Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

neustadt.fr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 531 posts

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#211

Post by JoshTriplett »

QAPereo wrote: post #70
_jal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on this. Honestly at this point, if the information is only contained within a video, I skip it and move on[1]. (I usually leave video in the browser crippled, only turning it on when I actually want to watch something.) [1] The trend of support docs for enterprise software going video is horrible, stupid, and a negative mark when I'm evaluating products. If someone has to spend hours of eyebleed rewindi…

I'm with you on this. Honestly at this point, if the information is only contained within a video, I skip it and move on Same, and I've noticed this trend for quite a while now. Text can always be trivially copied, even by a granny, and inserted into an email or forum. A video? You can have a DRM arms race with video. Videos also prevent skimming, and demand consumption of all content.

> even by a granny

Please don't use this as a substitute for "novice computer user" and similar. I've encountered people twice my age with grandchildren who are experts, and people younger than me who are novices.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#212

Post by eterm »

psyc wrote: post #65
pmoriarty wrote: post #25

"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…

Indeed, the Web became a juggernaut bandwagon, and got all the attention. Not for nothing. But I always felt the potential of the Internet was neglected as a result. There are other apps, notably MMOs, BitTorrent, blockchain and other P2P things. I sincerely hope that the “re-decentralization” movement is able to attract hackers and gain steam.

That requires net neutrality. In general I think there's a danger that ISPs become "Web service providers" and refuse anything which isn't HTTP from rDNS-able addresses.

Of course people will just end up recreating TCP over HTTPS to get around these sorts of things, but I don't think we're headed toward a decentralised and opinionated (i.e. not heavily filtered based on traffic analysis) network.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#213

Post by autokad »

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…

an example of controling how the content is consumed is gifs. gifs work great, there needs not be a replacement for them. one of the beautiful things about a gif is you can save it.

the current web hated that, it didnt have control. they are trying to 'wean' us off gifs through companies like giphy.

how many people cringe when you click on a link on reddit and realize its a link to youtube and you have to watch a commercial for a 30 second video? I am like omg, youtube, close

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#215

Post by [deleted] »

kfriede wrote: post #161
Thriptic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I often feel this way about podcasts. Many great podcasts have a 0:30 intro, 1:30 of ads then 08:00 of random babble before getting into 5:00 of the meat of the podcast. The most recent one I can think of is 99% Invisible, though they're not even close to the only ones that do it.

[deleted]

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#216

Post by eighthnate »

pmoriarty wrote: post #25

"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…

The sweetspot was mid 90s to mid 00s. We had the benefit of the web without the all-encompassing corporate control. It was a more open and freer place back then. But as the internet got more popular and with more corporate/government involvement, the standards were lowered to accommodate the lowest common denominator.

Less free speech, more control, less privacy and more ads.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#217

Post by [deleted] »

intopieces wrote: post #206
throwaway2016a wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been that Firefox was unusably slow on OS X and Linux for a long time and they lost a lot of users because of it. Now it is faster but it is difficult to woo people back. And even if it is faster, there track record shows that they found doing a release that slows down a large portion of users was acceptable. Granted I doubt they still have that attitude, and i think they are more performance based…

My work doesn't allow the latest version of FireFox, so after months of crashes and general unbearably slowness on MacOS I switched to UnGoogled Chromium. I wish I could go back to FF because I like Mozilla as an org, but it's not in the cards for my day to day.

[deleted]

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#218

Post by wutbrodo »

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…

> In books, I do like scifi but they recommend a bunch of books with spaceships shooting each other on the cover - not what I have ever been interested in.

You're making a huge mistake by judging a book by its cover in this case. The copy of the Foundation series that I had as a kid was very space opera looking too, and I've seen gaudy covers on everything from Dune to Kim Stanley Robinson. For Sci fi in particular, publishers have an incentive to trick a large chunk of the audience into thinking that its Star Wars-y, and there's not much incentive in signaling the things that you or I would get out these books.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#219

Post by digi_owl »

hasenj wrote: post #47
wickawic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sidebar: lots of easy to enjoy things are implemented in 'slow' interpreted languages. This site, for one.

Which I think is a big mistake, because even if it ends up being used in a low traffic site, it ends up complicating the installation process. Where as a compiled language not only would run fast but also have a very simple setup: just copy over the exe and run it. Nothing to configure. No dependencies to install.

Echo this.

If there is ever something that looks nice and shiny but will invariably cause me grief in getting working, it is written in some interpreted language (Python seems to be a particularly good at messing with me) that want everything to be in some very peculiar way.

And this trend of every new language coming with its own package manager is troubling me, as it means that developers will be even more lax about documenting their dependencies...

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#220

Post by s73ver_ »

tomc1985 wrote: post #196
s73ver_ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't consume it, instead of complaining that they're being "hostile" to you. Or, even better, create your own content in written form to compete.

If I could make written content to compete then why would I be watching said video in the first place? The objective of consumption is to learn, but what you advocate only works if one has already learned something. What about when the video contains exclusive, important trade-related info? Is dismissing someone to go create their own content on exclusive information really a coherent counterargument (or useful strat…

All content creators are stroking their egos.

I'm sorry, but I still see nothing "hostile" about them choosing one medium over the other. You might have a slight inconvenience, but that's it.

If you don't like things being in videos, then write written content to compete with it. Otherwise, stop with the over the top exaggerations and feelings of entitlement from content creators.

Post reply on HN