Most of the modern internet is indistinguishable from what we used to call malware
Most of the modern internet is indistinguishable from what we used to call malware
Every site is trying to pull a Bonzai Buddy now.
"We need all your info for advertising, not you can't opt out unless you make an account and give us your email. Oops, looks like I hid the opt-out under a subheader. Amazon is now profiling you."
WE USED TO CALL THAT SHIT A VIRUS.
ITS EVERY. FUCKING. WEBSITE. NOW
"Hi I'm going to block this entire site until you give me your info, this is very cool and normal."
Capitalism ruined the internet. The whole thing is malware now.
It’s not that bad for me, but then I’ve got eight finely tuned anti-bullshit browser extensions and a DNS sinkhole. No one should have to construct a whole elaborate tower defense like this just to get on the web.
I personally find that the most tragic thing about the internet is how if you looked at the way it was made you'd almost think it was the product of a socialist state. It is a product of intensive collaboration between different researchers, fully subsidized by the state every step of the way and the end result effectively given away for free to the public. Now it is rendered a wasteland, carved up and privatized, and with LLMs and image generators it can only get worse as everything gets filled up with computer generated slop.
However, let's take a moment to think about how much good such technology could do if it was subservient to the needs of a socialist state, search engines that actually give you what you want, central planning networks with unparalleled efficiency, social media that prevents the reproduction of reactionary thought, a free, fully organized and easy to access centralized digital library of all academic resources. I can't help but be hopeful for whatever society comes out of this capitalist hell.
The internet has become useless for news. Back in the old days you could use Google to find articles and read them. Today, everything is behind a paywal and Google results for news content has turned from a list of links to useful information to a list of banner ads for subscription services.
And no, I'm not going to buy a subscription for Racism Weekly or The Hunt The Poor For Sport Times just because they happen to have some interview with a ghoul or happens to be the ones who exposed some generic local government scandal. And even if I had disposable income and wanted to spend some of it on the self-important stenographers who calls themselves journalists, there's no way I would buy more than one or two subscriptions and I would still be excluded from most of the stuff Google tries to push.
Me: goes to website to use its function
website popup: "Oh, you're using your cell phone to visit me! I look WAY better in an app!"
Me: can't figure out a way around the popup and surrenders to the app download
website's app popup: "We're sorry but your cellphone is too old, I can't be installed."
Me: goes to website on a computer made from parts from before the website and my cellphone existed
website: "Hey thanks for logging in, lets get to work"
It tru. Apps? Apps? I used to SCOUR MY FUCKING MACHINE to get rid of spyware like apps. I went nuclear on the boot sector. I DOD formatted by storage just to be certain every trace of spyware was gone.
I'm using uBlock Origin to block most advertising and sketchy our outright hostile and malicious code, uBlacklist to block shit from search results (pinterest), and Firefox for general purpose fuck this shit.
it's great how everything just sucks more and more and there's no end in sight
Siderant but every company that has you make a workday account on their external site when you apply can get fucked. I'm not gonna spend 2 hours filling out an application, after already sending my resume, after confirming my email address to a site I'm never going to use again in my life, to not get an interview anyway.
If you are after that sweet metadata just make your race and gender questions a bit more robust. (I still don't know if those are meant to be inclusionary or exclusionary.)
Archive.org will eventually be destroyed under capitalism, but it’s both a wonderful window onto how the web used to be and also the equivalent of low-background steel for human knowledge. That and Wikipedia are the only unsullied places I can think of that have outlasted the last 15 years or so of enshittification.
Yes, but was Bonzi Buddy
on the blockchainAI-based?Tor browser with security mode on Max. Find out how much of the internet is actually information or paywalls
I was just thinking about this the other day. I noticed that I would click on an imgur link and try to zoom in on my phone, and it legit just took me zooming as permission to redirect me to some completely random imgur post about the worst meme you've ever seen. And I'm like "isn't this like clickjacking or something? i thought that was considered malware"
i visit hexbear, my favorite invidious instance, and sometimes satisfactory tools and all of them with privacy badger and ublock. thankfully i have been relatively shielded from the enshittification. but i really hate how the www is headed straight into the shitter
It's been like that in the olden days too, give or take.
Only such big shit-infested sites we would visit rarely, going for familiar forums and friends' webpages instead.
Now those are replaced by some functionality on big shit-infested sites.
Oh, it's that instance. Anyway, the comment is politically neutral.