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Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

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Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#151

Post by black_puppydog »

bambax wrote: post #141
jccalhoun wrote: post #71

I use ublock origin and privacy badger not because I am worried about privacy but because the internet is basically unusable without it. Because of this, I don't see many ads. But I have been an amazon customer since 1999 (according to what they say on their website when I'm logged in.) Looking at what they recommend for me, this personalization stuff is crap. In music, Amazon recommends bands I never listen to like…

It's really amazing how bad those personnalisation engines are; AI seems pretty stupid for now. But as I was making the exact same point a few days ago here on HN, someone responded to say that maybe it was on purpose, that if recommendations were too good they would creep us out. Don't know what to think of it but I found the objection interesting...

another point is that you (the recommender, and, incidentally, also the user) are happy if there is at least one novel and interesting item in the recommendations. This might apply less to music (list) recommendations, but in general that's how I (as a customer) also approach lists of recommendations.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#152

Post by joepie91_ »

s73ver_ wrote: post #137
tomc1985 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? That's stringing together a bunch of things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

The primary motivation of many "creators" is to gain more income; to that end, they do not need to produce user-friendly content, they just need to produce content that earns money. That doesn't even require maximizing readership.

Aside from that, whether one person is being hostile to another person has absolutely nothing to do with anybody "owing" anybody else anything. These are two totally unrelated concepts.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#153

Post by edgarvaldes »

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…

IMHO how-to's of manual activities are better in video form. Other than that, text form is way better.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#154

Post by DontTrustOver25 »

titzer wrote: post #144

FTA: "...we have faster connections, better browser standards, tighter security and new media formats. But it is also different in the values it espouses. Today, we are so far from that initial vision of linking documents to share knowledge that it's hard to simply browse the web for information without constantly being asked to buy something, like something, follow someone, share the page on Facebook or sign up to s…

After reading this essay I actually share the sentiment. With progress in blockchain technologies and ideas like Blockstack I'd love to see that rebirth come in the form of a decentralized internet.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#155

Post by QasimK »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #119

We need web browsers with good local & p2p indexing/search/bookmarking features. Before I ever touch google, I want my search/address bar to look thoroughly through well organized, locally bookmarked content indexes. The next stop before Google is indexes I've subscribed to. My friends, family, organizations, libraries, businesses, campaigns, wikipedia, etc. After that, duckduckgo. If I haven't found it by then, goog…

I’ve found Chrome/Chromium to be absolutely terrible at searching local history and bookmarks. It often fails to find even the simplest of pages which I know I’ve been to recently, while Firefox is capable of digging out pages that are barely in my memory.

It’s one of the things that keep me on Firefox - it’s simply more usable!

(Personally, I’m convinced Google does it deliberately to gain more user attention time on their search service.)

The idea of having subscribed indexes is interesting! I often just want to search Wikipedia. The idea of indexes from friends or family sounds more like “trusted sources”, or the web of trust, or even GPG key verification. You’re saying I trust these sources more because I trust these people more.

I think doing this slightly in the background automatically (vs actively asking your friend for recommendations, or looking at a bloggers recommended materials page) could make the internet safer. It risks creating “bubbles”, but these should be a lot less significant than your own personal (Google) search bubble.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#156

Post by QasimK »

livatlantis wrote: post #4
reaperducer wrote: post #3

Irony: The web page that rails about the web being user hostile is coded so that Safari's user-friendly reader mode is disabled.

Author here. Is it? It works on my end. Could you tell me which OS/Safari version you're using? Thanks.

Works for me on iOS Safari 11.0.3

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#157

Post by pera »

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…

I do agree that not everything is imposed by evil corps, but hostile products don't necessarily fail by their own: cigarettes and junk foods are just one example of this.

In general I'm not against video content in a web page, as it actually can be a good source of raw data that we can use to understand something in great details, but I would argue that in many cases video is objectively inferior to text: texts are much easier to parse (both for computers and humans) and also some irrelevant information included in the audiovisual format can reduce the entropy of a content (e.g. how a reporter looks like physically).

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#158

Post by tomc1985 »

s73ver_ wrote: post #137
tomc1985 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and then you wouldn't have it in any form.

This would be a blessing for much of the "content" out there.

Do they owe me anything? Of course not. But if they want my precious, precious attention and the opportunity to advertise to me then they need to play ball my way. Otherwise, fuck them.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#159

Post by tomc1985 »

hasenj wrote: post #89
tomc1985 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they provide a statically linked binary, which is rare -- especially in open source, where such a thing generally has consequences with your license(s).

The only problematic licenses here are the GNU family of licenses. This is very unfortunate but there's no way around it. Luckily there are many many useful libraries available with very liberal licenses.

While GNU is restrictive it is an important bulwark against exactly the kind of corporate conquest that more liberal licenses have seen. Much of Amazon's unfortunate domination over cloud services couldn't exist without liberal open-source licenses...

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#160

Post by ThrustVectoring »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #69
shams93 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah personally I learn much faster and better by reading than via most videos. You can't keyword search a video, with text documentation I can keyword search within the page to find out exactly what I'm looking for.

Another problem I have with videos is that I can't go at my own pace---I'm stuck at the pace of the speaker. Some videos I'll watch at 2.5x speed, but the speaker may speed up and slow down at times. With text, I can speed-read, slowing down at key points as needed. And if it's a text I want to devote more study/attention to, then can print it (which facilitates speed reading as well.)

It's not just pace, but order. If someone presents information out of the order you need it in a video, it gets really awkward to consume. If text is out of order, you can easily skip around and re-read portions.
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