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How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

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Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#241

Post by rustcleaner »

jerojero wrote: post #205
drnick1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was crea…

There's more to ads than banners and unskippable videos. I bet if you open YouTube, even with Adblock and sponsorblock, you'll see ads. "Tech" channels are nothing but ads because all they do is present products for people to buy. Even channels that do legos are ad channels. YouTube itself has become a platform for serving videos that are advertisement at their core. These videos are popular, get good engagement, pay…

Sponsorblock (FF extension) is neccessary for YouTube, as well as Seal (GUI for yt-dlp) + BravePipe (fork of NewPipe, integrated Sponsorblock) for Android.

Also, adding `Before: YEAR` in search takes you back to a more wholesome time.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#242

Post by rustcleaner »

inigyou wrote: post #197
drnick1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was crea…

I switched to a Firefox fork, but recently opened Firefox itself and was horrified to see the browser itself shoving ads in my face. Buy our VPN! Sign up to a Mozilla profile! Did you know about the extension store? Firefox (the product) and Mozilla (the for-profit company) are lost causes. Firefox (the technology) is still there, for now.

I really like Mullvad Browser, which is Tor Browser -Tor +uBlock Origin, for clean & ephemeral browsing.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#243

Post by rustcleaner »

smeej wrote: post #136
deepsun wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with Google Music, it was perfect. You could stream, or could buy and download mp3, or you could upload your library to it. And the best feature: "I am feeling lucky" -- play a random song you ever liked and keep playing a generated playlist off it. But they killed it due to internal wars with YouTube Music that sucks. There's still nothing like Google Music.

The thing that pissed me off was that I had uploaded so many indie local bands' CDs, none of which were ever on YouTube, so I lost more than half of my music library when they forced that change and there was nothing I could do about it, having long since gotten rid of the disks because I believed them that they would never delete my stuff. (Degoogled not long after that, actually. Fool me twice...)

Cloud is an unnecessary evil, in the Stallmanesque sense.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#244

Post by jfengel »

docjay wrote: post #162
jfengel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also .001% of the content there is now. The Internet of 2000 was microscopic. Now everyone can create content, without any of the friction of hosting it. The vast majority of it is crap, but that was always the case. The main difference between now and 30 years ago is that the Internet is vastly more diverse. It isn't just other CS majors any more. Now everyone gets to wade in the vast crap pool looking for…

It sounds like you agreed with them from the other direction. “The internet of yesteryear felt more special.” - “Nah, there wasn’t as much slop back then and now it’s a crap pool that anyone can wade into and look for scraps.”

I'm saying the amount of crap is the same, but it used to be all our crap and not crap targeted at 12 year old Korean girls or 77 year old Uruguayan grandmas.

It was more special, to us specifically. But I'm claiming that the amount of crap just for us is still there. It's just easy to be distracted by the billions of content producers that are easier to find.

Note that I wasn't talking about slop, which does indeed risk a true Dead Internet. But people were pining for Geocities long before AI.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#246

Post by Tanoc »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #194
firatsarlar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have ad blockers, ad blocker detectors.... But apparently no ad blocker blocker. Should I continue? Block the blockers by blocking the blockage... ouch.

There are adblock blockers... some sites detect the ad blocker and prevent you from visiting the site without ads... so yeah, you then don't visit the site.

Funnily enough most of those only work if the Javascript from an external resource is allowed to load. NoScript, no problem. Of course then you have to deal with NoScript, but it has so many other uses you'll be sorting your whitelist anyways.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#247

Post by Tanoc »

jfengel wrote: post #244
docjay wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you agreed with them from the other direction. “The internet of yesteryear felt more special.” - “Nah, there wasn’t as much slop back then and now it’s a crap pool that anyone can wade into and look for scraps.”

I'm saying the amount of crap is the same, but it used to be all our crap and not crap targeted at 12 year old Korean girls or 77 year old Uruguayan grandmas. It was more special, to us specifically. But I'm claiming that the amount of crap just for us is still there. It's just easy to be distracted by the billions of content producers that are easier to find. Note that I wasn't talking about slop, which does indeed…

I would argue that a lot of our crap can't be produced anymore because of automated moderation and the DMCA. Remixes of old videogame songs, animutations, fan lore websites, these all get targeted constantly, and it's disenfranchising and disincentivizing people. They're scared whatever thing they made is going to get a takedown request, or the website they upload it to will not accept it because it's legally toxic. And before anything is said, no, not everyone uploaded to their own site even back in the late '90s. We had web portals like Newgrounds and Fark where they'd put stuff. It's when we abandoned web portals and moved to social media platforms that the suffocation began to happen, because the point wasn't to show other people in your community something you made, the point became grabbing as many generic views as possible. First that was for virality, then it was for AdSense money.

What's funny is that back in the day if you mistyped a URL it'd go nowhere. Then for a while domain squatters took over, and they'd lead you to dead end traps slinging porn or pyramid schemes. Those dead end traps were on the fringes however, where nobody really ventured. Nowadays everywhere is designed like that, except instead of porn it's corporate ads, and the pyramid schemes are run by people making videos those corporate ads play over.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#248

Post by abustamam »

inigyou wrote: post #197
drnick1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was crea…

I switched to a Firefox fork, but recently opened Firefox itself and was horrified to see the browser itself shoving ads in my face. Buy our VPN! Sign up to a Mozilla profile! Did you know about the extension store? Firefox (the product) and Mozilla (the for-profit company) are lost causes. Firefox (the technology) is still there, for now.

The most annoying thing is whenever I encounter a form with an email input I get an ad right there -- "use our email mask relay! First five are free!"

I can probably turn it off somehow but I feel like it should be opt-in or at least live elsewhere.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#249

Post by inigyou »

abustamam wrote: post #248
inigyou wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to a Firefox fork, but recently opened Firefox itself and was horrified to see the browser itself shoving ads in my face. Buy our VPN! Sign up to a Mozilla profile! Did you know about the extension store? Firefox (the product) and Mozilla (the for-profit company) are lost causes. Firefox (the technology) is still there, for now.

The most annoying thing is whenever I encounter a form with an email input I get an ad right there -- "use our email mask relay! First five are free!" I can probably turn it off somehow but I feel like it should be opt-in or at least live elsewhere.

Just abandon Firefox and switch to another Firefox-based browser.
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