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The 'Fuck You' Pattern

cedwards.xyz

331–340 of 619 posts

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#332
post #127

"Wow, fuck you. I just wanted to look at cats." "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 i…

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 o…

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.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#333
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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 :)

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#334

"Wow, fuck you. I just wanted to look at cats." "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 i…

>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.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#335
post #48
post #13

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 embedde…

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 som…

I have not been able to to get this to work. what is the exact ua string that works for you guys

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#336
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Is there an announcement, help page, or issue/commit explaining this feature?

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#337
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#339
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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
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