a big city can be your "social feed" without any bias. A big city can offer so many things and ideas if you just go out, meet random people and listen to what they say.
Help! I'm stuck in a local maxima and I can't tell how to escape!
By blocking Facebook tracking me around the web, I now see ads for things my girlfriend might be interested in as we share an IP address. Makes for more interesting adverts and I get a better idea of gifts to buy her.
> If they have that data anyway -- and hundreds of companies do -- I might as well benefit from it, and Instagram's ads were the first ones that I actually found interesting.
I always feel a little depressed when someone describes being more effectively manipulated as "benefiting."
I always feel a little depressed when someone describes being more effectively manipulated as "benefiting."
Subjectively it's the difference between "why am I getting ads for pregnancy tests and skirts, I'm a basement-dwelling troglodyte" and "wtf, they're actually showing me things I'd want to buy (if I had money)".
Joke's on them either way, they somehow haven't figured out I'm broke! But the difference is between "spying + garbage ads" and "spying + a bunch of cool shit I didn't even know existed" I'm gonna go for the latter.
Obviously the correct answer is neither: just use Adblock and/or pay for services you use and enjoy. For example I paid for YouTube premium so I could get an ad-free experience on mobile (because YouTube ads are somehow both horribly intrusive and horribly irrelevant, despite Google's apparent omniscience!).
By all accounts Google should know much more about me than Facebook does, but somehow their ads invoke a response somewhere between mild irritation and outright rage and disgust. Meanwhile on Instagram: "hey, I really like this backpack", "wtf they're selling psilocybin in capsules now? And I can just buy it? Nobody even told me that existed! Thanks Instagram!" Like I said, that was a pretty surreal moment for me.
Joke's on them either way, they somehow haven't figured out I'm broke! But the difference is between "spying + garbage ads" and "spying + a bunch of cool shit I didn't even know existed" I'm gonna go for the latter.
Obviously the correct answer is neither: just use Adblock and/or pay for services you use and enjoy. For example I paid for YouTube premium so I could get an ad-free experience on mobile (because YouTube ads are somehow both horribly intrusive and horribly irrelevant, despite Google's apparent omniscience!).
By all accounts Google should know much more about me than Facebook does, but somehow their ads invoke a response somewhere between mild irritation and outright rage and disgust. Meanwhile on Instagram: "hey, I really like this backpack", "wtf they're selling psilocybin in capsules now? And I can just buy it? Nobody even told me that existed! Thanks Instagram!" Like I said, that was a pretty surreal moment for me.
Anecdotal evidence, but my experience with IG ads was very different. I ordered stuff (mostly clothing) a few times (4 or 5) from IG ads and was very disappointed with the quality and service every single time. I now refuse to fall for IG ads ever again.
IG certainly doesn’t vet their advertisers very well. But what do they care if it’s a scam, they got paid.
I second this, the only ads I’ve ever willingly clicked/tapped on with the intention of buying were from Instagram
And that is quite a feat given how little information I hace willingly given Facebook compared to how I - until a few years ago - more or less volunteeres my data to Google.
Google knew everything about it and yet couldn't manage to serve anything but the sleaziest ads.
Instagram got the table scraps and yet convinced me to buy at least one thing that I'm actually happy with.
Google knew everything about it and yet couldn't manage to serve anything but the sleaziest ads.
Instagram got the table scraps and yet convinced me to buy at least one thing that I'm actually happy with.
Is it perhaps you since instagram is showing you a lot of ads, your just skipping the ones you don't care for and finding ones you like. Thus you are under the impression instagram ads are interesting. Or perhaps they're using the facebook data to feed you ads. You don't have to give facebook much, it can make a lot of assumptions based on your network.
In the early days of facebook, they sent me an email to join with 20 people I might know. I knew 19 of them. I have no illusions , facebook knows a ton about me. Even without a profile.
I found the ads on instagram quite intrusive and not relivant (they're the same size as a post), but that's just me ( I don't have a facebook so they can't correlate). I also find quite a few news sites almost unreadable with all the ads.
In the early days of facebook, they sent me an email to join with 20 people I might know. I knew 19 of them. I have no illusions , facebook knows a ton about me. Even without a profile.
I found the ads on instagram quite intrusive and not relivant (they're the same size as a post), but that's just me ( I don't have a facebook so they can't correlate). I also find quite a few news sites almost unreadable with all the ads.
Yep, seconded. Stopped using FB years ago and I use Instagram for two of my passions - tiny houses and boobs. And, somehow, Instagram figured out that I wanted to buy a Remarkable 2 ;)
But yeah, joking aside, Instagram was the one of few places I actually saw ads of things I wanted to buy. Sure, the ads tried to rip my eyes out for those products ($50 for a product I found for $5) but still...
But yeah, joking aside, Instagram was the one of few places I actually saw ads of things I wanted to buy. Sure, the ads tried to rip my eyes out for those products ($50 for a product I found for $5) but still...
As an aside, people complain that Twitter is a toxic place, but if you exclusively subscribe to art accounts, it's one of the most beautiful places on the internet.
Asian artists are an even safer bet: they only post art. How refreshing!
Asian artists are an even safer bet: they only post art. How refreshing!
You know, I do see a lot shit on Twitter but somehow my brain has given the low value, spam etc tweets the "advertisement treatment" - I tune it out, don't "see" it.
Any artists in particular you'd recommend?
Any artists in particular you'd recommend?
> And, somehow, Instagram figured out that I wanted to buy a Remarkable 2
The Remarkable website uses the Facebook tracking javascript. If you had visited the Remarkable website then it would know to advertise to you.
The Remarkable website uses the Facebook tracking javascript. If you had visited the Remarkable website then it would know to advertise to you.
That's probably it, yeah. Still, surprising that only Instagram figured the RM2 angle out.
[deleted]
Funnily, I always had the impression that Instagram main (maybe only?) purpose was to watch ads ("influencers" as they call them these days), so I figured out they must be pretty good ads since people are coming there just for them ;)
> The surveillance part still creeps me the hell out, but if they're gonna do it anyway they might as well use that data to benefit my life.
This is such a defeatist narrative, and it isn't even accurate. They in fact don't have your data, that is half why they run these services. Each service you don't use is another piece of you they don't have. It isn't an all or nothing proposition. Throwing up your hands and granting them powers they don't have short circuits the more meaningful deliberation of "is this service worth the cost?"
If I had to guess, I might say that these companies enjoy the strong men we have built them into, because people give in.
This is such a defeatist narrative, and it isn't even accurate. They in fact don't have your data, that is half why they run these services. Each service you don't use is another piece of you they don't have. It isn't an all or nothing proposition. Throwing up your hands and granting them powers they don't have short circuits the more meaningful deliberation of "is this service worth the cost?"
If I had to guess, I might say that these companies enjoy the strong men we have built them into, because people give in.
Instagram ads are the most obnoxious out of all social media. When looking at stories they often come up every other user. The volume alone is absurd.
Ads are fine. The "fuck you" pattern is letting you see the cat picture for 5 seconds before covering it up and requiring you to create an account and share your data with Facebook before you can see it.
Everyone everywhere has realized throughout the ages that conversion of anything is higher when you get a demo of the product.
This isn't a "fuck you" pattern. They gave you a social media Costco food sample.
This isn't a "fuck you" pattern. They gave you a social media Costco food sample.
Except Costco is very upfront and honest about what a sample is and how it works. The food-based analogy would be they offer you an entire meal then slap you after you take your first small bite letting you know you have to pay to continue eating.
> Everyone everywhere has realized throughout the ages that conversion of anything is higher when you get a demo of the product.
Apparently not video games. Not many game companies offer demos anymore because they actually hurt sales.
Apparently not video games. Not many game companies offer demos anymore because they actually hurt sales.
> > Everyone everywhere has realized throughout the ages that conversion of anything is higher when you get a demo of the product.
> Apparently not video games. Not many game companies offer demos anymore because they actually hurt sales.
That's interesting. Is that because the demo cannibalizes sales (ie. people have enough fun just playing the demo they don't feel compelled to buy the game), or because the demo undermines the game's value proposition (ie. people don't buy the crappy game because the demo makes the crappiness evident)?
> Apparently not video games. Not many game companies offer demos anymore because they actually hurt sales.
That's interesting. Is that because the demo cannibalizes sales (ie. people have enough fun just playing the demo they don't feel compelled to buy the game), or because the demo undermines the game's value proposition (ie. people don't buy the crappy game because the demo makes the crappiness evident)?
I have no doubt it converts better. Facebook are masters at using little dopamine hits and denials to get users to do whatever they want.
It’s still an obnoxious thing to do, which is the point of the article.
It’s still an obnoxious thing to do, which is the point of the article.
Getting a free article or three, or the first half of one, is a demo.
Letting you glance at it then making it disappear is not a demo.
Letting you glance at it then making it disappear is not a demo.
The bait and switch. You used to be able to view links of public post.
The bigger the userbase grows, the bigger the fuckyous they can give the rest. It’s no longer “hey join us, we have cool stuff”, it’s “fuck you, we already got your friends, whatcha gonna do”. We can complain about that, right?
The bigger the userbase grows, the bigger the fuckyous they can give the rest. It’s no longer “hey join us, we have cool stuff”, it’s “fuck you, we already got your friends, whatcha gonna do”. We can complain about that, right?
"No, fuck you. The internet was never meant to be this."
I understand how this shitty agreement came to be but that doesn't mean that I like having my experience online be a metaphorical middle finger.
They spent billions in infrastructure and staffing to hijack the free internet where I could look at cat pictures on cat picture websites that had cat pictures as the goal, all so they could show me ads, and they have the nerve to say that I'm in the wrong for not being happy about that?
I understand how this shitty agreement came to be but that doesn't mean that I like having my experience online be a metaphorical middle finger.
They spent billions in infrastructure and staffing to hijack the free internet where I could look at cat pictures on cat picture websites that had cat pictures as the goal, all so they could show me ads, and they have the nerve to say that I'm in the wrong for not being happy about that?
That's quite a ridiculous claim. Surely they can display ads to anonymous users, That's not hard at all. But then they can't track you and profile you, which is a big no.
Now is it fair for a company to track and shape the behavior of millions of people?
Now is it fair for a company to track and shape the behavior of millions of people?
Facebook/Mark Zuckeberg didn't spend $1B on the infrastructure of Instagram. He bought the network effect that he knew is impossible to beat by a better product.
I'm pretty sure that if they had non-targeted (or at least targeted not based on tracking), unobtrusive ads, and zero dark patterns, they would've been still earning enough money to cover their expenses and then some. Unfortunately, they've set out to earn all the money in the world for no benefit to anyone at all.
If you manage to build a large enough empire, then... and only then, can you make the world a better place.
Either you're the customer or you're the product. Recognizing that nearly all internet companies do this allows you to identify what level you're comfortable with and duck out or move on if needed. It's always good to review your social media habits and scale back.
I recommend doing this the same time you're spring cleaning or after you prep for winter. Also go through and unsubscribe from emails and update passwords.
I recommend doing this the same time you're spring cleaning or after you prep for winter. Also go through and unsubscribe from emails and update passwords.
> Either you're the customer or you're the product.
Or you're both. Or perhaps none.
I kinda like that we have now such a big, visible and studied echosystem where we'll see any pattern working at a significant scale.
Any kind of dichotomy just doesn't cut it anymore I think.
Or you're both. Or perhaps none.
I kinda like that we have now such a big, visible and studied echosystem where we'll see any pattern working at a significant scale.
Any kind of dichotomy just doesn't cut it anymore I think.
1/ They bait people in to destroy any sane competition. Then they milk them.
2/ Well fuck you even further and go to hell for defending such behaviours.
3/ ps. Their infra is ridiculous. A team of 100-120 engineers can do way better. They can’t get their user base though because of 1/
2/ Well fuck you even further and go to hell for defending such behaviours.
3/ ps. Their infra is ridiculous. A team of 100-120 engineers can do way better. They can’t get their user base though because of 1/
How is Instagram's profitability? Like the OP sometimes I'd like to look at a feed anonymously. Why can't they still serve ads based on content?
Similarly, it use to be that going to the app showed me "my feed". Sometime in the last 6 month it changed to only show me the newest post of people I'm following and then only posts of random "popular" people of which I have zero interest.
If they want to make money from me, I'd use the app more with the old style of showing me only posts from people I follow with an ad every few posts, like say 1 ad 2 3 ad 4 5 6 ad 7 8 9 ad. As it is now I barely use the app anymore. Of course I'm not the target audience.
Similarly, it use to be that going to the app showed me "my feed". Sometime in the last 6 month it changed to only show me the newest post of people I'm following and then only posts of random "popular" people of which I have zero interest.
If they want to make money from me, I'd use the app more with the old style of showing me only posts from people I follow with an ad every few posts, like say 1 ad 2 3 ad 4 5 6 ad 7 8 9 ad. As it is now I barely use the app anymore. Of course I'm not the target audience.
[deleted]
Don't believe the lie that ads and dark patterns are the only way to run the internet. I remember the internet of the 90s, we had ways to look at cat pictures, too. And ads back then were way less obstrusive and tracking basically nonexistant.
The issue is that FB+Insta try very hard to become the first/default go-to place for people to post content, just to lure in others and extract value out of them.
The issue is that FB+Insta try very hard to become the first/default go-to place for people to post content, just to lure in others and extract value out of them.
If that's the case then Instagram should not entice people in by temporarily granting access. It should be upfront about requiring an account.
And furthermore all the content should be delisted from Google for cloaking https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...
Okay, then they need to SAY THAT. All of them need to be CLEAR about what their business model is and how it works, and do not give any mess about "free markets" or "trade secrets" here, they have captured too much attention to be treated with kid gloves.
"X is self evident, but maybe not to you," seems to me like a fundamentally flawed argument.
People constantly think that Facebook/Insta/Google is trying to do good things for the users or that whatever is good for users is good for BigCo-s.
So sometimes it is true, but most of the time it is not and BigCo-s have to push users to do things.
So sometimes it is true, but most of the time it is not and BigCo-s have to push users to do things.
This company neither has these cats, nor creates a content with them. Sites with images are full of cats and ads, but only instagram is arrogant enough to demand your ids. It’s easy to fuck the instagram, really, because it barely has anything of value that is not reposted elsewhere, or just similar. I’d even have a profile on it if it weren’t such a moron (judging by other sites with cats, where I register eventually after some lurking). They don’t know basic internet rules and deserve everything said above and below.
> This is the implied agreement. You understand it, or you don't.
I'm fine with businesses who use that model and make it clear. Those kinds of tactics are galling coming from a company whose literal mission statement is "Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."
If you want people to make an account, make a more compelling business proposition. Gatekeeping seems like the most vulnerable, monopolistic position to take.
I'm fine with businesses who use that model and make it clear. Those kinds of tactics are galling coming from a company whose literal mission statement is "Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."
If you want people to make an account, make a more compelling business proposition. Gatekeeping seems like the most vulnerable, monopolistic position to take.
Nah sorry. The reason companies that own social media don’t offer ad and tracker free versions is because then they’d have to say to their userbase what they’ll remove, and thereby what’s in the regular product. Their business model depends upon the ignorance of their userbase of what they’re doing, and they’re holding their network as hostage for those who don’t wish to participate.
Unfederated and (forced) open systems is the only way out of this.
Unfederated and (forced) open systems is the only way out of this.
It's not just about ads .. they can just show them to this visitor if it was. It's about targeted ads. They have slightly limited ability to target if the viewer doesn't sign in .. for which the viewer needs to accept their T&C .. which is needed for them so someone doesn't sue them for invading their privacy without their consent.
IANAL so I'm not sure whether such a suit will stand in any court.
IANAL so I'm not sure whether such a suit will stand in any court.
There seem to be many non tech savvy people who were shocked by docos like Social Dilemma and don't understand they are the product. They think they are 'just looking at cats'. Maybe these companies should clearly display on their front page they in personal data collection and targeted advertising business.
You can advertise without abusing the user.
Same thing happened with cable TV back in the day. It is about extracting as Mich value as most people will tolerate. There is no escaping ads if a company isn't principally opposed to them and charges directly for their product
> "Well, fuck you, too. We're here to sell ads."
Go fuck your self. Internet was never meant to be sell ads for you. Companies found loop hole and now you think you are entitled to it. Snap out of it asshole
Go fuck your self. Internet was never meant to be sell ads for you. Companies found loop hole and now you think you are entitled to it. Snap out of it asshole
[deleted]
Wait, ad click through tracking now only works for registered users? When did that change? More importantly, what are all these ads doing on pages that don't require me to login?
I don't really see an agreement here. It's also not Instagrams content they are hiding behind the implied paywall. Because that's the real hidden truth, they make you pay, not with money, but with your soul. They will stalk you everywhere to the end of your existence, try to learn everything about you and use it against you in every way they can that gains them something.
It's been bad a long time now, but not like this. You really want to tell me it was this blatant?
So yeah, fuck you, I just wanted to look at cats.
It's been bad a long time now, but not like this. You really want to tell me it was this blatant?
So yeah, fuck you, I just wanted to look at cats.
The users of Instagram create the value though. The ones posting the cat pictures.
>You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure
You almost had me, right up to this point. Then I realized you are posting pointed sarcasm about instagram's owners.
You almost had me, right up to this point. Then I realized you are posting pointed sarcasm about instagram's owners.
“Wow fuck you, I don’t.”
Seems this would fit with surveillance capitalism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
So did Instagram employ these fuck-you patterns from the start, or did they pretend to be friendly until they'd gotten enough market share and network effects?
That's called bait & switch, and is (if not legally in this case, then morally) rightly considered fraud.
That's called bait & switch, and is (if not legally in this case, then morally) rightly considered fraud.
Until they populate all the top search results with those patterns.
This apologies for any unethical practice by companies in Reddit/HNs are really interesting. They side completely with the authorities. Properly trained.
This apologies for any unethical practice by companies in Reddit/HNs are really interesting. They side completely with the authorities. Properly trained.
Reddit is full of these patterns in order to drive users from mobile web to app. Reddit mobile web really sets the bar for user-hostile UI in my opinion.
Reddit's new UI is still hilariously terrible. The day they remove old.reddit.com is the day I stop using the site.
Who the hell thinks what I want when I click on an article is to bring it into a related article feed with 1.5 comments showing? If I accidentally click outside of the article area the whole thing vanishes with no way to get back where I was. I had thought these issues would be obvious and they would clean it up, but here we are months later and it is still broken from a UX standpoint.
I guess all of the devs moved over to work on their bespoke media player? You know, the one that barely works half of the time.
Who the hell thinks what I want when I click on an article is to bring it into a related article feed with 1.5 comments showing? If I accidentally click outside of the article area the whole thing vanishes with no way to get back where I was. I had thought these issues would be obvious and they would clean it up, but here we are months later and it is still broken from a UX standpoint.
I guess all of the devs moved over to work on their bespoke media player? You know, the one that barely works half of the time.
Someone posted on HN within the last week that Reddit hired some product managers who pushed a lot of these dark patterns/anti-user features to increase conversions towards account signups and app installs. Nobody thinks you actually like all that broken shit. Though I fail to understand the business reason for hosting/serving videos through a custom media player.
Reddit doesn’t want you to lurk without an account or browse on mobile on a browser. They make less money that way. Eventually I am sure they will break old.reddit.com once they think they no longer need the holdouts (who I suspect are a lot of power users).
As someone who has used Reddit for probably 10 years at this point, it makes me sad that some place that I at times legitimately felt like a “member of a community” would break my use case like this (I have accounts but on mobile I sometimes just want to lurk/browse without logging in). But it’s their website and they can do what they want with it. Our only recourse is to complain and try alternatives.
Reddit doesn’t want you to lurk without an account or browse on mobile on a browser. They make less money that way. Eventually I am sure they will break old.reddit.com once they think they no longer need the holdouts (who I suspect are a lot of power users).
As someone who has used Reddit for probably 10 years at this point, it makes me sad that some place that I at times legitimately felt like a “member of a community” would break my use case like this (I have accounts but on mobile I sometimes just want to lurk/browse without logging in). But it’s their website and they can do what they want with it. Our only recourse is to complain and try alternatives.
The video player bit seems fairly straightforward if you imagine a monetization strategy involving video ads (which tend to have higher CPMs).
Likewise, the "1 comment displayed" thing seems like a "please consume the media and move on" effort potentially. Remember, they don't make money from you reading comments. They make money from you going back to other surfaces where ads are displayed. Namely your feed or another post.
Likewise, the "1 comment displayed" thing seems like a "please consume the media and move on" effort potentially. Remember, they don't make money from you reading comments. They make money from you going back to other surfaces where ads are displayed. Namely your feed or another post.
They're already breaking old.reddit.com. The image gallery viewing UI is hilariously bad on old, and recently I've had a lot of post links having the wrong href (usually to the page you're on or the same as the Next link at the bottom of the screen).
Oddly enough, the video player on old still works way better than the one on new.
Oddly enough, the video player on old still works way better than the one on new.
Agreed about old.reddit.com. I feel pretty old saying this, but I really miss the days of straightforward web design. Everything now is so chaotic that I'm never really sure what clicking anything will do. It feels like design for the sake of design, not for the sake of the users.
I'm still shocked Craigslist has survived, virtually unchanged, since 1996.
It's may not be the cleanest interface, but it's a nice reminder of the more utilitarian days.
It's may not be the cleanest interface, but it's a nice reminder of the more utilitarian days.
IMHO Craigslist is a good example of a design that nailed it right from the start and avoided the temptation to redesign year after year. Choose a region, choose the category, enter your search and bam, there are your listings. It's all bookmarkable too. What a great website.
You're not wrong but they could really afford to improve the user experience without 'ruining the design'. Unless something's changed from what I remember
- the categories page is cluttered.
- results page is messy and annoying to parse.
- the site only supports plaintext posts and has an annoying POSTing funnel.
I haven't looked but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a QoL extension made to cover all the holes left by the 'nailed design'. It's good but not great, as no web design lasts forever.
- the categories page is cluttered.
- results page is messy and annoying to parse.
- the site only supports plaintext posts and has an annoying POSTing funnel.
I haven't looked but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a QoL extension made to cover all the holes left by the 'nailed design'. It's good but not great, as no web design lasts forever.
It's still privately owned and the owners actively refuse to "modernize" it AFAIK.
Why would they? It works.
Why would they? It works.
Reddit's aggressive push to login , to use app, and the new web UI : together, these nudged me away from reddit and helped me stop my huge timesucking & mindless reddit habit. Happy ending. Thanks reddit !
What is really boggling is people paying to 'gild' posts, which is very profitable, while the company also employs all these dark patterns / user tracking / data selling
The new Reddit on desktop is quite bearable if you do 3 things:
- Be logged in.
- Set the view to "classic".
- Always open threads into a new tab. Never just do a left click to open them, use a middle click.
- Be logged in.
- Set the view to "classic".
- Always open threads into a new tab. Never just do a left click to open them, use a middle click.
Just commenting to say that there are third-party reddit apps that are pretty good.
Boost for Android is the only way I browse reddit anymore.
The back button is broken, too. Was it that hard to bring you back to the comment you were reading when you clicked the link? Guess so.
And their video player is utterly fucked. The video will load and reload about 3 times before it becomes playable, on the desktop. On the mobile site, usually the video freezes and the audio track plays. Gifs will overflow and play under the UI, and that's not been fixed for over a couple of years.
And now it renders Gifs inside replies and every single fucking thread has the "omg gifs!" thread voted to the top.
The modern Reddit UI is a complete and utter tragedy of design and engineering. But it serves ads, so who cares.
They only redesigned it so that they could make ads first-class.
And now it renders Gifs inside replies and every single fucking thread has the "omg gifs!" thread voted to the top.
The modern Reddit UI is a complete and utter tragedy of design and engineering. But it serves ads, so who cares.
They only redesigned it so that they could make ads first-class.
In fairness, I see that on a lot of sites now and I almost want to say that's something browsers should be fixing. "Back" should take me to the exact page state, almost as if I had been following every page in a new tab (which is what they recommend now if you want to preserve where you were). It should be instant. But on most sites it hasn't been for a while.
> which is what they recommend now if you want to preserve where you were
And which becomes more difficult when sites break middle-clicking and other shortcuts to open links in new tabs, or when the "links" ain't actually links but just something on which they tack on an onClick() and run a bunch of JS to reinvent the concept of a link.
And which becomes more difficult when sites break middle-clicking and other shortcuts to open links in new tabs, or when the "links" ain't actually links but just something on which they tack on an onClick() and run a bunch of JS to reinvent the concept of a link.
Yes! I made a post about that just recently on Facebook, about how annoying that is. And I was told the workaround was to use the browser’s “duplicate tab” feature before opening one. But that doesn’t help either: it just loads the current url in a new tab, which loses page state.
What we need is something that locally duplicates the page state into another tab. But then, sites already break that by a) firing off requests that can be dangerous to duplicate (not idempotent) and b) synchronizing state across tabs (argh!) so you can’t have different state in different tabs for the same domain (or just session, idk).
Facebook is notorious about that last bit and won’t let you eg have one tab with your feed best visible and another with a conversation hovering over it all.
What we need is something that locally duplicates the page state into another tab. But then, sites already break that by a) firing off requests that can be dangerous to duplicate (not idempotent) and b) synchronizing state across tabs (argh!) so you can’t have different state in different tabs for the same domain (or just session, idk).
Facebook is notorious about that last bit and won’t let you eg have one tab with your feed best visible and another with a conversation hovering over it all.
Not broken.. working just as intended unfortunately. It is a lot harder to remove that functionality entirely to force users to stay on a signup modal.
It's gotten to the point where if I saw "Software Engineer - Reddit" on a candidate's resume, I would seriously question this person's chops, even if it's just one small signal in an otherwise great background. How did this site's quality to get so poor? Why couldn't you do anything about it? It's so bad that you have to believe it was deliberately made bad.
It is absolutely deliberately made that way!
There was a Reddit tech lead on YC News a day or two ago who straight up admitted that they do this on purpose to drive up DAU/MAU. He also said that his options are up, so fuck you.
There was a Reddit tech lead on YC News a day or two ago who straight up admitted that they do this on purpose to drive up DAU/MAU. He also said that his options are up, so fuck you.
And maybe that poor soul agrees with you and that's why they left? Cause management wanted X and they opposed X?
What is worse, is that even though I installed the official app to squelch this nonsense (the Fuck You Pattern is effective) the mobile site still prompts with "Open in the Reddit App".
When I click it my iPhone opens the App Store. The App Store then has a big blue "Open" button to launch the app, but of course all context is lost and opening from there brings you to your Reddit front page.
When I click it my iPhone opens the App Store. The App Store then has a big blue "Open" button to launch the app, but of course all context is lost and opening from there brings you to your Reddit front page.
I'll one up this - I use an alternative, unofficial app for reddit. Until recently the 'open' button on their website would take me into that specific app - as you would expect - but since last week or so it's started sending me to the Google Play store page for the official app instead.
Reddit's app registers itself as a uri handler for reddit links but (thanks to google) AMP or iframe results don't prompt the actual system uri handler that would take you to the app.
Oh wow, is this what happens when multiple Fuck You Patterns collide?
Whoa, is that what this is? I’ve been wondering for quite some time why in the world Reddit hasn’t figured out how to make the “open in the app” links actually work. It’s bonkers that they spend so much effort making the web site push you to the app, but don’t even provide a working way to open a piece of content in the app.
Isn't that a failure of the reddit devs rather than of Google? They could have the app register for amp.reddit.com links.
So much this. Now that I know it works this way, I just try to ignore any promising-looking search results from any of the sites that do this, because I don’t feel like trying to search for the same thing in their app because they broke their mobile site and broke the “open in app” by assuming I don’t already have it.
I use Baconreader on Android and its great. I've heard loads of great things about unofficial reddit apps and nothing good about the official app.
Use Apollo or (better) quit reddit, IMHO.
I don't have a Reddit account, and every time I use it I am reminded why. Their patterns have taken me from "I should create an account one of these days" to "there is nothing on the Internet that I need to see so badly that I would let Reddit see anymore about me than my IP address." It's almost as if they are taunting users: "give up and create an account, or go home. Oh, and use the fucking mobile app while you're at it, or the suffering will continue."
OTOH, once I get there, a lot of Reddit content makes me wonder why I bothered. :-)
OTOH, once I get there, a lot of Reddit content makes me wonder why I bothered. :-)
Sadly, it's a humongous amalgamation of forums that has taken all the users from niche forums I used to frequent.
Reddit is diverse, there still are some good corners here and there. You need to know where to look.
Appending "reddit" to google searches still produce better results than the alternative of 100% autogenerated listicles. For now, at least.
For what it's worth, google search understands the /r/ part of the URL as well, e.g. site:reddit.com/r/linux . It still gets the time of posting completely wrong, though...
To make this more ergonomic, you can add the URL as a search engine with a keyword, e.g.
URL: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:reddit.com+%s
Keyword: red
In Firefox you most likely want to use a bookmark with a keyword instead of their new search engine crap.
To make this more ergonomic, you can add the URL as a search engine with a keyword, e.g.
URL: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:reddit.com+%s
Keyword: red
In Firefox you most likely want to use a bookmark with a keyword instead of their new search engine crap.
Use the old interface available at old.reddit.com. Its mostly fine. There are some really good corners of reddit, though the popular subs have been infected with the well washed masses.
What I don’t understand is why Reddit wants us to use the app so badly. Is it just for ads? Is it data collection?
My guess is because it’s harder to block ads through the app than it is in the browser-based version (at least in iOS). Whatever the actual reason is, the asshole design (which ironically they have an entire subreddit for) actually discourages me from using Reddit, so I’ve been using it a lot less in the past couple of years.
It’s like the Nigerian Prince email scam but the other way around : 99% of the people who receive such an email will identify the scam and ignore it. This is totally fine for the scammers. Working as expected.
Now, in the Reddit scenario 99% of the Reddit users don’t mind downloading an app. It’s just us, techies, that 1% who cares. This is totally fine for Reddit. Working as expected.
Now, in the Reddit scenario 99% of the Reddit users don’t mind downloading an app. It’s just us, techies, that 1% who cares. This is totally fine for Reddit. Working as expected.
I suspect it’s all that and their metrics show that mobile users are the most “engaged” so they want more mobile users to have an even higher count of engaged users. Also, it’s harder to spam notifications without a mobile app.
They deliberately make their mobile web experience awful, so I don’t think that’s why (how can you trust a metric that you’re deliberately sabotaging?). I suspect mobile apps just allow for more data collection than web apps.
I think it's time for lawmakers to start drafting up an "engagement tax" and start penalizing companies for demanding peoples' attention.
They get a lot more data more reliably from the app and have a lot more control of the ad surfaces and how they are served.
This is more or less "social network publisher side monetization" SOP.
This is more or less "social network publisher side monetization" SOP.
I suspect it's for neither. It's to fulfil some metric. They either want investor money or IPO money and either way, they want people in their app because their app is way over-valued compared to monthly impressions.
Likely both. It sure as hell ain't to make your experience any better.
Ads, tracking, notifications, with higher overall engagement due to faster and more content available.
another possibility is to increase traffic, which I guess also increases ad revenue. It's a lot easier to tap an icon on your home screen than it is to open a browser and type in reddit and whichever subreddit you want to browse. The less friction there is, the more likely you are to be a daily user, driving their revenue.
This is my guess — phone-screen real estate and the potential for push notifications.
The answers to questions like this are always extremely simple - it is better for their business.
Gmail webmail too. I’ve hit « I’m not interested » to their app prompt around 500 times in a row. Will i change the 501st? No.
Then again, my ATM machine still asks me which language I want service in. It’s my hope if I choose something other than English, it calls 9-1-1, slows down the prompts and does nothing irreversible.
Then again, my ATM machine still asks me which language I want service in. It’s my hope if I choose something other than English, it calls 9-1-1, slows down the prompts and does nothing irreversible.
Reddit's usefulness has waned dramatically and continues to do so.
The web reddit is just awful. Leave a thread open for some time, and navigation even breaks.
The Reddit AMP implementation on top of Reddit Web is even worse. For the first few times I encountered it, I assumed there was a bug or something that would be fixed soon.
I just use old.reddit.com on my mobile and laptop.
Try i.reddit.com on mobile, it's easier on small screens. Click the cog on the right for options like collapsing comments.
Try teddit.net. It's not perfect, but mostly works fine. There are extensions that will replace reddit.com by teddit.net in the URL to make it even easier.
It is better to use i.reddit.com on your mobile
Same.
saved reddit for me: https://teddit.net/
The best part is clicking a link, loading a page, and it just says “Something broke”
Twitter does this too. How the fuck is it even possible?
Twitter does this too. How the fuck is it even possible?
Glad it's not just me. Twitter seems to break more often when a page is loaded from the browser cache, but I can't pin down any other pattern for the “Something broke” errors on both mobile and desktop.
Will Twitter ever have more than two 9s of reliability as measured from the user's POV?
Will Twitter ever have more than two 9s of reliability as measured from the user's POV?
Oh, I just posted a question about this elsewhere in the thread. I've come to assume this is intentional and probably doesn't happen if you're logged in or using the app (though I don't know). It's been like this for years. Like every time I follow a link to Twitter I seem to get a random roll whether it works, and same random roll on each refresh. After n refreshes, where n may be 0-10, it works. Browsing the site doesn't do this.
I literally can't open Twitter links on my phone (Firefox as browser). It always says "something went wrong" and reloading a bunch of times doesn't help either. If I use the same link on Desktop (or change my phone browser's user agent) it works. I think its a fuck you pattern to get me to install the app.
I only use reddit.premii.com on mobile. That's what their mobile site should look like
I was initially annoyed by this, and then thankful. I have learned never to install apps of this kind, and thus the fact that Reddit has made itself unpleasant to use from a browser is a helpful little nudge away from a time-waster.
Microsoft Windows is even worse.
Constant disruptive updates, forcing you to make an account during install, ads in the start menu, that creepy "Cortana" process that you can't kill...
This may have been true when Win10 just came out, but it isn't anymore. You can schedule your updates (and if you don't, they try to schedule them for you in non-use hours), there are ways to bypass the MS account creation and just use a local account, I haven't seen an ad in my start menu in ages, even after multiple large system updates and there is not a single reference to Cortana in my Task Manager or Services (I turned Cortana off in settings).
Granted, I'm aggressive at turning off startup items, managing what services run on boot, and so on, but my point is, each of the things you mention may have been true at one time, but they are not necessarily true today.
edit to note: I'm not defending Microsoft's use of dark patterns, they definitely do push them out and then sometimes back off if there is enough pushback. And that is bad, and should be called out. Just aiming for accurate information here.
Granted, I'm aggressive at turning off startup items, managing what services run on boot, and so on, but my point is, each of the things you mention may have been true at one time, but they are not necessarily true today.
edit to note: I'm not defending Microsoft's use of dark patterns, they definitely do push them out and then sometimes back off if there is enough pushback. And that is bad, and should be called out. Just aiming for accurate information here.
they've lately been trying to get me to make a cloud account to login. i remember when i installed it i made an "offline account", but now after a few updates im occationally getting a nag to "finish setting up your computer" before i can start using it which leads to a place wanting me to make an account which I now have to cancel out of rather than have a permanent method of removing it.
it's just a matter of time at this point
it's just a matter of time at this point
From this perspective it's amazing. I ditched Windows completely for about 5 years (coinciding with my time in Software). And had to deal with none of these problems any more, I always remember that I hated windows for some reason but can't seem to pinpoint/remember, but now you've reminded me.
I disagree. Reddit is worse because if you don't have an account, you are constantly pushed to make one, or get pop-ups to download the ad. They also seem to limit functionality, like seeing all comments, unless you have an account.
The Windows installation process is annoying for sure, but once you get through it, you are able to disable or rework everything you mentioned. iOS honestly has everything you mentioned as well; in fact, it's installation process pushes even more services than Windows does, but I never see people complain about it. I find both process annoying, but I forget about them once I get everything setup because it goes away. I don't want a reddit account because I basically only visit the site when a friend sends me a link. I am guessing I can also have their stuff go away if I download the app and sign up, but it's not as essential to me as using Windows or iOS.
The Windows installation process is annoying for sure, but once you get through it, you are able to disable or rework everything you mentioned. iOS honestly has everything you mentioned as well; in fact, it's installation process pushes even more services than Windows does, but I never see people complain about it. I find both process annoying, but I forget about them once I get everything setup because it goes away. I don't want a reddit account because I basically only visit the site when a friend sends me a link. I am guessing I can also have their stuff go away if I download the app and sign up, but it's not as essential to me as using Windows or iOS.
Additionally, the experience of using reddit is very different with an account versus without. The same argument cannot be made for Windows 10.
One of the few good things from Windows 11 is that Cortana has been evicted (the Bing stuff is still there though).
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
These are the primary reasons I moved off Windows and onto a combination of macOS and *nix. Plus, macbooks have native Thunderbolt 3 support, which is essential for near-zero latency audio production.
I use Reddit is Fun app on android and haven't noticed any changes in UX for more than 5 years. When a I rarely go to reddit.com on my pc, I can't even recognize the original site.
The cookie prompt on old.reddit.com is so obnoxious now. You can't close it and the "continue" button takes you to the new.reddit.com homepage
I just used ublock origin to delete it. They still think they serve it, but I never see it.
I know! Isn't it lovely? I used that to break my reddit addiction. Haven't been on for a while.
I think they're trying to push it to just before the point where people actually consider how useful the content is (not very), or maybe past that point, after which they'll put out some superficial "we're sorry" bs.
I now use https://libredd.it with Privacy Redirect browser extension.
I don't even need to use old.reddit.com for daily browsing now. (Unless need to comment)
I don't even need to use old.reddit.com for daily browsing now. (Unless need to comment)
I never use reddit on mobile, but also there the whole new reddit design thing is so terrible I just don't bother going there anymore. It's sad, there were a few really nice communities there.
I get around this by not using their app or website at all and using an alternative Reddit client (Apollo for iOS). Wonder if they'll do the Twitter and shut down third party clients eventually.
old.reddit.com is acceptable, with uBlock Origin and the like, and on mobile Relay for Reddit is a nice app.
I love instagram. It's the best social media site. Last time I checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my G-free phone.
When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedded Instagram crap, it doesn't even load on vanilla firefox. That's cool, those stories are usually celebrity gossip that I don't actually want to read but got baited into clicking on.
It's my favorite social media site, because their hooks just bounce straight off me.
Thanks, Instagram, for the consistent signalling. I never wanted to be your friend anyway.
When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedded Instagram crap, it doesn't even load on vanilla firefox. That's cool, those stories are usually celebrity gossip that I don't actually want to read but got baited into clicking on.
It's my favorite social media site, because their hooks just bounce straight off me.
Thanks, Instagram, for the consistent signalling. I never wanted to be your friend anyway.
Pinterest and Reddit are not better these days. The amount of things you can view on reddit on your phone without creating an account or installing the app is dwindling daily.
Every time my wife sends me a Pinterest link I just ask her to screenshot it as I can't see shit on the default mobile page. I don't even know why Google continues to allow them in the results when there is clear-cut policies around showing something different to the crawler than the user.
Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
Every time my wife sends me a Pinterest link I just ask her to screenshot it as I can't see shit on the default mobile page. I don't even know why Google continues to allow them in the results when there is clear-cut policies around showing something different to the crawler than the user.
Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
> Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
This is hilarious and makes so much sense. God, the internet is broken
This is hilarious and makes so much sense. God, the internet is broken
How are they not getting absolutely destroyed by the Google search algos, since that’s the definition of cloaking: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...
Big players like LinkedIn, Facebook, et all play by different rules. Losing LinkedIns results would damage Google.
Half the reason I use Qwant is it works better than LinkedIn's paid search results. Google does much worse.
Half the reason I use Qwant is it works better than LinkedIn's paid search results. Google does much worse.
The content is pretty much the same if you log in. Google doesn’t seem to care in instances like this, I’ve worked on multiple very large sites that do the exact same thing (further in so e instances: present a JS app to users and a faster JS—less experience to google). Many news sites do it too, for example.
Pretending to be a robot, in order to not get caught by robots. Kinds makes sense. In a sci-fi dystopian way.
This should help:
https://sumtips.com/software/browsers/set-user-agent-on-a-pe...
https://sumtips.com/software/browsers/set-user-agent-on-a-pe...
Those Windows 7 screenshots evoke a sense of nostalgia for the time before a Windows that broadcasts and monetizes my every action. I think an even bigger “fuck you” pattern is when an OS that I paid for tracks me and monetizes my private information.
Maybe I’m just getting old.
Maybe I’m just getting old.
Nope; Windows is getting old :-P
Time to switch to another OS. Consider some newbie-friendly Linux, like Mint (linuxmint.com).
Time to switch to another OS. Consider some newbie-friendly Linux, like Mint (linuxmint.com).
Agreed. I am a Mint user and I couldn't be happier.
I switched around one year and a half ago because I was concerned about the constant data transfer (increasingly harder to deactivate) between my devices and Apple/MS. I was also sick of seeing unwanted ads and notifications both in Windows and Mac.
Personally I'm on Devuan because of my aversion to systemd, otherwise it would be mint for me.
Hm, nothing for Android - for either ff or chrome?
It's been reported[0] that Firefox Nightly has a Debug menu through which one can bless a custom collection of allowed extensions to get around the new Mozilla Nanny State™ but I haven't personally expended the energy to try it
0 = https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...
0 = https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...
You may be looking for iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome, the chrome repo has the firefox extension as well, fyi.
Darn, it actually works! Thank you a lot for the mention.
Does Google not check for this at all? They could easily spoof their User-Agent to see if sites lie about what they show.
I dunno, folks might get salty if google's bots used misleading useragents. And it just escalates the existing cat&mouse game
Bing seems to have figured it out just fine.
My guess is nobody cares about this issue at Google for whatever reason, either because no compensation is tied to it or they are getting paid to push Pinterest.
My guess is nobody cares about this issue at Google for whatever reason, either because no compensation is tied to it or they are getting paid to push Pinterest.
Because reddit and google have the same political bent, and aren't competitors.
Google already explicitly discourages “cloaking”.[0] They define it as:
> Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected.
You’d think they’d do something about it. Maybe it’s because Reddit doesn’t cloak necessarily, but when it straight up refuses to show without the app (sometimes), I’d call that cloaking (in spirit). News sites throwing up paywalls would fit that too.
[0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...
> Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected.
You’d think they’d do something about it. Maybe it’s because Reddit doesn’t cloak necessarily, but when it straight up refuses to show without the app (sometimes), I’d call that cloaking (in spirit). News sites throwing up paywalls would fit that too.
[0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...
Yup. Googlebot can also traverse some paywalls
Pinterest is by the far the worst because it takes content from the rest of the world and strips away all context. It's the anti-wikipedia, an information black hole.
I hate Pinterest with a passion. If you want to find reference images for whatever topic, all you get is the medium res crap with a 'make an account' pop-up instead of the original source they stole it from. I think alphabet or whatever will acquire it in the near future (or have they already?) because there is just no other explanation for letting Pinterest poison image search that much.
Image search is practically dead and Pintrest singlehandedly killed it. I just use Wikimedia Commons now.
works fine on DuckDuckGo
Whenever I put a google search down, and see one page of Pinterest on there I immediately go back to the search box and go for; “-site:pinterest.*”. I absolutely hate that site with a passion.
Even though I have the app and an account, I still despise using it. They break things like zoom and saving images. Clicking on something interesting takes you to…a site that doesn’t actually have that.
I truly don’t understand how Pinterest is so popular when it’s also so awful. Tumblr was so much better until Verizon destroyed it with management incompetence.
I truly don’t understand how Pinterest is so popular when it’s also so awful. Tumblr was so much better until Verizon destroyed it with management incompetence.
Unpinterested is an extension do do this automatically
Is there a Google option to perma-ban a domain?
Maybe a place I can upload a HOSTS file?
Or an extension that adds this to every search?
Maybe a place I can upload a HOSTS file?
Or an extension that adds this to every search?
There is: uBlacklist[1]. I've been searching for the exact same thing to get rid of Indian tutorial scamsites, bad GitHub and StackOverflow clones and, of course, Pinterest results :) Can recommend.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...
You can try this extension. It was forked from a project once maintained and abandoned by Google themselves.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-bloc...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-bloc...
I couldn't put my vague dislike for Pinterest into words until this: you have it exactly.
I fully agree, but do they count as social media? I kinda categorize them as crowdsourced SEO spam
> Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
Hmmmm. Now that I think of it I'm fairly sure that serving different content to Googlebot compared to what you served ordinary users used to be a good way to call down the wrath of the SEO master upon your (or your clients) website.
Then again, that was before. Back when Google was a nice company and acted in the best interest of its users.
Hmmmm. Now that I think of it I'm fairly sure that serving different content to Googlebot compared to what you served ordinary users used to be a good way to call down the wrath of the SEO master upon your (or your clients) website.
Then again, that was before. Back when Google was a nice company and acted in the best interest of its users.
In fact it's still forbidden by Google ... Except if you are very large like Pinterest
It might not be forbidden if it works. Google is famous for undocumented workarounds.
Only the most expensive SEO-experts know the occult methods of success on Google's search results
Filed under the "okay for me not for thee" google policy.
Reddit (the service) is tons better than Pinterest, facebook, instagram... I think it's totally out of line to group Reddit in with them. The new reddit website is total trash but you can use like 99% of reddit without ever visiting the website. I use Apollo for example, and there are many other apps you can use or develop your own. You can also use old.reddit.com. Access to reddit is much more open than any of these other networks that require you to use their app only.
Reddit on desktop is still okay. The mobile version of Reddit is deliberately broken in order to force you to use the app. Many subreddits can't be viewed, you can only view the first couple of comments in each thread, the front page is hidden behind a huge nag screen,...
> The mobile version of Reddit is deliberately broken in order to force you to use the app.
fyi - if you use old reddit, the mobile site is fine - I've never seen a subreddit blocked or threads truncated.
new reddit is a pile of steaming dogsh
fyi - if you use old reddit, the mobile site is fine - I've never seen a subreddit blocked or threads truncated.
new reddit is a pile of steaming dogsh
old.reddit isn't deliberately broken, but not really suitable for small screens like phones.
i.reddit is better for that, but it doesn't support many content types inline and has issues showing comments in some cases.
teddit.net doesn't support loading more comments inline and the icon to unfold post content is tiny.
i.reddit is better for that, but it doesn't support many content types inline and has issues showing comments in some cases.
teddit.net doesn't support loading more comments inline and the icon to unfold post content is tiny.
Yes, but again, you can use their official app, or literally any other app developed. Those third party apps can view anything. Contrast that with Instagram where if you don't want to use their app, sucks for you.
I disagree it's out of line to group Reddit with the likes of Pinterest, fb, etc.
The fact that they're slightly more user-friendly doesn't make up for using dark patterns and dirty tricks.
I think it's unethical to intentionally design features that confuse users and force them to take roads they don't really want to take. Reddit crossed a line with the annoying pop-up that constantly asks you to download their app, for example. I don't care that the pop-up is less persistent than let's say Instagram. It's ill-intentioned design and it shouldn't exist.
I think it's unethical to intentionally design features that confuse users and force them to take roads they don't really want to take. Reddit crossed a line with the annoying pop-up that constantly asks you to download their app, for example. I don't care that the pop-up is less persistent than let's say Instagram. It's ill-intentioned design and it shouldn't exist.
That's a good point, but I think Reddit is more than "slightly more user-friendly." It's developer friendly - way more so than other big networks - and that makes a big difference.
Look, I don't work for reddit or have any skin in the game, other than I use it every day (it being the service - I RARELY use the official app or website). And granted, I'm not a typical Internet enjoyer, but it's easier for me to enjoy reddit than it is to enjoy facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest, tiktok, because of decisions reddit made to not do what all these other ones did.
Again I say - that's a very low bar. Reddit app and reddit website still suck. But reddit the service and the company is 10x better than the other networks (note I'm not commenting on the CONTENT here, that's for another day)
Look, I don't work for reddit or have any skin in the game, other than I use it every day (it being the service - I RARELY use the official app or website). And granted, I'm not a typical Internet enjoyer, but it's easier for me to enjoy reddit than it is to enjoy facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest, tiktok, because of decisions reddit made to not do what all these other ones did.
Again I say - that's a very low bar. Reddit app and reddit website still suck. But reddit the service and the company is 10x better than the other networks (note I'm not commenting on the CONTENT here, that's for another day)
My main issue with Reddit is when I'm doing mobile research about something, I usually Google about something, probably something and put site:reddit.com to read people opinions. When going straight from Google without having an app, the experience will be obviously horrible. Now I use an app called "Relay", but this also has some issues, it will open the Google link, but it will usually open the content and there doesn't seem to be a good way to get back to comments unless I'm missing something. Maybe I should try some other app, where I can either choose whether I want to see the link, or the comments. Usually comments are more interesting to me.
There's also an issue with going back to search once I am finally in the all context.
Ps: using android.
There's also an issue with going back to search once I am finally in the all context.
Ps: using android.
I use Apollo on iOS and I have to long press on a link to do "open with Apollo", which is fine but pretty annoying. Would love to be able to set the default handler so that I can just regular press. Of course would be nicer if Reddit's mobile website just worked and I didn't have to rely on an app to consume the content in a civilized manner. Nonetheless I still maintain that reddit is more user-respecting than the other social networks mentioned. Low bar, granted...
In Relay if you swipe up on the action bar on the bottom you'll see the comments.
I prefer Sync for Reddit cause it provides a very HN-like UX if you set the view mode to smaller cards or compact.
I prefer Sync for Reddit cause it provides a very HN-like UX if you set the view mode to smaller cards or compact.
> Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
All those robots sharing data among themselves with no humans needed or, apparently, wanted.
All those robots sharing data among themselves with no humans needed or, apparently, wanted.
old.reddit.com is still around, for now, and does not have any of this garbage.
old.reddit.com is clearly beginning to rot:
1. The new Reddit seems to have a different markdown parser which allows surrounding unindented code with ``` lines. This doesn't render on old Reddit.
2. New Reddit seems to be saving links with escaped underscores and correcting for it at render time? I've started to see people posting broken links like https://example.com/some\_path\_with\_underscores when it should be https://example.com/some_path_with_underscores
3. Posts with multiple images sometimes don't work? I haven't been inconvenienced enough by this yet to investigate.
1. The new Reddit seems to have a different markdown parser which allows surrounding unindented code with ``` lines. This doesn't render on old Reddit.
2. New Reddit seems to be saving links with escaped underscores and correcting for it at render time? I've started to see people posting broken links like https://example.com/some\_path\_with\_underscores when it should be https://example.com/some_path_with_underscores
3. Posts with multiple images sometimes don't work? I haven't been inconvenienced enough by this yet to investigate.
I've started having weird redirects on any v.reddit.com posts too - they redirect back to main page instead of taking me to the video.
I haven't fully tested what combinations don't work, but it feels like the beginning of the end of old.reddit.com.
I haven't fully tested what combinations don't work, but it feels like the beginning of the end of old.reddit.com.
The report dialogue has also been broken for awhile now, and the new support for image+text posts was backported in a pretty ugly way too.
It doesn't... but the nature of Reddit has been clearly driven by the "new" interface. There's a lot less text-based technical content, and a lot more image/gif meme-based content because that's what the new interface is optimized for - and it goes out of its way to make it very, very hard to see the deep text nested comments that are the dominant feature of the old interface (and HN).
So, while you can browse the place with the old interface, the nature and trends of Reddit are mostly driven by the new interface.
Which is fine, if they want to go that way, it's just a shame that what used to make it any good is dead or dying.
So, while you can browse the place with the old interface, the nature and trends of Reddit are mostly driven by the new interface.
Which is fine, if they want to go that way, it's just a shame that what used to make it any good is dead or dying.
And you just KNOW it's going to disappear. Not immediately of course, some slight visual breakages here and there. Then some hotshot manager is going to point out how it doesn't bring any "value" to the company and how in fact it actually hurts reddit's image. Then it will be gone.
And then somebody makes a substitute UI that calls the api, then reddit tries to take it down, then someone builds an open source version, then github gets a C&D letter and the creator makes blog post about it that reaches the front page of HN. I'm looking forward to the journey.
The first part happened: https://teddit.net ;-)
> then someone builds an open source version
Damn, I went to dig up the URL for reddit's source and it seems it is no longer open :-(
https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
Damn, I went to dig up the URL for reddit's source and it seems it is no longer open :-(
https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
Saidit is an old reddit fork with small changes (the biggest one is no downvotes):
https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit
https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit
From my time at Reddit I can say the reason it has lasted this long is there are no hotshot managers.
Chris Slowe is the hand guiding the ship day to day, with a bunch of really passionate hackers underneath him. They are maintaining like 4 different code bases and keeping feature parity as best they can with a team that could still comfortably go on a ski trip together (compare that to the 60k+ at Facebook). The users hate change while also demanding new features. The business makes no sense. Steve is off doing... something, to ads or something and make investors happy so they keep the ship afloat. UI is going to hell to drive DAU metrics for investors. Banning shitweasels brings down the wrath of the conservatives. Yet they are still working their assess off to keep a mound of spaghetti from bursting into flames with 1/10th the staff they need to do so.
Chris Slowe is the hand guiding the ship day to day, with a bunch of really passionate hackers underneath him. They are maintaining like 4 different code bases and keeping feature parity as best they can with a team that could still comfortably go on a ski trip together (compare that to the 60k+ at Facebook). The users hate change while also demanding new features. The business makes no sense. Steve is off doing... something, to ads or something and make investors happy so they keep the ship afloat. UI is going to hell to drive DAU metrics for investors. Banning shitweasels brings down the wrath of the conservatives. Yet they are still working their assess off to keep a mound of spaghetti from bursting into flames with 1/10th the staff they need to do so.
Good to know that a major social media platform is built on the same shit and bailing wire that most of us have to deal with every day. Sort of makes me feel like the SV companies really aren't any different than anyone else, they just (typically) have a lot more money.
It'll eventually be removed with the reasoning that its hardly used and most traffic uses the new Reddit and now they can focus on improvements without having to support this legacy code.
Yeah, it's really infuriating.. Reddit consumed most of the cool niche forums on the internet, and now it's slowly mashing them all up into a bland Facebook clone
Embrace, extand, extinguish.
Never, ever trust an incorporated company.
Never, ever trust an incorporated company.
Does that include the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation?
A lot of those niche forums were already being killed by VerticalScope and InternetBrands.
It’s a lot of what lead to Reddit’s popularity in the first place.
It’s a lot of what lead to Reddit’s popularity in the first place.
I don't think I've hear of heard of VerticalScope but I aware of Internet Brands. What niche forums did they kill?
VS bought out a lot of the automotive forums. Also now owners of RedFlagDeals if you're a Canadian.
Surprisingly difficult to find a complete list.
There's 100% an opportunity for someone to bring on a bunch of subreddit admins into starting a new automotive forum network. Reddit and Facebook don't work well for car stuff.
https://old.reddit.com/r/4x4/comments/hw1p3a/vertical_scope_...
Also a bunch of tech and gun forums. Supposedly over 1000 properties, but it's not like I'm going to recognize that they own "mothering.com"
Surprisingly difficult to find a complete list.
There's 100% an opportunity for someone to bring on a bunch of subreddit admins into starting a new automotive forum network. Reddit and Facebook don't work well for car stuff.
https://old.reddit.com/r/4x4/comments/hw1p3a/vertical_scope_...
Also a bunch of tech and gun forums. Supposedly over 1000 properties, but it's not like I'm going to recognize that they own "mothering.com"
And then something else will replace it. They'll digg themselves their own grave.
Maybe Ycombinator will incubate a rival that uses the HN model.
I thought they already did, this little company called Reddit that went on to benefit from the banality of digg.
I wonder what their relative market share is. Lots of the people that have been on Reddit for years may user old.reddit. I certainly do.
I really can't stand their hostility to no using their app on mobile though. The UX seems purposely difficult to drive users towards the app, for the obvious reason of greater access to user data most likely.
I really can't stand their hostility to no using their app on mobile though. The UX seems purposely difficult to drive users towards the app, for the obvious reason of greater access to user data most likely.
One of their biggest hurdles to overcome is, I gather, that a lot of the super large subreddits' moderator teams are exclusively on old.reddit.com for moderation. If they break old.reddit.com completely right now, a lot of the biggest subs would implode with bots, spam, and angry human word-vomit.
If they fix the moderation story for new reddit, I'd imagine they have a pretty quick path towards obsoleting old reddit by just not caring about anyone else still on old reddit.
They've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I think they're actively working on that problem.
If they fix the moderation story for new reddit, I'd imagine they have a pretty quick path towards obsoleting old reddit by just not caring about anyone else still on old reddit.
They've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I think they're actively working on that problem.
> They've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I think they're actively working on that problem.
Though that has had some funny issues. One thing I noticed was the enrollment for the new modmail. It is on the settings page on old reddit for a sub, but I couldn't find it anywhere for the new reddit UI. Wacky.
Though that has had some funny issues. One thing I noticed was the enrollment for the new modmail. It is on the settings page on old reddit for a sub, but I couldn't find it anywhere for the new reddit UI. Wacky.
For sure, it's not a perfect solution. Hence 'fixed' instead of fixed haha.
For Android at least, there are multiple free-as-in-freedom reddit client apps available. Two I know of are Infinity and Slide. Both are way better than the mobile website, and I'm sure better than the official app.
And then I will stop using Reddit for the most part (although it's still the best resource for finding authentic reviews of things / services.. I Google "<thoughts on something> reddit" more often than not these days). Which is probably for the best for my productivity / sanity tbh
The redesign is still a slower, worse experience, especially on mobile.
The redesign is still a slower, worse experience, especially on mobile.
If they do (and it wouldn't surprise me), people will start making third party desktop clients (or rather, they'll start getting popular).
If they ban those, then we'll see some major migrations methinks.
If they ban those, then we'll see some major migrations methinks.
I'm starting to find that title links to posts with multiple images just link back to the page you're on. It feels like it's just going to slowly disintegrate. Which I think on balance I'd be happy about because I spend too much time on there anyway.
old.reddit is ok, but it's rarely used for links. I know there's a plugin, but I can't stand the idea of adding plugins for things like that. The only reason I have a reddit account is because you can change preferences to be even better than old.reddit (e.g. turn off custom themes, disable outbound click tracking, no thumbnails, compact list, etc.). It basically looks like HN after what I do to it. I know it's all arranging deck chairs on a sinking ship but I hope a decent rescue ship gets here before it's all gone.
Just go to https://teddit.net/
> Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
Cloudflare slaps you for this, though.
Cloudflare slaps you for this, though.
I'll take a Capcha over a fuck-you paywall.
Regarding reddit, you can replace "www" with "old" i.e. https://old.reddit.com and it is still functional. There is also a firefox (perhaps chrome too) extension that replaces it automatically.
I don't know how long it will last, but if it's gone I think I'll be off reddit. I tried to use regular UI few times, and the experience is absolutely off putting. It reminds me of digg right before people flew to reddit.
I don't know how long it will last, but if it's gone I think I'll be off reddit. I tried to use regular UI few times, and the experience is absolutely off putting. It reminds me of digg right before people flew to reddit.
> Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.
I'm surprised sites this big are even relying on the user agent for determining Googlebot, given how easy (and common) it is to forge, when they could be checking the Googlebot IP ranges instead.
I'm surprised sites this big are even relying on the user agent for determining Googlebot, given how easy (and common) it is to forge, when they could be checking the Googlebot IP ranges instead.
I have not been able to to get this to work. what is the exact ua string that works for you guys
The day they drop old.reddit.com is the day I stop using Reddit.
> a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot
Be sure to follow the site's robots.txt rules, though. Otherwise, you could end up getting googlebot banned! /s
Be sure to follow the site's robots.txt rules, though. Otherwise, you could end up getting googlebot banned! /s
for Reddit, you can "sign up" with a bogus email address and still interact (browse, join, comment, vote, message) freely. the only possible downside is it asks you to verify your email address every launch, but I don't see this as a downside since I am using Reddit anonymously, and it is easily dismissed. been doing this for over a year now
You can actually just click "Next" on the sign-up screen without having entered any email address at all. It works fine, for now at least.
that's cool. I get the impression they're not really interested in monetising or data mining if all these loopholes exist, and that their platform is supported by those who wish to engage in microtransactions, which do not hinder functionality in any way e.g. pay for privileges. good on them
What's valuable is your interests so that they know what ads to put in your face. Whether or not your email is linked to you is irrelevant -- you can click on ads all the same.
This solution doesn't save you from the data mining they do on your usage.
I use an ad blocker so have never seen an ad on Reddit
>>> when there is clear-cut policies around showing something different to the crawler than the user.
yes ....
yes ....
>a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot
Can't believe I've never thought of this.
Can't believe I've never thought of this.
[deleted]
> The amount of things you can view on reddit on your phone without creating an account or installing the app is dwindling daily.
Like what? The phone browser works just great. IIRC there's a nag dialog that prompts you once to install the app, then it caches the answer and shuts up.
Like what? The phone browser works just great. IIRC there's a nag dialog that prompts you once to install the app, then it caches the answer and shuts up.
> The phone browser works just great.
No, it is not. I can not access any subreddit without installing an app (which I am not going to do).
No, it is not. I can not access any subreddit without installing an app (which I am not going to do).
Sorry... I literally do this every day of my life, across several devices. I'm just on Firefox on Android, it's not like it's a weird setup or anything. What are you running that reddit won't let you into a subreddit?
I have the same experience as OP which is that many subreddits or individual posts are inaccessible without creating an account. If you're looking at cat gifs you will probably get by with the occasional nag screen but some will outright force you out of the page.
Really? I still occasionally visit a handful of subs, almost exclusively through android chrome. I'll certainly never download an app to do it though.
This was a dark pattern they launched almost a year ago, as a non user of mostly every social media site, instagram is probably the worst in terms of forcing users to login to view public content.
I wouldn't normally have a problem with this but public content should be just that, viewable by the general public and not being forced to install a tracke.. err, their app on my phone.
Where I have a huge problem with this is public health or other official announcements from community leaders or essential information and its being put out on facebook. So now I can't access a public message by a publicly elected entity for general consumption. It seems extremely slimy and it feels illegal on some level as I don't want to be forced to login to facebook to view local updates.
I wouldn't normally have a problem with this but public content should be just that, viewable by the general public and not being forced to install a tracke.. err, their app on my phone.
Where I have a huge problem with this is public health or other official announcements from community leaders or essential information and its being put out on facebook. So now I can't access a public message by a publicly elected entity for general consumption. It seems extremely slimy and it feels illegal on some level as I don't want to be forced to login to facebook to view local updates.
Is the way that Twitter links often fail to load on the first several tries (then finally, mysteriously, work as if nothing happened) one of these "force you to log in and use the app" dark patterns? It's been that way for years now, so I have to think it's not accidental.
It always takes exactly 3 reloads for me.
I organize a puppy meetup. Right now via a group SMS. Sub-optimal. Sharing event pics is flakey (mix of android and ios). The responses (LOL, hearts, etc) become their own text messages (?!). Etc.
Since some of us have Instagram, I thought to try it, if only to share pics. Sign up was brutal. I can't figure out how to use my phone account on my desktop. Sharing existing pics sucks. Taking pics with Instagram sucks.
I can't even figure out how to simply browse a friend's feed.
I legit can't imagine why anyone uses Instagram, for any purpose.
Since some of us have Instagram, I thought to try it, if only to share pics. Sign up was brutal. I can't figure out how to use my phone account on my desktop. Sharing existing pics sucks. Taking pics with Instagram sucks.
I can't even figure out how to simply browse a friend's feed.
I legit can't imagine why anyone uses Instagram, for any purpose.
Cute babes. It's like the point of contact now for them because none of them want to be on facebook with their mom commenting dumb shit on their page.
if it wasn't for them i would so delete this shit
if it wasn't for them i would so delete this shit
Is this way I always get text messages from one of my friends that say > Liked "{$ENTIRE_CONTENTS_OF_PREVIOUS_MESSAGE}"
It's iMessage garbage spewing into SMS. On iOS you'll get a little heart or some other animation, to "support" this with SMS they give the reaction and the whole quote.
Most people don’t really use Instagram, it’s more like Instagram uses them.
I'll stick my head above the parapet and say that as a content consumer I really like Instagram and it genuinely is my favourite social media platform. I'm probably an atypical user but now that I'm well out of my 20's the friends I still connect with online I have real connections with so it's a joy to see what they're up to. My interests (food, 70's sci-fi, cats, modern art) are well catered to and I've done a good job of curating the accounts I follow to get a good mix of interesting content. Even my promoted posts are mostly local restaurants and businessess so I've never really felt aggrieved that I'm getting controlled by big corporates. I've also found my experience mostly apolitical with the advantage that because commenting is so tacked on I don't feel the urge to interact with anything beyond liking images or sharing the ocasional post with my friends and family
I understand it's mindless, but I dont want it to be anything else. It's a toy platform for looking at device sized images and short videos on my mobile and that's all I want it to be.
I understand it's mindless, but I dont want it to be anything else. It's a toy platform for looking at device sized images and short videos on my mobile and that's all I want it to be.
Thanks for this comment. I've been annoyed by the fact that click-baity articles don't load Instagram content in the past, but re-framing the issue as a bullet dodged and time saved is a surprisingly powerful shift of perspective.
Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok. Just... No. Funny enough, I was a big Imgur user until one day I somehow realized I'm wasting my life on the dumbest shit in the dumbest format possible.
Reddit on the other hand, is trying hard to push me away and I thank them for it, but a lot of info you can only find there. Like real measurements of graphics cards and just real information from real people.
Kind of sad, but Reddit has attracted all the people who used to frequent niche forms in one place.
Reddit on the other hand, is trying hard to push me away and I thank them for it, but a lot of info you can only find there. Like real measurements of graphics cards and just real information from real people.
Kind of sad, but Reddit has attracted all the people who used to frequent niche forms in one place.
Best part, it is all conveniently grouped on a single site unmarred by useful content so you can easily just ignore it all without anxiety you are going to miss out on something important.
> From TFA: "Since I’m a technical person, I tried to simply remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page."
You need to not only remove the modal, but remove the "overflow:hidden;" in the <body> tag. After that you should be able to scroll.
I have CSS/JS injectors that do this for me already, I really fucking hate popups and scrolling impediments of any sort.
You need to not only remove the modal, but remove the "overflow:hidden;" in the <body> tag. After that you should be able to scroll.
I have CSS/JS injectors that do this for me already, I really fucking hate popups and scrolling impediments of any sort.
This!
edit: Sometime they add "pointer-events: none;" to the <body>, should check that too.
edit: Sometime they add "pointer-events: none;" to the <body>, should check that too.
I had the same experience. I wanted to watch someone's podcast Livestream that was being broadcasted on Instagram (I don't know why they didn't just use YouTube). But I couldn't even create an account. I tried with my desktop and phone on different networks. It wouldn't work.
Perhaps I'm "old" for this.
I don't "get" Instagram. I'm not on it, I don't use it, all that "I just don't just because".
I have a room mate // romantic partner who does use Instagram. OK, that's great, that's fine. They're younger than I am so perhaps they get something I don't; times change, I get that; I still don't get "The Insta".
Maybe some social media will ding on me the next time around. I'll wait.
I don't "get" Instagram. I'm not on it, I don't use it, all that "I just don't just because".
I have a room mate // romantic partner who does use Instagram. OK, that's great, that's fine. They're younger than I am so perhaps they get something I don't; times change, I get that; I still don't get "The Insta".
Maybe some social media will ding on me the next time around. I'll wait.
I tried to create an Instagram account to be able to see some photos.
The first attempt stopped at "unexpected error" just after selecting a login name.
The second attempt with different email address in a different browser ended the same way.
Third attempt I tried from the third browser, via cellular data and gmail email. That one finished ok but still returned back to Sign up right after the last signup atep. Entering the same data in Sign up resulted in "there is account using this email". So I tried to log in and it was successful but it immediately showed "suspicious activity dialog" FORCING me to enter phone number and do SMS verification. After I did that, my shiny new Instagram account started working.
But I expect it will be blocked or deleted for inactivity soon unless I start submitting photos or generate enough ad impressions or ad clicks. I use adblock though..
The first attempt stopped at "unexpected error" just after selecting a login name.
The second attempt with different email address in a different browser ended the same way.
Third attempt I tried from the third browser, via cellular data and gmail email. That one finished ok but still returned back to Sign up right after the last signup atep. Entering the same data in Sign up resulted in "there is account using this email". So I tried to log in and it was successful but it immediately showed "suspicious activity dialog" FORCING me to enter phone number and do SMS verification. After I did that, my shiny new Instagram account started working.
But I expect it will be blocked or deleted for inactivity soon unless I start submitting photos or generate enough ad impressions or ad clicks. I use adblock though..
My favorite feature is how when someone shares an Instagram post of Whatsapp it's blurred out. I realized this today and it just hit me that they don't care about making the apps actually good. All they care about is that you go back to the main app where they can advertise to you.
[deleted]
Also, it’s 2021 and their iPad app is just the non-iPad app where it’s just a scaled portrait-only version of the iOS app. Do they not have the resources to do a proper iPad app?
i don't do social media anymore, but I used to use instagram to browse favorite artists. I found chrome developer tools would let you change to mobile view and then you could browse instagram/upload photos/etc like normal.
Haven't tried it in a long time so maybe doesn't work anymore.
Haven't tried it in a long time so maybe doesn't work anymore.
Instagram is terrible but I can defend forcing account creation via app only. It seems likely that such a route would draw a disproportionately large interest from scammers and disproportionately small interest from real customers.
I don't know if it's just me or what, but I can no longer view Instagram posts while logged out.
Other people report being able to, but it just sends me straight to a login page.
Other people report being able to, but it just sends me straight to a login page.
Same. I've never had an account, and for as long as I can remember everytime I end up on their page I'm greeted with a login screen.
In fact, I've always found it perplexing how little information or incentive there is on their landing page that would encourage me to make an account. I only even barely know what that site is for because of osmosis and image previews from sites that link to it. Makes me wonder how they got critical mass to even get started.
In fact, I've always found it perplexing how little information or incentive there is on their landing page that would encourage me to make an account. I only even barely know what that site is for because of osmosis and image previews from sites that link to it. Makes me wonder how they got critical mass to even get started.
Instagram allows you to create an account in the browser.
https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/
I don't understand this post and the blog author's comments about using desktop. I get the appeal of not having apps installed on your phone, but wasn't Instagram phone-first? I remember not having a smartphone in the early 10's and not being able to use Instagram because you couldn't use their site. I would argue the phone-based experience is far superior to the browser...
https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/
I don't understand this post and the blog author's comments about using desktop. I get the appeal of not having apps installed on your phone, but wasn't Instagram phone-first? I remember not having a smartphone in the early 10's and not being able to use Instagram because you couldn't use their site. I would argue the phone-based experience is far superior to the browser...
I run the web app on my google free phone quite easily. Just add to Home Screen.
you can make an account from desktop no problem
I'm glad we now have a name for this. If I may take a stab at a more formal, reusable definition of the Fuck You pattern:
A UI pattern whereby content a user wants is provided, then yanked away before it can be consumed, to be replaced by a demand for something the site wants (log in, sign up, subscribe, pay, etc). It's distinct from merely providing a limited amount of content in the first place, as when a site offers 3 articles for free before requiring payment.
A UI pattern whereby content a user wants is provided, then yanked away before it can be consumed, to be replaced by a demand for something the site wants (log in, sign up, subscribe, pay, etc). It's distinct from merely providing a limited amount of content in the first place, as when a site offers 3 articles for free before requiring payment.
Maybe that should be the Yanker pattern, since there are certainly many more scummy behaviours that merit the Fuck You label.
I suggest the Lucy pattern (as in the football running gag from Peanuts).
Oh, good reference! I like "Peanuts Pattern" myself.
Somehow Charles M. Schulz managed to perfectly capture the feeling of following a pinterest link from a search result, half a century before pinterest existed.
Tantalus pattern?
Brilliant name. We have a winner.
Great, now my boss is going to ask me to implement this.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Hopefully if we call it what it is and keep the name "Fuck You" pattern, any boss that wants to implement it will realize how user hostile it is. More likely, the MBAs figure out a more colorful name for it and every single app on the planet starts to have it.
Twitters new-ish feed refresh with out ask on mobile is a good example of this. While reading a tweet your feed will refresh shoving you anywhere between 10 and 100 tweets up on your feed. If I really wanted to see what I am reading I have to scroll back down through my already witnessed feed.
unless you're logged in, pinterest is only this, has some searches essentially 'SE-Owned' and has been doing this for ~7 years. They're the OG of this.
Pinttern?
Pinttern?
Very well articulated. It's the digital equivalent of emotional blackmail.
Appwall? Subscribewall? Mailwall?
Millwall? A wall that wears you down until you comply?
That's already the name of a a soccer team[2] with the motto "No one likes us and we don't care"[3]. How poetic.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwall_F.C.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_one_likes_us,_we_don%27t_ca...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwall_F.C.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_one_likes_us,_we_don%27t_ca...
Q: But what about the unauthenticated existing users we might alienate?
A: There’s no way to gather data on that so it’s not a thing.
This is the problem with “data driven” decision making in a nutshell. It has annoyed me to no end at every company I’ve worked for.
A: There’s no way to gather data on that so it’s not a thing.
This is the problem with “data driven” decision making in a nutshell. It has annoyed me to no end at every company I’ve worked for.
>US Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale reportedly told McNamara,[3] who was trying to develop a list of metrics to allow him to scientifically follow the progress of the war, that he was not considering the feelings of the common rural Vietnamese people. McNamara wrote it down on his list in pencil, then erased it and told Lansdale that he could not measure it, so it must not be important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
Sentiment analysis is a real thing. Of course collecting poll data on questions like "How much do you approve of the US Air Force turning large parts of your country to a moonscape? Rate from 1 to 5" probably wouldn't have gone over so well.
On the other hand, virtually every study of the Vietnam war said it was a huge mistake and Domino theory was bullshit.
On the other hand, virtually every study of the Vietnam war said it was a huge mistake and Domino theory was bullshit.
... but if you can't collect data on them, you can't target ads to them or sell their data elsewhere, and therefore they're worth nothing to you.
At the end of the day every company wants to make money, or will be bought out by cutthroats who think it's all there is, and this kind of thinking will take hold. Users you can't profit from = leeches.
At the end of the day every company wants to make money, or will be bought out by cutthroats who think it's all there is, and this kind of thinking will take hold. Users you can't profit from = leeches.
You can still collect (a lot) more information than classical advertising in print or on TV gets, and that seems to work alright.
Actually I think it's the opposite - online advertising is so ineffective all this micro-targetting is the minimum required to persuade people to throw their money away. In reality how do I target someone in New York? I buy an ad in the NYT.
It's frequently ineffective because it's frequently done mindlessly, because it's possible to do so at enormous scale for low cost.
The equivalent in the online world would be to pay site X to show ad Y at times Q-Z. And then you just trust that they'll do so, like you have to do for print/TV ads, and pay the site. That does happen, and you can find quite a lot of company blog posts out there saying that it works, but it's much more manual so yeah. It isn't the majority.
The equivalent in the online world would be to pay site X to show ad Y at times Q-Z. And then you just trust that they'll do so, like you have to do for print/TV ads, and pay the site. That does happen, and you can find quite a lot of company blog posts out there saying that it works, but it's much more manual so yeah. It isn't the majority.
Users are not consumers, but product. And untracked users are lower quality, so culling them can be beneficial. So no problem here.
[deleted]
Who says you can't collect user metrics from unauthenticated users?
with Instagram, I think the thought process is closer to: we can get a lot more data from them if we coerce them into logging in
Or rather, why don't we force them to login when most of them oblige. Those who refuse are a tiny minority which is insignificant anyway.
Another fuck you pattern from Instagram is hiding the keyboard when you go to search for a user to encourage you to get distracted and tap on a suggestion rather than what you were searching for. You have to tap search three times to actually see the keyboard. It has to be intentional because it's been happening for years.
Wait wha? What’s the flow here to produce this?
I open IG, tap into the search tab, tap the search bar, keyboard appears, type in user, tap result.
Do you want tapping into the search tab to autofocus the search bar and open the keyboard. I can totally understand that but IG’s search tab is more a discovery thing now. Which like evil’s of social media aside was a sorely needed feature since finding people to follow has always been hard on Twitter and IG.
I open IG, tap into the search tab, tap the search bar, keyboard appears, type in user, tap result.
Do you want tapping into the search tab to autofocus the search bar and open the keyboard. I can totally understand that but IG’s search tab is more a discovery thing now. Which like evil’s of social media aside was a sorely needed feature since finding people to follow has always been hard on Twitter and IG.
Are you on Android? You have to tap search icon, then the search bar, after which the keyboard pops up then disappears, then tap the search bar again.
I’m on iOS so I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. Definitely wouldn’t be the first time Android gets the shaft in terms of app quality from large companies. Looking at you Google whose iOS apps are better than their Android apps for some reason.
Perhaps iOS doesn't allow it. It's a valuable "bug" for Instagram, so they have no incentive to fix it. Otherwise the app is relatively bug free, and this issue has existed for years, so I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook absolutely doesn't deserve it.
My Android device works the same as the iOS user described.
I've seen it on multiple android devices. But even if only one tap on the search bar is necessary, it's still an antipattern, as the user clearly wants to search, and the keyboard should come up right away. Recommendations and suggestions should not be conflated with search, or at least shouldn't override search.
Yea fair enough - and that page is always incredibly jarring at first.
Wow, I don’t use Instagram so I haven’t seen this, but that’s a very nasty pattern.
There are some instagram mirrors you can use:
https://dumpor.com/v/polite_cat_olli_official
https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official
Suffering the ads is preferable to whatever fb wants.
https://dumpor.com/v/polite_cat_olli_official
https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official
Suffering the ads is preferable to whatever fb wants.
> https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official
Works for the Olli, but for another profile returns for me a "permanent error", blocked by Instagram.
See https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/cadence.moe/gemlog/2020-12-1... "Future of Bibliogram after restrictive IP blocking"
Works for the Olli, but for another profile returns for me a "permanent error", blocked by Instagram.
See https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/cadence.moe/gemlog/2020-12-1... "Future of Bibliogram after restrictive IP blocking"
Thanks for these mirrors... I used to visit picuki website which used to work great until recently...
Thank you :D
Yeah - this is why I stay out of Instagram. They're repeatedly, blatantly hostile to any non-user use.
At least they're not as bad as Pinterest, which has done this for years, plus their million alternate domains polluting search results.
At least they're not as bad as Pinterest, which has done this for years, plus their million alternate domains polluting search results.
I was actually under the impression that what Pinterest does was against the ToS of Google. I can't find the link or reference, but I believe it was along the lines of 'You can't post images just to farm user account creation on your services' which is exactly what Pinterest does.
I would love if we could do away with these sites and those websites that insist I use their 'app' to view simple text data.
I would love if we could do away with these sites and those websites that insist I use their 'app' to view simple text data.
Pinterest is the absolute worst at this. I died a little inside when I finally gave in and made an account (using google login). But I needed to use an image for some research I was doing.
What exactly is a “non-user use”?
Anyone who hasn't signed up for various tracking!
E.g. sending links to your post to friends and family. Many family members don't have accounts, and some days all they see is a login prompt. Many times, my recipient is on a different device / using a different browser / cleared their cookies because their ISP tech support somehow thinks that helps - some days, all they see is a login prompt, and don't remember their password, and don't want to go searching for it.
All of this has ensured that none of them like Instagram links, and do not want an account.
All of this has ensured that none of them like Instagram links, and do not want an account.
“Non-member use”
Oh, I’ve got a perfect example of a ‘Fuck You’ pattern in the wild, and it’s served with a side of ‘user gas-lighting’.
The gun.deals app, (specifically the iOS version, though I suspect android is engineered the same way), is your typical design of stacked rows of links for deals on, you guessed it, gun stuff.
As with these apps, the user scrolls down the list by dragging their finger upward. Except on gun.deals, the app will [intentionally] misinterpret the first contact of the finger as a ‘click’ on the row item. This causes the user to have to back out of the item they had intended to scroll past. (While almost certainly delivering fraudulently obtained ‘impressions’ that the app maker can represent to advertisers and vendors they are selling data and screen share to).
The gun.deals app, (specifically the iOS version, though I suspect android is engineered the same way), is your typical design of stacked rows of links for deals on, you guessed it, gun stuff.
As with these apps, the user scrolls down the list by dragging their finger upward. Except on gun.deals, the app will [intentionally] misinterpret the first contact of the finger as a ‘click’ on the row item. This causes the user to have to back out of the item they had intended to scroll past. (While almost certainly delivering fraudulently obtained ‘impressions’ that the app maker can represent to advertisers and vendors they are selling data and screen share to).
Fuck you patterns are everywhere on the web nowaday.
Some of the most annoying to me:
Twitch trying to discourage the use of the embedded player/non official players (like VLC) by replacing the content by a fullscreen purple picture asking you to watch on twitch.tv.
Reddit trying to force mobile user to use the reddit app as soon as the content is marked NSFW.
Instagram forcing me to login to view pictures.
Twitter asking me to see who someone is following.
Some of the most annoying to me:
Twitch trying to discourage the use of the embedded player/non official players (like VLC) by replacing the content by a fullscreen purple picture asking you to watch on twitch.tv.
Reddit trying to force mobile user to use the reddit app as soon as the content is marked NSFW.
Instagram forcing me to login to view pictures.
Twitter asking me to see who someone is following.
Another one is the "can I help you" chat box that pops up.
Intercom and the likes.
Thinking about making a Chrome plugin that intentionally asks some nonsense questions programmatically in the background to waste their time and disincentivize that behavior.
(To be clear, I love having chat channels for sales and support, just NOT unsolicited "Can I help you" popups.)
Thinking about making a Chrome plugin that intentionally asks some nonsense questions programmatically in the background to waste their time and disincentivize that behavior.
(To be clear, I love having chat channels for sales and support, just NOT unsolicited "Can I help you" popups.)
That just drives them toward using bots instead of humans.
I don't understand why Zoom doesn't get more flak for this. Their web version is intentionally crippled and broken in an attempt to force users to download their app. They won't even show the link to join a meeting with the web version until you have failed to join with the app (it used to require 3 failed attempts, but they seem to have dropped that to a single failed attempt).
Where are the developers implementing this stuff on large social media, especially Reddit who had such a user friendly founding? Surely they're here on HN. I'd love to hear their thinking in going along with this, assuming it's something better than "fuck the users I want to get paid." How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it?
> How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it?
You start with priorities that are fucked up before you even interviewed for the job.
The world of today is not like the world of 10+ years ago. In 2001, if you met a developer, there was an exceptionally high % chance that they were fundamentally into technology in a very deep & personal way. In 2021, you will find that most people in technology see it for the cash cow that it is and utilize it accordingly.
I would say that maybe 10-20% of the tech employees today actually give a fuck about these sorts of things. The rest just want their paycheck and as many other benefits as they can obtain. Raising a stink over dark patterns is not a good idea if you don't bring a whole lot of other meaningful value to the table.
You start with priorities that are fucked up before you even interviewed for the job.
The world of today is not like the world of 10+ years ago. In 2001, if you met a developer, there was an exceptionally high % chance that they were fundamentally into technology in a very deep & personal way. In 2021, you will find that most people in technology see it for the cash cow that it is and utilize it accordingly.
I would say that maybe 10-20% of the tech employees today actually give a fuck about these sorts of things. The rest just want their paycheck and as many other benefits as they can obtain. Raising a stink over dark patterns is not a good idea if you don't bring a whole lot of other meaningful value to the table.
I think this is because "tech" is quickly becoming a business utility, and every company is becoming a "tech company" just by augmenting its business with an app stack. "Tech" has become watered-down by proliferating everywhere, and accordingly developers have grown in number and diminished in average passion and skill.
Coupled with this, everyone knows these tech-driven ad-distribution companies posing as "social media" are pretty shady, because they're based on coyly mining user attention for $. So I you get a job there, your moral bar is low enough that a dark pattern here and there is no big deal.
Coupled with this, everyone knows these tech-driven ad-distribution companies posing as "social media" are pretty shady, because they're based on coyly mining user attention for $. So I you get a job there, your moral bar is low enough that a dark pattern here and there is no big deal.
It is a losing and neverending battle, too -- new C-levels come into your company, new managers and directors cycle in, perpetually looking for low-hanging fruit to up usage and profitability in their fiefdom at the expense of long-term goals and faithful users. You can explain once or twice how you're not going to implement some dark pattern, but what about the tenth time? Or the hundredth? Or the thousandth? And even if you manage to block it every single time, that same rot in the company will eventually wear down other reasons you'd like to work at the company, whether it's compensation or cool underlying tech or culture or remote-friendliness, and then you'll leave, and who will stop the dark patterns now?
Good news, my friend, you can see their sentiment right here in this very thread! Scroll up or down and feast your eyes.
My personal story: When I interviewed for a job at Amazon many years ago, all the recruiter e-mail kept going into my trash. I finally realized that I'd just directed *@amazon.com into my trash years earlier because they kept filling my inbox with so much useless bullshit, and I'd always hated the company. Turned out, though, that when presented with the chance to make twice as much money by working half as hard, those feelings became very malleable.. "Well, we're a bunch of assholes, but nice guys finish last"
Really, I'm just following orders every day at my job
My personal story: When I interviewed for a job at Amazon many years ago, all the recruiter e-mail kept going into my trash. I finally realized that I'd just directed *@amazon.com into my trash years earlier because they kept filling my inbox with so much useless bullshit, and I'd always hated the company. Turned out, though, that when presented with the chance to make twice as much money by working half as hard, those feelings became very malleable.. "Well, we're a bunch of assholes, but nice guys finish last"
Really, I'm just following orders every day at my job
Ah, the old "destroy it from the inside" strategy. Except instead of actively fighting anything, you recognize that rotting the company from the inside out with apathy while collecting the beefiest paycheck possible is your strongest weapon.
Bold strategy. Though I have to wonder if weaponizing your career in that way has dangerous implications for your self-esteem?
Bold strategy. Though I have to wonder if weaponizing your career in that way has dangerous implications for your self-esteem?
haha, where'd you get the idea that I'm fighting back?
No, my friend, I put on my jackboots and my company logo t-shirt and give 100% every day
Really, people benefit when I rob them of their privacy
No, my friend, I put on my jackboots and my company logo t-shirt and give 100% every day
Really, people benefit when I rob them of their privacy
The word "destroy" is questionable. These types of user-hostile patterns may in fact be needed to secure revenue or to exist at all.
The standard internet user doesn't pay for anything and increasingly blocks ads. That's why these patterns exist.
Surely it would feel uneasy to developers with a passion for UX, but there's nothing you can do about it. Go ahead and quit, it's not going to be very hard to find another developer willing to do it for 200K.
The standard internet user doesn't pay for anything and increasingly blocks ads. That's why these patterns exist.
Surely it would feel uneasy to developers with a passion for UX, but there's nothing you can do about it. Go ahead and quit, it's not going to be very hard to find another developer willing to do it for 200K.
> Since I’m a technical person, I tried to simply remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page.
^ try finding the container of the content that has its overflow set to 'hidden', and change it back to auto. Then you should be able to scroll again
^ try finding the container of the content that has its overflow set to 'hidden', and change it back to auto. Then you should be able to scroll again
Yes, Fuck Facebook, and fuck every other company that doesn't provide a net-positive for humanity. They may offer something convenient or useful, but if the mid/long-term cost is higher, then it's not a good thing for us or even for them.
People with short term vision (less than 50 years) are making poorly informed decisions. Granted, I would like to be fabulously wealthy. But if gaining my wealth meant the world would be worse in 2+ years (I give myself a year just to be selfish), then it's just not worth it. That 2 year cost will eventually kick my ass in 20-40 years.
So speaking very selfishly, if it has a net negative cost of greater than 1 year, then it likely will hurt me personally. So I (and everyone else) should pass on that option.
Backing up a bit, let's break down what insta and fb offer.
Very briefly, they offer some connection to close and unrelated humans. They offer some communication, some awareness, some entertainment. But their cost is SO high. Honestly, if we just budgeted $50/mo for services which didn't harvest our data, we'd probably be ahead. And our services would be less twisted in favor of "fuck you" patterns.
People with short term vision (less than 50 years) are making poorly informed decisions. Granted, I would like to be fabulously wealthy. But if gaining my wealth meant the world would be worse in 2+ years (I give myself a year just to be selfish), then it's just not worth it. That 2 year cost will eventually kick my ass in 20-40 years.
So speaking very selfishly, if it has a net negative cost of greater than 1 year, then it likely will hurt me personally. So I (and everyone else) should pass on that option.
Backing up a bit, let's break down what insta and fb offer.
Very briefly, they offer some connection to close and unrelated humans. They offer some communication, some awareness, some entertainment. But their cost is SO high. Honestly, if we just budgeted $50/mo for services which didn't harvest our data, we'd probably be ahead. And our services would be less twisted in favor of "fuck you" patterns.
I haven't used Facebook or Instagram in about 3 years. Occasionally I'll get sent a link to something on Instagram before having this exact experience. Whatever I'm missing out on, it hasn't been enough to convince me to make another account, my quality of life has significantly improved ever since I extricated myself from the social media hellscape.
Indeed, "fuck you" Facebook.
Indeed, "fuck you" Facebook.
Yesterday I wanted to see something on Instagram. I think it was inside Relay for Reddit, where a WebView would open the Instagram page.
Not only was there this delay, but the cookie consent was ridiculous. I now checked and it's the same on the Desktop in Chrome.
I have no option to reject/disable cookies. Usually you get to choose which things you want to reject, like user tracking, personalized ads, but you usually need to keep the functional cookies.
This popup only has one button "Accept All" and one "Manage Data Settings". The latter would be the one where I get to choose what to accept. But all I get there is an explanation telling me that "your browser or device may offer settings that allow you to choose whether browser cookies are set and to delete them. These controls vary by browser, and manufacturers may change both the settings they make available and how they work at any time."
What is wrong with them? Honestly, Facebook is the worst disease on the internet, even Pinterest doesn't reach their degree of hostility.
Not only was there this delay, but the cookie consent was ridiculous. I now checked and it's the same on the Desktop in Chrome.
I have no option to reject/disable cookies. Usually you get to choose which things you want to reject, like user tracking, personalized ads, but you usually need to keep the functional cookies.
This popup only has one button "Accept All" and one "Manage Data Settings". The latter would be the one where I get to choose what to accept. But all I get there is an explanation telling me that "your browser or device may offer settings that allow you to choose whether browser cookies are set and to delete them. These controls vary by browser, and manufacturers may change both the settings they make available and how they work at any time."
What is wrong with them? Honestly, Facebook is the worst disease on the internet, even Pinterest doesn't reach their degree of hostility.
This seems like an anti-scraping measure to me, they are limiting how much content you can access on the site without an account?
Seems like if they did not have protections like this, another group of people would be complaining about easy FB makes it for nefarious actors to violate your privacy, etc. and how careless they are in not locking down access better.
Seems like if they did not have protections like this, another group of people would be complaining about easy FB makes it for nefarious actors to violate your privacy, etc. and how careless they are in not locking down access better.
No because the first thing they do is to show you all of the content, ready to be scraped. Then they add their modal and then, after three reloads they store in your browser storage, they stops to show you the content.
So they don’t protect any data, they just leak it all. Then they hide it.
So they don’t protect any data, they just leak it all. Then they hide it.
I think this is partially correct.
I hate the FU patterns as well, but there are so many lame aggregator sites scraping for viral content.
I would say FU patterns are: 80% trying to keep people in the walled garden ecosystem, 20% trying to make it hard for scrapers.
I hate the FU patterns as well, but there are so many lame aggregator sites scraping for viral content.
I would say FU patterns are: 80% trying to keep people in the walled garden ecosystem, 20% trying to make it hard for scrapers.
I want plug-in which lets users highlight content on a page and mark it as "not malicious". It would use a CTPH algorithm to call out the non malicious bits from their context (same tech that virus scanners use). I call these annotations "brushstrokes".
Other users could "follow" my brushstrokes, so when they land on the page, instead of implicitly running whatever code it finds there it just fetches the known-non-malicious parts. I.e. the cat pictures.
I'd totally pay $5/month if $4 of it went to people who are annotating the web in this way. You could get paid in accordance with how popular and trustworthy your brushstrokes are, and together we can fix the web.
I guess the goal would be UURL's, where the both the reference and the referent are uniform--rather than a uniform reference to a who-knows-what-this-site-will-do referent.
Other users could "follow" my brushstrokes, so when they land on the page, instead of implicitly running whatever code it finds there it just fetches the known-non-malicious parts. I.e. the cat pictures.
I'd totally pay $5/month if $4 of it went to people who are annotating the web in this way. You could get paid in accordance with how popular and trustworthy your brushstrokes are, and together we can fix the web.
I guess the goal would be UURL's, where the both the reference and the referent are uniform--rather than a uniform reference to a who-knows-what-this-site-will-do referent.
Speaking of fuck you patterns, has anyone else been part of the A/B test where navigating to an Instagram page prevents you from using the back button? They somehow clean my tab history so that I can’t go back to Google. It’s been happening to me for months!
I'm glad you mention this, thought I was the only one. I've been experiencing this on facebook.com, for years.
I'm puzzled how this is even technically possible. A website isn't supposed to be able to clear the history of where I came from?
I'm puzzled how this is even technically possible. A website isn't supposed to be able to clear the history of where I came from?
It's Firefox doing it to prevent Facebook (and Instagram) from scraping your history.
If you're not on Firefox, then I don't know.
If you're not on Firefox, then I don't know.
That makes total sense, thanks!
Is there an announcement, help page, or issue/commit explaining this feature?
There's this:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/facebookcontainer/
I'm not sure if it's built into some versions now?
It does it on my Windows computer but not my Linux laptop, and I don't remember explicitly installing this extension on either.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/facebookcontainer/
I'm not sure if it's built into some versions now?
It does it on my Windows computer but not my Linux laptop, and I don't remember explicitly installing this extension on either.
Ah of course. Shows how I hold my bias toward Facebook :facepalm:
Exactly this about Instagram and Facebook bother me a little bit too, and here is something that most people also don't experience:
I sometimes use a VPS from a popular cloud provider as a proxy for my web browsing. I frequently get asked to "Prove I'm not a robot". This happens on all kinds of sites, including Youtube, Paypal, some government sites, etc. It is annoying enough, but Facebook as well as Instagram won't let me see _anything_ without logging in (which I don't). So can't even check the Lunch menu for a local restaurant on Facebook over this proxy.
I sometimes use a VPS from a popular cloud provider as a proxy for my web browsing. I frequently get asked to "Prove I'm not a robot". This happens on all kinds of sites, including Youtube, Paypal, some government sites, etc. It is annoying enough, but Facebook as well as Instagram won't let me see _anything_ without logging in (which I don't). So can't even check the Lunch menu for a local restaurant on Facebook over this proxy.
The same happens when you use Linux as your desktop OS together with an ad-blocker. I guess it trips off some anti-bot rules.
My favorite is Google's captcha where they let visitors solve their machine learning classification problem by asking them to classify images.
My favorite is Google's captcha where they let visitors solve their machine learning classification problem by asking them to classify images.
Ah ah ! I had the exact same issue with an Instagram account I wanted to see because it was mentioned in some newspaper.
I have no problem with private content but here it’s not even that : the content is shown then hidden.
Of course it’s their site, their rules. But it says a lot about the engineering of frustration and the respect they show to potential users.
I have no problem with private content but here it’s not even that : the content is shown then hidden.
Of course it’s their site, their rules. But it says a lot about the engineering of frustration and the respect they show to potential users.
Facebook does this too. I'll go to a link to a facebook page and be greeted some seconds later with nonsense about having to login. There's also that facebook login box that covers the bottom of the page.
Yeah unless it's a business, even then, you're pushed to sign up for an account to message the business. As a business, I would be weighing my options here as your Facebook page is often one of the first to show in the results. Not long until Facebook starts advertising other businesses over your business page.
Today I came across another type of "fuck you" pattern. I was buying a shirt (https://vindlr.com/collections/savings-guy/products/green-sa...). The first time I went to look at the page, it was $25. I closed it and came back several hours later it has risen to $30. I opened the site in private mode, and the price was $25 again.
The dark patterns are not a sign of misunderstanding good UX, nor are they a sign of pure evil by their makers.
Big social networks only come into existence via an aggressive, exponential roll-out. The main feature of such a network is having your friends on there. None of the other features matter as its plain to see how they copy concepts from each other all the time. It's about getting you in there.
Once in existence, producing revenue means keeping you in the experience for as long as possible. Which is best done in an app and preferably logged in. This allows for the personalization and notifications.
Put another way, publishing all of this on the open web, with many users using ad-blockers, just doesn't cut it. Further, you don't want to give away all content to the open web (cough...Google).
We gave them this power. None of us want to surf the open web. We want 3 apps that do everything. And we won't pay for it, not a penny.
Big social networks only come into existence via an aggressive, exponential roll-out. The main feature of such a network is having your friends on there. None of the other features matter as its plain to see how they copy concepts from each other all the time. It's about getting you in there.
Once in existence, producing revenue means keeping you in the experience for as long as possible. Which is best done in an app and preferably logged in. This allows for the personalization and notifications.
Put another way, publishing all of this on the open web, with many users using ad-blockers, just doesn't cut it. Further, you don't want to give away all content to the open web (cough...Google).
We gave them this power. None of us want to surf the open web. We want 3 apps that do everything. And we won't pay for it, not a penny.
The article is a great example of blogspam:
- Inflammatory title
- Low effort content
- An invitation to hate on a favorite HN target
- Inflammatory title
- Low effort content
- An invitation to hate on a favorite HN target
I pray for the day I won't have any reason to whine.
I use a Vim extension in my browser which converts 'j' and 'k' into scroll keys. I've found that on many sites which employ the modal overlay and suppress scrolling I can still scroll around using these keys even when arrow keys and mouse scrolling don't work.
Bibliogram is an unofficial front end to Instagram. Among other features, it won't prompt you to log in. Here's Ollie's page on Bibliogram:
https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official
Reddit on mobile is also beginning to require logging in to view certain pages, in which case you can use:
https://libredd.it/
Or
https://teddit.net/
https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official
Reddit on mobile is also beginning to require logging in to view certain pages, in which case you can use:
https://libredd.it/
Or
https://teddit.net/
It’s a good one actually cause even if it’s falsely triggered e.g by users on NAT sharing the same address it’s only going to tell them “fuck you” but they can still login
> From TFA: "Since I’m a technical person, I tried to simply remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page."
You need to not only remove the modal, but remove the "overflow:hidden;" in the <body> tag. After that you should be able to scroll.
I have CSS/JS injectors that do this for me already, I really fucking hate popups and scrolling impediments of any sort.
I have CSS/JS injectors that do this for me already, I really fucking hate popups and scrolling impediments of any sort.
Facebook was doing this for a while on business pages, but it looks like they've backed out of it now. Around 2 years ago you were only permitted to see content 'above the fold'. Scroll down to the second page of content and you saw an undismissable modal covering the entire page. Happily(!) you now have the option to dismiss the modal and continue scrolling, but the modal is shown for every new business page you visit.
Using a VPN, I'm completely locked out of any Facebook page, business or not. It just shows a login form.
I also like the mobile youtube website where they will ask you to create an account / login every 2-3 video views to "enhance user experience". This constant nudging (also a dark pattern) is clearly not about enhancing UX (commenting and playlists are not so much of use if you just watch links somebody posts in a chat or email) but clearly for youtube to serve better ads and track you more.
Just don't use these hostile sites. Your presence on them just adds to their credibility, and the rewards they offer are scant at best.
I just tried in a private browsing window: Without refreshing the page (to trigger the "forced HTTP redirect to login") I could delete the modal and disable the overflow:hidden on body and keep scrolling down quite a bit until I hit a post from January 18, 2019. So if you're prepared to try hard you can view a lot of cat pics without creating an account...
My challenge with this is that, I believe, you think instagram is a free service. It isn't, you pay for the service by selling your data to advertisers and using your data for advertisement. If they don't have your data, you aren't paying for the service.
I hate this and also, I don't use their service - same for facebook.
I hate this and also, I don't use their service - same for facebook.
The Royal Bank of Canada ("RBC") perpetrated a FYP last summer.
Users were suddenly denied access to online banking, unless they agreed to switch all statement reporting from paper to electronic. This was a condition prior to being allowed to continue with the login; the option was given to refuse, but it was made clear that this choice meant losing access to online banking.
But, don't worry, the UI flow assured the user: once you log in you can set your statement reporting preferences.
Of course, it didn't show you what the current preferences are or save them anywhere!
I had just one or two things for which I had been getting paper statements, all else being electronic. I could not remember exactly which and since they didn't remember for me, I did the simplest thing and switched every single item to snail-mail paper statements.
Getting the user to resent you (even more) isn't how you bring about cooperation.
Users were suddenly denied access to online banking, unless they agreed to switch all statement reporting from paper to electronic. This was a condition prior to being allowed to continue with the login; the option was given to refuse, but it was made clear that this choice meant losing access to online banking.
But, don't worry, the UI flow assured the user: once you log in you can set your statement reporting preferences.
Of course, it didn't show you what the current preferences are or save them anywhere!
I had just one or two things for which I had been getting paper statements, all else being electronic. I could not remember exactly which and since they didn't remember for me, I did the simplest thing and switched every single item to snail-mail paper statements.
Getting the user to resent you (even more) isn't how you bring about cooperation.
> …but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page
* {
overflow: auto !important;
}You can go ahead and block FB before FB blocks you.
With a simple /etc/hosts update like that:
https://pastebin.com/FAV2f9eA
Several years without FB and its scripts anywhere. Never regret about such decision.
With a simple /etc/hosts update like that:
https://pastebin.com/FAV2f9eA
Several years without FB and its scripts anywhere. Never regret about such decision.
Just looking at how this post got 400 points in an hour says a lot about how people feel about this. Internet fame isn't the arbiter of truth, but practically everyone here knows and relates to this post at one point or another on the web these days.
What I don’t understand about most sites that do this is how QUICKLY they reach the “fuck you” state. It’s like a few clicks, or a few seconds, or whatever — nowhere near long enough to get any idea what the site is about, what it offers, whether it is valuable, etc. Therefore, what exactly is gained here? I just get annoyed and immediately leave.
Imagine if this happened elsewhere in life. You go into a grocery store, you grab a cart, you get 5 feet inside, grab one item, and then you are immediately blocked by 8 security guards and interrogated for your name before you can continue. Would you stay in the store?
Imagine if this happened elsewhere in life. You go into a grocery store, you grab a cart, you get 5 feet inside, grab one item, and then you are immediately blocked by 8 security guards and interrogated for your name before you can continue. Would you stay in the store?
> It sort of worked, but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page.
Just an FYI the author needed to remove the CSS attribute on the body? element "no-scroll"
I've noticed Instagram's A/B testing however only so far as it prevents users from seeing "too much" without logging in. The case OP mentions is the least fool proof as there are many images left on the page after you get rid of the obstacles (modal, dark modal screen covering page, and no scroll css attribute). The other more robust method I've seen involves Instagram only sending the amount of images to the browser they want you to see
Just an FYI the author needed to remove the CSS attribute on the body? element "no-scroll"
I've noticed Instagram's A/B testing however only so far as it prevents users from seeing "too much" without logging in. The case OP mentions is the least fool proof as there are many images left on the page after you get rid of the obstacles (modal, dark modal screen covering page, and no scroll css attribute). The other more robust method I've seen involves Instagram only sending the amount of images to the browser they want you to see
Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter also do this, and I wish I could exclude them from Google search results.
The worst offense IMO is that even if you do take their bait to “use the app”, they punt you to the App Store page, losing the URL you were on in the process, so even though I have all of those apps installed, it’s not possible to click through from a Google result then open that same post in the app. At that point, I don’t try to search for the same thing in the app, I just convince myself that it’s not worth it and abandon any attempt to access that content. They can keep it.
The worst offense IMO is that even if you do take their bait to “use the app”, they punt you to the App Store page, losing the URL you were on in the process, so even though I have all of those apps installed, it’s not possible to click through from a Google result then open that same post in the app. At that point, I don’t try to search for the same thing in the app, I just convince myself that it’s not worth it and abandon any attempt to access that content. They can keep it.
I have been fascinated by this pattern lately. I don’t have an instagram account, but there are a few that I’ll browse occasionally. I usually browse in mobile Safari’s private mode. I can usually view one or two accounts before I get locked out. They’re incredibly good at locking you out! It’s not cookie-based, because I’m still locked out if I exit private mode or use a different browser on a different machine. I’m even locked out if I switch off wifi and browse from a tmobile ip. I’m not sure how they’re this good at fingerprinting, but it’s quite something.
My favorite example is "login before you know what's here". I'm always amazed by this. I hear about a new website, open it up, and there's a sign up pop-up.
100% close and go away.
100% close and go away.
This is the reason why I don't use Instagram...and that it also tries to force you to install an app instead of using the browser because you know...they can spy more from a phone.
I recommend trying to hit Reader mode button to defeat Fuck You patterns. This simple trick works on surprisingly many websites, because they need to conform with Google SEO rules.
Yep. Works on many paywall sites, too. Whenever you hit a paywall, turn on the reader mode, then refresh.
Pinterest is another one that exhibits this pattern. Infuriating.
On Firefox, when I load instagram, it deletes my history so I can't click back. I can't believe they'd deliberately be that shitty... is this some weird bug?
Firefox is doing that to keep Facebook from being able to access that tab's browsing history. You can disable this feature if you don't like it.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/
If you really want to browse cat pictures, just use this firefox add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/instagram-guest/
There are also proxy websites that allow you to browse instagram without login, but I don't like third parties learning about my browsing.
There are also proxy websites that allow you to browse instagram without login, but I don't like third parties learning about my browsing.
I've been using this expression for years, but I use it when a company purposely does not applies your explicit decision. In this case, you are the one trying to circumvent their policy.
https://mobile.twitter.com/XavierLava/status/108590014312636...
https://mobile.twitter.com/XavierLava/status/108590014312636...
I don't like stikcy header,s so I use the Kill Sticky bookmarklet ( https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ )
When I do this, some websites do the same thing, i.e. don't let me scroll down.
I think calling this the Fuck You pattern is entirely appropriate.
When I do this, some websites do the same thing, i.e. don't let me scroll down.
I think calling this the Fuck You pattern is entirely appropriate.
Well, it's definitely a dark pattern.
But why do you use Instagram to view cat pictures?
Just use google image search to view as many cat pictures you want. Yes, google also serve ads - but it doesn't prevent you from viewing images. And ads can be easily blocked with an ad blocker.
Social media, specially the FB family, is all about dark patterns. Avoid using them - at least for viewing cat pictures.
But why do you use Instagram to view cat pictures?
Just use google image search to view as many cat pictures you want. Yes, google also serve ads - but it doesn't prevent you from viewing images. And ads can be easily blocked with an ad blocker.
Social media, specially the FB family, is all about dark patterns. Avoid using them - at least for viewing cat pictures.
Another user mentioned bibliogram.art as a front-end for anonymous IG browsing.
There's also an Android app available on F-droid for this purpose: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.austinhuang.instagrabber/
There's also an Android app available on F-droid for this purpose: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.austinhuang.instagrabber/
Funnily enough the Instagram link in the blog post worked fine for me, because I use the "Privacy Redirect" extension which sent me to https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official
for the areas where you may not want to use profanity, we could also call this a 'Hold-Up' or Bank Robbery pattern - essentially they are holding you at gunpoint for your data which we know they will immediately sell regardless of if you want to use their platform for anything other than that one link
Use an app / webpage like ingramer (https://ingramer.com/downloader/instagram/photo/) :)
Instagram will probably notice and break/ban them eventually but meanwhile, this works.
Instagram will probably notice and break/ban them eventually but meanwhile, this works.
> but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page
Try this custom userstyle in a custom CSS plugin (like Stylus):
Try this custom userstyle in a custom CSS plugin (like Stylus):
body,
html,
html body,
.overflow-hidden {
overflow: auto !important;
}
Thing is, Facebook just tipped over the $1T valuation and, presumably, could easily subsidise Instagram as an ad- and dark-pattern-free environment, generate tons of goodwill, and maybe ameliorate some of the current anti-trust coming their way.
It just seems like the most obvious basic common sense approach?
It just seems like the most obvious basic common sense approach?
Facebook's use of this pattern prevented me from attending my grandfather's funeral (live streamed on facebook because of COVID) earlier this year. I was to say the least... pissed. If not for my sister who re-broadcast it to me over discord I'd have missed it completely.
Fortunately there are "instgram viewer" sites which proxy for you. For now.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=instagram+viewer&t=ffab&atb=v126-1...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=instagram+viewer&t=ffab&atb=v126-1...
Well I'm late to getting in on this but that blog post made me laugh.
I've done the same thing with my browser and had sites figure out ways to keep me out. I just quit going there.
Didn't really give it much thought though, aside from asking myself "why am I such a tightass?".
I've done the same thing with my browser and had sites figure out ways to keep me out. I just quit going there.
Didn't really give it much thought though, aside from asking myself "why am I such a tightass?".
Im not sure why this person would expect to see the content while logged out. Shrug.
Its part of a social network, if everyone was lurking it would just be a bunch of creepers. The product shows who viewed a post/story/reel etc and can't do that if you arent logged in.
Its part of a social network, if everyone was lurking it would just be a bunch of creepers. The product shows who viewed a post/story/reel etc and can't do that if you arent logged in.
If so they should not even show the page to begin with. I'd be fine with that.
(It's an intentionally public page about cat pictures, by the way, so it wouldn't be creepy for anonymous internet users to look at. It's only private Instagram pages that would be creepy in that sense.)
Letting you browse public content for 5 seconds before asking you log in is a "fuck you" pattern.
(It's an intentionally public page about cat pictures, by the way, so it wouldn't be creepy for anonymous internet users to look at. It's only private Instagram pages that would be creepy in that sense.)
Letting you browse public content for 5 seconds before asking you log in is a "fuck you" pattern.
Thats just advertising! I dont work at facebook but i also wasnt born yesterday. Give people a taste so they want to sign up. That doesn't make them evil any more than a movie trailer makes hollywood evil.
Your contract with the platform when you get the content is, you're going to log in/use the app. Otherwise you couldn't get the content on an ad-supported basis. Any time you try to scrape the web page you're actually stealing content.
I don't think that's a dark pattern.
A dark pattern is trying to trick you into something silly.
Like buying something extra you didn't even know about.
This is just them saying 'login' and when you try to get around it, they're saying 'login' again.
A dark pattern is trying to trick you into something silly.
Like buying something extra you didn't even know about.
This is just them saying 'login' and when you try to get around it, they're saying 'login' again.
It sounds like they disabled the scroll event on the body by setting overflow: hidden;.
[I am not the market segmentation fairy]
I can't buy anything from Amazon without an Amazon account.
Can't use Facetime without two Apple accounts and two Apple devices.
If it really matters, make an account. If it doesn't really matter, then it doesn't really matter.
I can't buy anything from Amazon without an Amazon account.
Can't use Facetime without two Apple accounts and two Apple devices.
If it really matters, make an account. If it doesn't really matter, then it doesn't really matter.
I feel like most websites used to be like that. And then suddenly we got a load of great websites that just gave us what we wanted without ads. Facebook, youtube, reddit, google maps, gmail, etc. Now things are changing once again.
The alternative is that life is made very easy for dystopian, privacy-invading companies like Clearview AI. Really I find this a lot less galling than on somewhere like Reddit, where most content isn't so personal.
The phenomenon he's seen is more likey the result of an overly paranoid and aggressive ant-bot algorithm. I've seen this too, but when using various devices and accidental (company machine) VPN connections.
It’s a cynical way to interpret it . The desktop experience is only 30% of mobile. Brand perception is tarnished if people use the reduced experience .
Think of web as a preview experience and mobile is the complete product.
Think of web as a preview experience and mobile is the complete product.
[deleted]
Have you tried hiding the div element with ublock, inspecting the html, and removing the y scrolling hidden rule?
It's common on many websites.
Ublock doesn't remove that rule but you can add it for each site.
It's common on many websites.
Ublock doesn't remove that rule but you can add it for each site.
We urgently need a functional P2P protocol for social media. Something where I can quickly and easily show my stuff to my friends - and vice versa. From my device to your device.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Linkedin has one of these too. Displays your full information to Google to index you, but if a human user visits, up comes the login wall.
F you for treating bots better than humans, linkedin.
F you for treating bots better than humans, linkedin.
There you go, an idea for business :)
- an "mutual" account that will crawl pages on those sites
- then share them without login
I am to sleepy and this idea is stupid as hell ...
I am to sleepy and this idea is stupid as hell ...
I used to be able to see photos that friends and family publish to Instagram, but then one day I was inexplicably cut off—no more access via open standard protocols.
I’m sad about that.
I’m sad about that.
The day instagram goes full Reddit is the day I probably stop using it. Thankfully I'm still just barely getting by with the website, but usually logged in.
Use ingramer.com or a similar tool/api, download all the images of your desired profile, and problem solved.
I call this solution “fuck you too”.
I call this solution “fuck you too”.
Do pay walls count as a “fuck you” pattern?
How about free trials with credit card submissions and having difficult “cancel subscription” work flows?
How about free trials with credit card submissions and having difficult “cancel subscription” work flows?
Author using "dark patterns" to describe anything he doesn't like (vendor upholding their side of the bargain)
I have all Facebook properties (fb, instagram, whatsapp, all of it) blocked by DNS via NextDNS on my router.
You're encouraged to try it.
You're encouraged to try it.
I'm allowed to view approximately 20 images free per day before Instagram forces me to a login screen.
Instagram is a mistake of the internet.
Instagram was fabulous until FB got their dirty fingers in there. I think Facebook and all their properties are cancer for the web.
They are banned on all my devices (and traffic to/from their shitty endpoints is actively banned on my networks). I call this the "fuck you too" pattern.
They are banned on all my devices (and traffic to/from their shitty endpoints is actively banned on my networks). I call this the "fuck you too" pattern.
Tiktok ?
this is not news about the content hidden behind login. Like come on. This is just a whiny post from a guy that for some reason didn't know this from like a 2 years ago!
Nothing about a pattern or simply coming to the realization that IG wants only users of its platform who log in, to use it and see its content! Not really knew considering in the early days it was an APP only platform....we've only been lucky to have the web desktop version for a short number of years.
Do I like this behaviour - No. But am I not surprised from a company, as mentioned, hasn't exactly supported anything web/open over its existence. I mean look at the never-resolved feud between twitter and instagram that means you stillllll can't post pics to twitter from Instagram or see preview cards on twitter of IG links etc --all because of a spat like 10 years ago.
But not posting nerdy rants about how I have to use bots and shit to workaround logging into a site I am apparently interested in the content of, but don't want to actually use or participate in.
Do I like this behaviour - No. But am I not surprised from a company, as mentioned, hasn't exactly supported anything web/open over its existence. I mean look at the never-resolved feud between twitter and instagram that means you stillllll can't post pics to twitter from Instagram or see preview cards on twitter of IG links etc --all because of a spat like 10 years ago.
But not posting nerdy rants about how I have to use bots and shit to workaround logging into a site I am apparently interested in the content of, but don't want to actually use or participate in.
Marked as "Can't reproduce" :) e.g. I can browse the cat pictures just fine
My theory is that Instagram is probably trying to prevent bots capable of rendering pages and making changes on the DOM (e.g. Selenium or chromedp) from harvesting their unauthenticated access rights to Instagram's frontend to crawl/collect images.
Hence, as the author tried to circumvent it, they probably got IPbanned.
Hence, as the author tried to circumvent it, they probably got IPbanned.
The pattern is real but in this instance
they're blocking bots and scrapers.
Their API is the same way. Instagram really hates its users and developers.
I would say - fuck Mark!!!
Ban Mark Zuckerberg from the internet. He ruins everything he touches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Microsoft's old playbook, just done better, and against the web at large.
Microsoft's old playbook, just done better, and against the web at large.
You get the level of service you pay for.
Instagram's free of charge.
Instagram's free of charge.
Ah, the classic “bait-and-switch”
Wish I could upvote it 10 times!
Instagram have a paywall, to be able to see the content you must pay with your data by creating an account, and later hopefully become addicted to the platform to give more data and eat as many ads as possible.
If you think forcing to log in to consume content is a 'fuck you' pattern, then what do you think of paywalls?
bnb1kaz843ecm0qnsp5gvpk6fjkca789hr3xa62lyg
[deleted]
The inability to scroll is from a body-level element that has `overflow: hidden` set. Set that to visible and you should be able to scroll
Maybe it's time for shit like hiding scrollbars to be opt-in. I bet there are great use-cases for messing with scrolling, or right-click, or the back button, or whatever else. I bet there are benevolent websites that make downright acceptable use of these things. But this is not the hot path. There is far more abuse than good-use, yet I don't know any browser that does the right thing.
I like that name better. But something that means exactly the same thing that isn't considered a curse word would be even better.
"Well, fuck you, too. We're here to sell ads."
It's not about dark patterns, that's just a second-order effect. It was never about dark patterns.
This is the implied agreement. You understand it, or you don't. And if you don't, I guess you haven't been on the web in the past decade or something.
What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who will pay for it.