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The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

cedwards.xyz

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Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> presumably they'll have some paper menus Increasingly commonly, that's a "nope". If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no longer for me. Perhaps it's time to go back to the old people's home, the nurse has been searching for hours.

> If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no longer for me. What kind of dystopian city do you live in? QR codes are on the decline again¹, fortunately. 1: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/may/23/off-the-menu-wh...

I can think of a large number of restaurants in Richmond BC that are still this way. (And only Richmond; neighbouring Vancouver/Burnaby/New West/Surrey are fine.)

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#53
The IP-level block you experienced after trying to get around the login modal is an anti-scraping measure. I doubt it is based on anything like “detecting that you’ve opened web inspector”, it’s much more likely that Instagram is running some heuristic that tries to bucket you into either “potential signup” or “scraper trying to download as many images as possible”, and once your behavior pattern fits into the second bucket they apply a (very) temporary IP block.

It comes off as extreme and insulting to a regular user, but it is also one of the few methods that scrapers can’t trivially dodge (it’s fairly easy to maintain a roster of IPs, but that is merely easy, while e.g. changing your user agent to pretend to be a different browser is trivial).

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#54

The reason for this (unjustified IMO) is bot/scraping prevention. On most VPNs you cannot browse profiles unless you're logged in. TikTok has a much more elegant solution to this problem (while still being a nightmare for bots/scrapers), with ByteDacne moving bot checks to the client with a mixture of proof of work and fingerprinting.

if it was bot/scraping prevention you would allow more than 3 profiles or reloads... that's just to block humans.

probably bots have a way to bypass this.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#56
I don’t really mind blocking ads and that sort of stuff. The social contract for websites is that they’ll send me what they want and I’ll render it however I want. But if they don’t want to send me content because I don’t have an account, that’s fair game IMO.

I mean, it is fine to complain, but I get where the company is coming from. They don’t make any money off those of us who block all their stuff. So, why do they want to do business with us?

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#57
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was how restaurants worked for a long time. Of course, if you prefer the predictability of seeing the menu before you get there, that’s your preference, fair enough. But I wonder if you might miss out on some places run by cooks who put all their talent into cooking, and none into technology. Could be some good stuff…

Talent isn’t a zero sum game. It takes next to no effort to throw your menu as a photo on google maps for example.

Example of how this falls apart: you change your prices. You change your menu. You have different menus for different times of day. You have different menus for special occasions.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#58
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still go to the restaurant to eat presumably they'll have some paper menus in there, or QR's or whatever

> presumably they'll have some paper menus Increasingly commonly, that's a "nope". If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no longer for me. Perhaps it's time to go back to the old people's home, the nurse has been searching for hours.

If QR is the only option, I make the server tell me what's on the menu.

I'm an old guy with bad eyes I'm not going to try to read your menu on a 5" phone screen in a dim restaurant.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> presumably they'll have some paper menus Increasingly commonly, that's a "nope". If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no longer for me. Perhaps it's time to go back to the old people's home, the nurse has been searching for hours.

Or, I have no idea how these QR providers work, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was the sort of low-effort service that restaurants don’t want to pay for. So, maybe ad/tracking funded. It is annoying when a transaction that for ages has been all-paper gets bumped into the panopticon.

QR codes can encode many things, including a url. If your restaurant already has a reasonable menu online, you can just link to that. No need to pay anyone, other than if you fancy print the qr code notices.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#60
>I tried to simply remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, but I wasn’t able to scroll any further on the page.

Usually when sites show a modal they also set CSS on the html / body element to disable overflow scrolling, so you'd have to find and remove that too.

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