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Not sure I’d prefer the easy internet of the past though. I hope no one forgets websites used to store your password in plain text and just sent it to you if you forgot. Oh and password length? Any 4 characters will do! Buying online? Yeah just need those super secure 3 digits on the card please. There’s a lot of unneeded fluff today like the promos and cookie disclaimers could have been handled at protocol level. But what is there for security is generally good change, even if it makes the process more complex.
Ah yes, the “Private, simple or secure” web dilemma that will push everyone to embracing AI agents that will amplify the issues with the first three options.
“tHiS wEbSiTe Is BeTtEr In ThE aPp!”
Bold of you to assume people know the difference between an app and a website.
The App:
One WebBrowser component.
A straw to slurp all your location and contact data.
Annoying notifications.
There was a booth at my farmers market (I know) that bragged about how they can turn any website into a app.
And I wanted to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) their table
“STICK TO GROWING TURNIPS YOU FUCKING RAT BASTARDS”
I was astonished when I first learned that hardly anyone enters web addresses anymore, then it made sense when I realized that almost everyone browses on their phones and uses the app versions of whatever they scroll, which is really only going to be somewhere between three and a dozen sites anyway, people don’t just “surf the internet” anymore, they scroll content aggregators and social media feeds. People hate making choices or having control, they want to turn off their mind and just be fed sensations and experiences.
Because of this most people don’t really know HOW websites and networks work, when I explain things like how cookies work, how to refresh a page, how to navigate to specific parts of a website by changing the address, how to search the web for alternatives, etc. I get looked at like either an annoying nerd or some kind of wizard.
Missing step of CAPTCHA asking you to click on motorcycle images, only for you to fail at least twice
Lifehack: Use the audio prompt and just put in ANY similar number of random words you hear. It fuzzes AI training data at same time. Works every time.
Me just trying to fucking pay a utility bill:
“Honey, could you come in here and tell me if this looks like the edge of crosswalk just visible behind that car? I have one chance left and can’t mess this up!”
Oh my. This was my yesterday trying to sign up on Meetup.
First it was click crosswalks. Then stairs. Then motorcycles. Then the sign up failed. 5 minutes of my life so I can RSVP some stupid ass event.
What a shit experience.
Or writing the exact characters in the obfuscated image only to be told it’s not what you seen.
I work in web dev and it kills me every time to set up this stupid UX.
Honestly, this biggest problem is these damn pop ups actually work for conversions. If people would stop filling the pop up forms on the sites they would fade to obscurity but for every annoyed dev who closes the pop up asking for an email, there is 10 normies who give up their email or create an account or complete a purchase.
Static email sign up forms in the header or footer of a site are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate in 2024 was 11%.. The highest preforming pop ups in this analysis had a 43% conversion rate, that is INSANE for web conversions. And those stupid gamification spin the wheel pop ups that I personally hate the most, have a 13% conversion.
I don’t know how this happens, but it seems like so many damned websites are broken when it comes time for me to actually use them. This is becoming an almost daily issue. So not only do we have to navigate terrible UI/UX applications, we also have to deal with frequent outages and novel bugs.
Wish I was kidding.
Friday: I had to log into an HR website to update my contact info, my login information didn’t work. The reset password link never sent me an email. Left a message with HR and still haven’t heard back. Later that day: Wanted to redeem some credit card points, button takes me to a 3rd party side, 3rd party site redirects to a message that says “we’re undergoing maintenance at this time please check back later”.
Saturday: Tried to make an online appointment with my primary healthcare provider. The form would not accept my phone number, for some reason, it would not pass validation. Eventually got through, selected a time slot from the list of available spots, went to submit and got a message along the lines of “your provider is not available during this time, please try again.” Later that day: Went to go read the news on one of the sites I have a paid subscription for. It hasn’t asked me to login for awhile, but on Saturday it did. No biggie, tried to sign in, but it kept giving me an error message about not having permission to view the site.
Sunday: Got a recall notice for my car last week. Went in to schedule the fix with the closest dealership. Went through a multi-page webform that took approximately 10 minutes to complete and then hit the submit button. Nothing happened. Clicked it again, thinking maybe it didn’t register. Nothing. Tried once more, nothing. A few minutes later, my phone rang, it was an automated call from the dealership asking me to hold for the next available representative. Moments later, another incoming call from the dealership, I switch over, same automated call asking me to hold. Then it happened again, another incoming call from the dealership. I ended up waiting on hold for quite some time (20ish minutes???) with no response before I finally just ended all the calls because I have shit to do.
Today (Monday): Tried to sign up for some insurance. Selected a bunch of options using the “compare” feature and then clicked the button. Nothing happened, so I waited. After maybe a minute, a pop-up appeared to let me know I was signed out due to inactivity. I tried signing back in, and this time it asked me for a code that it claimed to have texted to my phone number. Still haven’t gotten that text.
I wish I could say this is unusual, but it seems like a near constant now. What is up with this?
It sounds familiar. “Wait let me quickly do this online and we can eat.” Half an hour later: “OK I will finish this after dinner.”
They forgot the last step: delete the promo emails from the company you never signed up for
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
If you give some information to any for profit company you can be sure they will use that information and if you decline the permits they are going to keep asking until you eventually miss click.
For example if you fill shopping basked, but abandon it after filling your information they can contact you once as “a friendly reminder” about the cart and they can keep that information legally for few weeks until they must anomize the data. And if you at some point clicked something where you accept the marketing permits they can keep that information “as long as the company thinks it is reasonable to keep and/or revelant information for their operation.”
Source: Im part of the problem. Atleast for now.
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
Note: there are a lot of services now that will sneakily get your signature/acceptance without you realizing it. The latest one I noticed was at the pharmacy, where you normally sign for your prescription, it now has one or more options that pop up before you sign for your actual medicine, and if you read what you’re signing you see it’s permission to text you special offers and promotions.
ALWAYS READ WHAT YOU ACCEPT, IF YOU DON’T KNOW, DON’T SIGN IT. If you’re worried or pressured, just ask someone. We can’t keep discarding our rights and privacy because we’re worried about people in line behind us or worried how much time you’re going to lose at least SKIMMING the user licence agreement. You can save yourself a lot of junk and hassle if you at least make sure the accept buttons and signature fields are actually for what you want.
I am glad I am using proton. I never give my real email to any website and create an alias for every website. That way, when I ever receive a spam email, I know exactly which company sold my data and I can turn that alias off permanently.
do you use “email+alias@proton” style aliases (afaik how gmail does it) or do you get an entirely new email address?
I use proton pass and it generates an alias with a prefix you give it, which helps to recognize what email it is, so this format: <prefix>.<random-generated-part>@passmail.net
So an example could be [email protected]
- cloudflare decides it doesnt like your user agent or IP or any of a myriad of other factors and denies you access completely, order has been cancelled
What’s literally traumatizing are the scumbag sites that wait a little bit before showing you an email popup.
Like, I’ll be reading something and then BLAM! I’m immediately taken out of my focus and have to, for the 1 billionth time (and counting!), refuse to give them an email address.
Fuck everyone who encourages this bullshit. Fuck everyone who actually gives them emails. It’s likely an extremely low percentage of users, but that’s all that it takes to ruin things for the rest of us.
Scumbag sites like that are actively contributing to lowering everyone’s standards and making us get used to a ‘new normal.’
it’s likely an extremely low percentage of users
its not, its actually a pretty high percentage, the conversion rate of pop up email form to static forms in the footer or header are like night and day. Static email sign up forms are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate for emails pop up with incentive (like a discount code) in 2024 was 7%.
If people stopped filling out the pop up forms they would go away, but people still continue to bite so they live on.
I mean, these “scumbag sites” include everything from the NYT to X, The Everything App.
“New password must differ from your current active password”
26: unsubscribe from the email promos that the site automatically signed you up to even though you didn’t check the Subscribe to newsletter box, which requires you to log into the site and find and uncheck all the boxes in the “contact settings”.
26a: Note that they will simply add more categories over time and helpfully subscribe you to each of the new ones whether you ever visit the site again or not.
Unsubscribe? You mean report spam
Report spam? You mean deactivate single-use email.
Unsubscribe is for real suckers only. When someone clicks that I always imagine some goon elbowing the guy next to him and saying something like, “look Keith we got another” unsubscriber" over here!" With a big goofy grin on his face.
If the email is from a legitimate business, they must have an unsubscribe button and it has to work. They get a little time before they are required to process the request, 10 days in the US, but I’ve usually seen it take effect immediately.
Don’t click the unsubscribe button in an actual spam email.
If you didn’t ASK to receive emails from them, it’s spam and it should be reported as such.
Fuck unsubscribing from things I didn’t subscribe to.
Not sure what you mean about legitimate businesses. I don’t really trust any of them anymore. Those unsubscribe pages are still full of traps and they often don’t keep you off new mailings that they can say you didn’t explicitly unsubscribe from because this is a new newsletter that they thought you might be interested in. If I didn’t opt-in, it’s spam, and I’d like to think that maybe me labeling it as such might contribute to filters picking it up for someone else too.
I also feel like the goon then adds you to more mailing lists
exactly. if i didnt purposefully subscribe to it, its SPAM.
Just make a web browser standard for all of this this. I hate repeating myself.
Missed the step towards the end were you have to switch browser and restart the whole process because “Firefox not supported” or you’ve an extension that’s a bit overzealous on blocking the checkout popup window.
Blocked an ad that fucked up the css so dramatically that the checkout button is now permanently stuck at -10% of viewport.
I tried to order chicken teriyaki so it would be ready for my wife to pick up en route home. Website requires a login. Make it. It doesn’t log in after creating the login, so log in again. Password wrong. Reset password. Finally get in. Get to last step and there’s no button to send the order. Fortunately, I’d wasted so much time that my wife was already there standing in line.
I assume it’s just formatted for mobile, but when I’m sitting at my computer, I’m going to use it, it’s always faster. Except when it doesn’t work.
Call next time?
Blasphemy and heresy.
The times I go in there they’re like “Use the website!” I feel betrayed.
And I wasn’t looking for solutions, just griping.
Ah yes I had to learn this from my wife don’t give a solution just nod along. I gotchya
Ha, I’ve “learned” the same thing from my wife. Definitely still learning, though.
But… I have to talk to a human?
😱
I wasn’t that hungry anyway.
Or the page which doesn’t allow an ad blocker
Website wants to know your location
Yeah that shits annoying. If you have something you need my location for, I will give you my zip code and pick from “nearby” on a map myself.
We have driver’s licence as an app in norway. I was on my way into a pub where I was asked by a bouncer to show ID. I forgot my physical wallet with physical ID, so the dance started:
- Unlock phone.
- Find app.
- App requires national login. Enter personal number (Norwegian SSN)
- National login has 2FA via another app. Open that to confirm.
- National login requires password. My password is in a password manager, so I open that.
- Password manager requires password.
- and 2FA.
- Acquire password and scramble back to the app that required password for national log on.
- Complete login so I can show that I am 33 years old, which is over the required age of 18.
In reality, the bouncer just gave up on me at around step 5 and let me in.
There are just things that should be physical things.
IDs and fucking buttons in cars please. Holy fuck please can we not do the IPAD thing in cars. Please God.
And on cooking stuff!
Long click to select stove element
Phew now it’s on full power…
I have yet to encounter an electric stove that doesn’t loop to full power when you press “-” when it’s at its lowest setting
Mine doesn’t. But it will go straight to full power with ‘power on’ then ‘+’ (rather than ‘power on’ then ‘-’). A single ‘power on’ press doesn’t actually turn the burner on, which I always thought was weird. But the alternative of having to go through power levels sounds worse, so I guess I get it
It is an physic thing, OP just forgot it at home.
Yesterday, I was on the train and the lady checking the tickets at first walked past me without checking mine. After more people had gotten on, she made her route back down the train, when she asked me, if she had checked mine – hmm, she must’ve checked mine – so, she was already about to walk on and out of reflex, I said that she had actually skipped me before.
Felt a bit silly to then get out my ticket and show it to her, since I clearly wouldn’t have told her to ckeck me, if I didn’t have a valid ticket. Kind of same energy as with your bouncer, like you wouldn’t have all this stuff on your phone and spend the time trying to get into it, if it won’t lead to anything.
Either he was being a dick (fairly likely all bounces are) or you have a really good moisturizing regimen because there’s no way that a 33-year-old would look like they’re under 18.
I definitely do not look like an 18-year old. But I was entering with a group consisting of a variety of looks, so it was just a thing to check everyone.
That sounds like a 60 second thing at most. None of it is worse than having to drive back home for your wallet.
In Norway, it has been a long tradition to do as many drinks as possible at home before heading to the bars, due to steep prices in bars. So I was pretty “beautiful” at that point, which does not help with running passwords and 2FAs
So driving back home would have been even more difficult as well (or illegal).
I’m stealing “pretty beautiful” lmao
How people can deal with internet without adblockers like uBlock is just baffling. Not only ads, but also all the cookie banners and phone app popups and other crap. uBlock will filter all this shit out so you just use the website without junk and annoyances.
I’ve used the original Windscribe back when it was still a regular x86 app that acted like a local proxy and would filter out ads and banners. That was early 2000s iirc. Even back then I couldn’t stand all this crap. Today I can’t imagine browsing without uBlock or at minimum with DNS filtering which can’t apply cosmetic filters or more advanced rules.
AdNauseam. It clicks all the adverts. Yes, this is actively malicious behaviour. No, I don’t care.
Malicious against advertisers, beneficial to the site you’re visiting.
That’s a win-win in the desolate place we call the internet today.
Just want to post this here for anyone not aware… uBlock “medium” mode. Kind of an unadvertised feature that has to be enabled in a strangely obscure way (I think they want to make sure you’re not a complete idiot).
Still, pretty easy to set up, and much more protection than the default (but also not nearly as frustrating as “hard” mode or whatever they call it). Basically, most sites you visit are going to be broken the first time you go, but you enable elements you need for the site to load, then save those settings for that domain. Takes about 30 seconds or so once you know what you’re doing and you only need to do it once per domain. Basically, I keep 1st and 3rd-party scripts off completely most of the time. It’s relatively rare that I absolutely need to enable 1st party scripts on a page for it to load.
It’s kind of like uBlock + noscript learning mode. The element zapper is clutch as well, but that’s not unique to medium mode or anything.
DNS level ad blocks have been a huge game changer for me. When I play games at home, no ads. Then when I go out and play those games, I forget that they have ads.
For me setting up Android phone without it. Installed some app and got bombarded by all the ads and shit. Something I just don’t even know on mine.
Windscribe was important because every bit of bandwidth saved mattered. Less so with 2.5gb fiber connections to home.
I actually didn’t care so much about bandwidth back then even though 56K modem was ass. It was the ad banners that drew me nuts. Especially since that was the era of flashing and blinking GIF and Adobe Flash banners. I got 1Mbit ADSL a bit later and that’s when it was even less important since bandwidth was unlimited. Banners were still there tho and were just as annoying.
