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Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

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Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#261

Post by marlokk »

jdavis703 wrote: post #253
baxtr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I simply hate sites with videos and no related text content/summary. I’ve noticed that especially news sites are increasingly employing this “feature”. I assume the main reason for this is that can force you to watch the 20-30s video ad. There is no way of avoiding it other than opening a new tab and doing something else for 30s... what a waste of life time

What would be a better solution for ensuring the video's producers continue to receive funding to make more videos?

ethics

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#262

Post by lern_too_spel »

gruez wrote: post #2

>If you use Chrome as your main browser, consider switching to Chromium, the open-source version of the browser. Consider minimalist browsers like Min (and choose to block all ads, trackers and scripts) to browser news websites. no love for firefox? or for that matter, any non webkit browsers? >HERE WeGo for maps (free) i'm not sure that's any better in terms of privacy

Also, FastMail isn't any better for privacy, and you have to pay for it to boot. The article was more or less reasonable until the nonsensical recommendations at the end.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#263

Post by 5ilv3r »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #119

We need web browsers with good local & p2p indexing/search/bookmarking features. Before I ever touch google, I want my search/address bar to look thoroughly through well organized, locally bookmarked content indexes. The next stop before Google is indexes I've subscribed to. My friends, family, organizations, libraries, businesses, campaigns, wikipedia, etc. After that, duckduckgo. If I haven't found it by then, goog…

I had an idea for something like this. I found a fictional device called a memex on wikipedia, and I figured that it would be very easy to implement simply searching your browser cache from the address bar. Obviously the cache will need to be big and persistent, but man it sure would be useful.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#264

Post by tomjen3 »

vog wrote: post #248
tomjen3 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are podcasts like that, but I admit I am strange because all my favourite podcasts are multiple hours long, getting really deep into the content. Jocos podcasts, which doesn't really have ads other than for his own products, fx are often more than 3 hours, Dan Carlins Hardcore History is typically that long per episode, but often they are also part of a series, like his 5 episodes on the first world war (probab…

This. Exactly this. I don't get why anyone would listen to a podcast with ads and/or bad information density. I mean, the whole point (and value) of podcasts is to remove the private radio station crap, not to replicate it. BTW, the German podcast scene is a quite positive example of the directions podcasts can go.

Do you mean podcasts in German or by Germans? If the latter, any good suggestions?

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#265

Post by tomc1985 »

s73ver_ wrote: post #220
tomc1985 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could make written content to compete then why would I be watching said video in the first place? The objective of consumption is to learn, but what you advocate only works if one has already learned something. What about when the video contains exclusive, important trade-related info? Is dismissing someone to go create their own content on exclusive information really a coherent counterargument (or useful strat…

All content creators are stroking their egos. I'm sorry, but I still see nothing "hostile" about them choosing one medium over the other. You might have a slight inconvenience, but that's it. If you don't like things being in videos, then write written content to compete with it. Otherwise, stop with the over the top exaggerations and feelings of entitlement from content creators.

Like I have the time or desire to compete with most of these yokels. We give in some areas and take in others, that's how the world works. Content creators are not some unassailable gift horse immune from inspection or criticism. People are free to criticize the things I contribute to this world; and my feelings will not be hurt if they do. Perhaps you could learn from this.

Video needs smothering, not competition.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#266

Post by ZenoArrow »

ataturk wrote: post #26

The part where the author tries to tie Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the user-hostile web is bonkers. People, you have to understand this: There exists a large number of others out there who desperately want government reformed, want more localized control over their lives, and who voted accordingly. It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that…

> "People, you have to understand this: There exists a large number of others out there who desperately want government reformed, want more localized control over their lives, and who voted accordingly. It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that may be hard to understand, but it is the truth!"

Thank you for taking time to consider the effects of media spin and not take everything you read at face value. If more people made the same effort we'd be a lot better off.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#267

Post by FridgeSeal »

joepie91_ wrote: post #150
QAPereo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on this. Honestly at this point, if the information is only contained within a video, I skip it and move on Same, and I've noticed this trend for quite a while now. Text can always be trivially copied, even by a granny, and inserted into an email or forum. A video? You can have a DRM arms race with video. Videos also prevent skimming, and demand consumption of all content.

> Videos also prevent skimming, and demand consumption of all content. To an advertiser, that's a feature. This is half of the problem.

As someone who reluctantly works in advertising, I can tell you that advertiser's view themselves as God's gift to the internet and think they're doing great things for it. So many people in the industry have drunk the coolaid and honestly, earnestly think that exploiting anyone they can for information just started to to make an add ever so slightly more (creepily) personalised is a good thing.

They need to be put back in their box and have a bunch of their toys taken away. GDPR is a good start.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#268

Post by sillysaurus3 »

smhost wrote: post #225
DeusExMachina wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cigarettes and junk food are not hostile in this context. We are talking about things that people don’t like but are forced to get anyway. Cigarettes and junk food are definitely unhealthy, but people love them. So much that it’s hard to take them away from them.

That's a very bizarre definition of love. Few people are happy about their addiction to an unhealthy habit. Don't you think it's disingenuous to talk about user preference without talking about reward hacking? I think the internet is actually worse in this respect because much of it is systematically designed to induce addiction with no upper limit. Your evolutionary arguments are also pretty bizarre and reductionist…

Can we stop framing arguments as "bizarre"? It's unduly personal.

I don't think their arguments are bizarre, and it's better to meet them head-on than to insinuate they're weird.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#269

Post by vvanders »

ThinkingGuy wrote: post #246
vvanders wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically the closest thing I've found to the hey-day of the internet(~'99) for me is Ham Radio. It's hard to explain but it's got the same feel of people who tinker and enjoy technology for the hell of it. With HF you get communication all over the globe. It's also explicitly non-commercial so it's stayed relatively undeveloped. Granted you'll never see the exponential of communication that the internet unleashed d…

I generally agree, but while there's still a strong DIY spirit in the ham radio world, especially in the hardware field, I often find myself disappointed by many hams' willingness to surrender control and freedom to proprietary protocols and software (PACTOR, D-STAR, Winlink, Ham Radio Delux, to name a few) in exchange for convenience.

Oh yes, I hate the implementation(love the tech) behind PACTOR. Of course there's also the really annoying symbol rate limit regulations as well.

Thankfully K1JT via WSJT has been doing some awesome open source weak signal work. FT8 is pretty sweet and really exploded recently.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#270

Post by tstactplsignore »

ataturk wrote: post #26

The part where the author tries to tie Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the user-hostile web is bonkers. People, you have to understand this: There exists a large number of others out there who desperately want government reformed, want more localized control over their lives, and who voted accordingly. It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that…

>It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that may be hard to understand, but it is the truth!

Don't we objectively know this is false? You can dispute the size of the effect, but both Russians and corporations absolutely ran large targeted misinformation and propaganda campaigns for the 2016 election, taking advantage of what you could call the user-hostile web. The intelligence communities, congress, and big tech companies all agree on this now... Your distortion may be a bit more qualified than Donald Trump's daily fabrications, but it still intends to deceive on what is an objective fact all the same.

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