The primary reason - there is a lot more money in the system than in the 90s. As a consequence, there is a lot more scammers, spammers and hackers. As a consequence, companies built defences, inconvenient for the users. There is a never ending arms race, of which we are the victims.
Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
171–180 of 383 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#172Users tolerating such bullshit is the reason why it exists and keeps on existing. Nobody is forced to continue using dark-pattern software, nobody was forced to use Apple and tie their credit-card to their "apple cloud account", yet normal users dont see a problem with it at all and just continue even paying for software which is hostile to them and their interests. Your question is like, "Why does DRM exist it is ac…
Yeah, that's the thing. You can't really fight against results. Putting an annoying modal asking for an email will give you lots of email leads. Sending newsletters will give more returns to the website. Sending desktop notifications whenever there's a new article works and gives more visits. A website that takes 20 seconds to load is not an issue. Advertisements give more than zero moneys. The reason it gives positi…
100% - even annoying "promotional" email blasts. I've worked for companies where, when we did surveys, customers overwhelmingly said that we sent them too many emails or that the emails were not relevant. Yet time and time again we would do a bulk email send and watch in-store sales climb up proportionally. So naturally then we had to make email address a required field when making an account online. One more step for users, and specifically something that most users don't want to give...but the money says otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#173donotreply@... emails, anyone?
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#174Users tolerating such bullshit is the reason why it exists and keeps on existing. Nobody is forced to continue using dark-pattern software, nobody was forced to use Apple and tie their credit-card to their "apple cloud account", yet normal users dont see a problem with it at all and just continue even paying for software which is hostile to them and their interests. Your question is like, "Why does DRM exist it is ac…
Users are the last ones to blame. If anything it’s policy makers, investors and industrialists. If you want to participate in society, you need a smartphone, and guess what? The whole world is okay with only 2 companies doing this….
I don't have a smartphone, am I not participating in society?
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#175Because human nature is hostile and self-destructive.
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
€35 private antigen test in the UK[0], taken within 48 hours of your planned return, would have done it. You paid €100 because you didn't read the guidance and prepare. [0] https://fly.randox.com/
The fact that you're expected to pay some private company 35 quid for a test the NHS will send you for free is laughable and demands subversion.
Disagree. The nhs doesn’t provide it for free, but it’s paid by everyone. international tourism is not really a necessity, if you can afford that, you should be able to afford a test too. There are many test providers, but they are all in high demand right now, so it’s expected that the prices and waiting times are higher than they used to be. The cost of travel during the pandemic has certainly increased, specially when going through the peak of a huge wave as we are right now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable.
I do get the complaint regarding going back and forth from Ireland. The transit between NI and Ireland should be smoother and not require you to pay extra. However, if you’re coming from Portugal, the US, etc I think it’s entirely reasonable,
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#177Users tolerating such bullshit is the reason why it exists and keeps on existing. Nobody is forced to continue using dark-pattern software, nobody was forced to use Apple and tie their credit-card to their "apple cloud account", yet normal users dont see a problem with it at all and just continue even paying for software which is hostile to them and their interests. Your question is like, "Why does DRM exist it is ac…
Unluckily providers clone each other, designers trying to prove their reason of existence pushing for new or modern approaches just for the sake of it, and technical writers in the fallacy of quantity write about anything different comes their way quickly, judging by first look not by sustainable usability consequently generating the appearance of trend without having any trend (not like a trend is a good measure, not at all! nevertheless, it is used as guideline by too many).
I try to avoid as much as possible from the user hostile internet but there is wee choice in an era of rapid cloning of UX with random tweaks for the illusion of novelty.
I go away immediately (for many many years now) from pages blocking the view with dialogs of subscription after 10-20 seconds or even less from arriving. I go away from randomly found unknown sites expecting me of configuring 30 cookie settings the 500th of time that month. I do not watch youtube because it is intrusive with ads, suggestions, autoplay (on the top of the usual strident but uninterestingly wicked content). I simply avoid discovering new content because 98% of the time it is just a struggle not useful or entertaining at all.
It is the exception that I get what I need instead of being pushed into something others want from me. There is unmanageable amount of content pushed my way and almost zero interest of serving what I need. It is a struggle to use the web. I avoid it more and more in fact only going for reliable locations when I need something.
Unluckily there is little choice to choose from approaches when I am determined to do something. Movie streaming sites all have the same intrusive and pushy behaviour. I cannot browse their collection in peace not only because they do not provide real choice but pour their preselected lists on me but when I stop the mouse in some random location an active content pops into my face distracting me from relaxing on entertainment content. Netflix, Amazon Prime and some other I tried works the same. It is not relaxing but upsetting, not entertaining at all. I more and more need to rely on my old collection of movies.
Same with music.
I am avoiding using social media sites due to the overload of useless content poured into my face following an obscure logic (no logic). Those just block me instead of being helpful or entertaining. LinkedIn is exception, I use it for job search, but don't get me started how sh*ty that is, oh my god! Like if clueless amateurs were given half the necessary time to come up with something whatever. Since Google and all the other job searching sites are even worse I cannot go elsewhere really after finished with know names and organisation and the direct search (which is the only reliable). When I complain about usability they respond nothing. Absolutely nothing. Which is also typical in parallel of the irrelevant empty responses.
Unluckily this whole unusable internet is a huge and painful topic that would fill days and weeks of discussions and summarising the negative but completely avoidable experiences, all the user hostility out there.
HN is one of my remedies with its reliable and simple approaches and interesting, easy to navigate content, with the lack of obstructive visual noise and manipulation.
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#178Open source has been serving big tech for the past 15 years. Millions of man-hours to build better tools for the cloud overlords. Structure everything to fit the needs of amazon and apple, not the little guy who self-hosts a forum. Mozilla was abandoned. There is no open-source mobile phone. The web became a bad fascimile of mobile app platforms. Google doesn't care to integrate touch-interfaces and functionality in the browser. Academia jumped in the cloud as well.
Why do we even need the internet at this point? Google has stored all the content and amazon and cloudflare carry all the traffic. They 'd be far better off with optimized proprietary centralized protocols instead of the distributed mess that is tcp/ip.
Maybe that's what the internet needs, competition from another network
We also need to be able to pay for little stuff. Remember game arcades? All you needed to play a game was a coin, anonymous, impersonal, not-tracked, easily accessible and effortless to use, and it made them sustainable. Try to ask your users for $1, it's entirely impossible considering the fees and dangers involved. We need anonymous mini transactions like this for the internet. Browsers should implement it, and it can be secured with legal limitations (e.g. your wallet cannot spend more than $200/month on websites).
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users are the last ones to blame. If anything it’s policy makers, investors and industrialists. If you want to participate in society, you need a smartphone, and guess what? The whole world is okay with only 2 companies doing this….
I don't have a smartphone, am I not participating in society?
What I mean is that you need it to use an increasing number of private and public services these days.
Speaking from my experiences in Europe and South Asia.
So effectively companies and the government are telling us that we need one of these to get avail conveniences and in some cases to be able to use their service at all…
With policies that mandate the use of digital vaccine certificates, apps and QR codes being ubiquitous, we’re effectively being forced to become a customer of Apple or Google one way or another
I cannot enter or place an order at most coffee shops today without a smartphone
Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?
#180I think of the Internet as a subculture, like a music scene: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
It started with geeks working in labs doing cool shit with computers on government grants. They figured out the technical aspects. This is circa 1980 and earlier.
Then came the early adopters. They recognized the potential and wanted nothing more than to do cool shit with computers, and so they did. They used the technology invented by the geeks with the same spirit of the geeks, for they themselves were geeks. This was circa 1990.
Next came the mops. They saw early adopters and geeks doing cool shit, and wanted to do cool shit too, but they lacked the wherewithal to do it. But they stuck around because they were happy enough to watch others while they did cool shit. This was circa 2000.
Next came the sociopaths, who said things like "They trust me — dumb fucks". And that was it, that was the beginning of the end. Once the sociopaths came on the scene, everything good about the scene was done. No longer was the scene about doing and watching cool things; it was about sociopaths extracting value from "dumb fucks" who didn't know any better, and there were plenty of them at that point. The geeks were powerless to stop them - the technology was well thought-out and commoditized. Other geeks were then in the employ of sociopaths, executing their will. This was circa 2010.
And really, at this point the sociopaths control so much of the space (as they always end up doing, because that's what they aim to do and no one tries to stop them) that they can just pay geeks to reshape their creation in the sociopath's image (see Web 3.0). This is where we are now.
What usually happens at this point is a long, slow decline of the scene as the sociopaths take over and wage a scorched-earth campaign in search of profits. Everything is monetized to the hilt until there's nothing left. If at any point there is an aspect that remains unexploited, it will soon be exploited by a waiting sociopath. This is the future of the Internet.
That's my theory at least. The Internet is user hostile because the people who own the biggest chunks of the Internet really do view you as a "dumb fuck" that deserves to be exploited.