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The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

cedwards.xyz

171–180 of 403 posts

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#171
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which every for-profit company seems to wind up doing these days.

Every for-profit public company. And so they should/have to.

No, it doesn't have to be every public company either. Meta might be a for-profit public company, but Zuckerberg still has the majority of voting shares. If he wanted to get rid of the annoying IG "feature" that this blog describes, no one could stop him. He could prioritize the long term health of the company over their quarterly results. He is the one that is ultimately making the decision, not the public shareholders.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently on mobile it's stopped giving me the option to even view the page anonymously, at least for adult content. It gives me: "This is mature content and may not be appropriate for certain viewers. To continue, use the app to confirm you're over 18 and browse anonymously."

old.reddit.com

"Just modify part of your URL bar every time you click a link to Reddit" falls into "F you".

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#173
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which every for-profit company seems to wind up doing these days.

Every for-profit public company. And so they should/have to.

They do not have to, regardless of whether it's what the shareholders would prefer.

They only have to do what the shareholders demand if the shareholders actually vote to make them.

The meme of the "fiduciary duty" meaning that profit must be maximized at all costs has been debunked so many times by now it's really not funny.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#177
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And generally users of the web want things to be free / don't want to pay directly for these utilities. I feel like we as internet users are a big part of the math here.

I'm happy paying for a few personal cloud servers, more than I need perhaps. I'm happy paying for a solid Internet connection, electricity, computers, hard drives, UPSs, etc. I'm happy for paying for VOIP PSTN connectivity, mobile connectivity, etc. With very few exceptions (mostly arising out of expedience), I do not pay for software . I honestly do wish the dynamics of the software ecosystem were different, so that…

[deleted]

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#178
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a Trojan Horse pattern, really. They give away the service for free membership with billions of VC until their competitors collapse or fade away, then they start becoming more aggressive with ads and/or charging for premium access which used to be free.

This is not new, Gillette used to give out free razors to get people used to their ecosystem and get recurring revenue. It’s just more “in your face” now.

Did they stop? It used to be every guy got a razor for their 18th birthday, which was creepy as nobody even signed up for it(unsure about women?). Myself and all my classmates got one.

I tried Googling this, and the last article I found was from 2019...

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#179
This is an important insight. What is the correct response when someone says “fuck you”? The answer is obvious. “No, you”

The correct thing to do is to acknowledge the relationship they have expressed by their distain for you. That relationship is adversarial, other. It’s “you’re nothing to me” if you’re nothing to them they probably oughta be nothing to you.

For me “fuck you” patterns are a signal you should have no relationship with that company.

As are: nag forever patterns and hard nudges (a hard nudge is a shove, I don’t like being shoved — google maps uses a hard nudge to force login so they can bypass US data privacy rules. Thanks, but no thanks)

Delete your account, add to your pihole block list and use wireguard to teleport your mobile home so you benefit from that while out and about.

You’ll be surprised at how liberating it feels to be able to forever sever ties with products that express “fuck you” patterns.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#180
post #4

The Pinterest::Google interaction is the most annoying of these; it seems impossible to find an image result from Google on the page Pinterest shows you.

I've been running uBlacklist [0] for over a year now on all my devices for two sole purposes: blocking (1) Pinterest, and (2) Quora from my Google results.

[0] https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs

I can report a general positive impact on 98% of my searches. In the remaining 2% of cases (where I'm typically looking for some hyper-specific image I stumbled upon months or years ago), I can temporarily disable the filter with a single click.

Adding domains to the list is also as simple as clicking "Block this site" next to a result. In theory, if you diligently block lots of crappy websites, you could gather a collection of domains that de-crapifies your searches extensively. But for me, results from Pinterest and Quora were the biggest gripes by far, and this has worked beautifully just for that.

You can even subscribe to blacklists created by others, although I haven't explored that option so far. And your lists and/or settings can sync across devices with Google Drive. Available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

* I'm not affiliated to the project in any way, just promoting what's, in my eyes, quite a useful browser extension.

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