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Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

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Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#131

Post by megaman22 »

duxup wrote: post #78
blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

I read some sports related sites. Many have auto play video that seems to pop up just a bit after you've already started reading. The video almost always is unrelated (different team, different story) to what I'm already well into reading. This is annoying 100% of the time. It's never useful to me. Even worse. Some stories will be just a few words and a video. So I go to a site, read, play video.... and that same sit…

I'm convinced nobody at ESPN has tried to use their website in a long time. I remember it not being a dumpster fire of UX once, but that was like 10 years ago.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#132

Post by zeveb »

DerfNet wrote: post #85
pmoriarty wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still centralized, and owned and run by a commercial entity that uses it to further their own interests, with a record of its users' interests and opinions. The capabilities and features of web forums are also really dumbed-down and limited compared to what you could get with the mail clients and news clients of even 20 or 30 years ago.

Could you expand on that second line a bit? I'm curious what features we're currently missing out on compared to decades past.

NNTP was often hosted locally to the machine that you were reading on, so browsing it is incredibly fast, so much faster than using a website that it's not funny.

Plus, the clients had things like killfiles, so that one could ignore a troll or a subject (or even fancier stuff, like scoring: maybe a user tends to have worthless comments, but what he says about one subject is really worthwhile).

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#133

Post by platz »

Consumer's can't solve this from the ground up. What's needed is to prevent certain kinds of key acquisitions. The law around acquisitions is too permissive in an age of network effects; acquisition laws were fine pre-internet but don't solve their intended purpose anymore. Normally, the market corrects against the biggest players because the biggest players are slow to change culture and their business. But, acquisitions are the mechanism by which the big players are preventing themselves from being disrupted by smaller, more nimble players. If the big players can simply buy up any new comers (who will want a deserved pay-out for their efforts) on the scene, they maintain complete control regardless of what consumers want. Otherwise, any "alternative practices" you try to foster will simply be crushed, if they ever become a large enough threat.

Facebook acquiring Instagram is a perfect example.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#134

Post by Thriptic »

blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

> But many of the providers of "content" know they have little to provide, so they drag it out in video form, saving the actual information for the last 10% of the video (if ever!)

0:00 - 00:10 Useless video animation

00:10-2:00 "Hey guys welcome to my channel. Make sure to like and subscribe and let me know how I'm doing in the comments. Also make sure to check out [sponsor] and use coupon code [code] for 10% off"

2:00-5:00 Useless personal story about why creator is making the video

5:00-10:00 Useless history of the subject matter

10:00-11:00 The actual useful content

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#135

Post by sctb »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #98

Talk about silver linings! Trump's victory certainly made the facebook/twitter/instagram liberals see what an obscenity this has all become. Of course if the dems make a comeback in the midterms, watch them all go into full-blown social-media relapse.

Please don't post this kind of partisan flamebait on Hacker News. We're here to try for better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#136

Post by leggomylibro »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #99
wtetzner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and i think they are more performance based now, but a lot of us left for Chrome and never looked back. And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog lately, and sometimes I have to kill it to get my computer back to a usable state. And of course, I have to dig through all of the Chrome process and try to figure out which is the one that will take down the rest of…

> And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog lately I'm OS X and I've had some CPU issues lately if I have a lot of tabs open but overall not nearly as many issues as when I finally decided to give up Firefox. I actually downloaded Firefox lately and it seems pretty nice. If Chrome gets works I may consider it.

I usually have a few hundred tabs open in Firefox without issue; it seems to do a good job of putting unused/old tabs to 'sleep' until you come back to them.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#137

Post by s73ver_ »

tomc1985 wrote: post #63
s73ver_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I cannot get behind the idea that a creator choosing to deliver their content that they made in a form they chose can be hostile to you.

Why not? Content creators are not inherently virtuous beings. Many, I would say, are quite the opposite.

I wouldn't, because they could just as easily not make the content, and then you wouldn't have it in any form.

And the greater point there, that you appear to have missed, is that content creators don't really owe you anything, unless you've paid them. Thus, their actions are not hostile to you.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#138

Post by Animats »

It's all about me, Me, ME!

The entire first screen is some guy blithering about himself. Cory Doctorow says all this, better.

Diaspora would be a good idea if it had any traction. Until then, we're stuck with Facebook.

Google, not so much. Most of Google's services have quite good alternatives. I don't use any service that requires a Google account. With Google reading and censoring what you put in Google Docs, that's probably a bad idea anyway.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#139

Post by sergiosgc »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #111
blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

If video content would be so "hostile", it would have failed on its own already. People would flock to other places where they can read instead. I don't buy this idea where everything is always imposed on us by evil corporations. More and more websites using video to me seems more like a proof that people prefer videos over written content. That's why videos usually autoplay, also on YouTube and Facebook: if a person…

> If video content would be so "hostile", it would have failed on its own already. People would flock to other places where they can read instead.

Video ads pay a lot better than ordinary display ads. 15$ CPM vs 30¢ CPM on my media sites. It's not a 1-1 comparison on UX (you may lose half your reader base and still come out ahead).

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#140

Post by lotsofpulp »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #111
blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

If video content would be so "hostile", it would have failed on its own already. People would flock to other places where they can read instead. I don't buy this idea where everything is always imposed on us by evil corporations. More and more websites using video to me seems more like a proof that people prefer videos over written content. That's why videos usually autoplay, also on YouTube and Facebook: if a person…

It's easier to make money from videos than from text, and that's why websites would prefer that. There's not much else to it.
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