This is the state of the modern internet — ultra-profitable platforms outright abdicating any responsibility toward the customer, offering not a “service” or a “portal,” but cramming as many ways to interrupt the user and push them into doing things that make the company money. The greatest lie in tech is that Facebook and Instagram are for “catching up with your friends,” because that’s no longer what they do. These platforms are now pathways for the nebulous concept of “content discovery,” a barely-personalized entertainment network that occasionally drizzles people or things you choose to see on top of sponsored content and groups that a relational database has decided are “good for you.”
↫ Edward Zitron
Corporate social media has gotten so bad, they’re basically unusable. The rare times I open Facebook to like a picture my mother posted or whatever, I’m just gobsmacked by how utterly unusable it has become. I’ve never used Instagram, but whenever I accidentally end up there, I have no idea how to navigate that place. YouTube is more ads than video if you don’t pay for Premium (which I do, because I use YouTube a lot so I get enough value out of it). Twitter is barely worth a mention – it’s no surprise that a social network bought and run by a nazi is now even fuller of nazis than it already was.
It’s not just social networks, either. The web as a whole feels like it’s been looted and plundered, and turned into a flyover state strip mall. Browsing the web is, for me at least, virtually impossible without autoplay blockers, my Pi-Hole, Consent-O-Matic, and settings to permanently block requests for location and notification access. The rise of “AI” has only made everything even worse, especially now that the big, wealthy content networks that, yes, own all your favourite technology news websites are also looking into it.
Luckily, there’s also a countermovement brewing. I’ve focused OSNews’ entire “social” strategy on Mastodon (and the various other ActivityPub tools), as it’s the only social medium that’s usable and enjoyable. With the nazis remaining on Twitter, and all the brands and influencers on Facebook (or Threads or whatever), everyone else interested in technology coalesced around the Fediverse, and it’s been a massive boon for a small website like OSNews trying to steer clear from all the SEO enshittification. There’s no spam, only relatively small, approachable brands, no influencers, no algorithms – just real, ordinary people, who also care about a usable, fair, and equitable web.
I hope that OSNews can eventually be run without any ads at all, but that’s going to take a lot more consistent work from me to convince more and more people to support us through Patreon or Ko-Fi, or for companies to become sponsors. However, I am convinced it’s a better route to take than trying to chase the SEO dragon, because we all know where that leads to.
Thom,
Thank you for the link to Consent-O-Matic! I hadn’t heard of it before and it’s the missing piece to my own annoyance-free browsing setup.
Thom,
Thanks for the heads up on Consent-O-Matic. I’ve been looking for a tool like this ever since those disingenuous consent pages started appearing.
In a more ethical, perfect world, I see OSNews as ad free, and non-AI or whatever it is, encumbered. I do not see sponsorship, or Patreon, being it’s savior. As a fan of the content here, I agree with it’s ideals, but realistically, personally, I cannot afford it, nor a subscruption as I’m now on a fixed income. That being said, I hope a younger crowd can aid in the financial well being of OSNews/ Hopefully, they are like minded as Thom, Eugenia, etc.
Another thanks for the Consent-O-Matic link!
Half of this is the internet, half of this is just bad software. The Linux Desktop is rapidly becoming unusable. Between the GNOME UI changes which are awful, and the lack of maintenance on older GTK2/3 software. A lot of applications are now breaking/falling out of maintenance and the desktop experience is quickly becoming hot garbage.
As for Facebook, I set up a redirect (using LeechBlock) from the Facebook home page to https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr. That, combined with uBlockOrigin, means my Facebook feed is just friends’ posts, with no ads.
I’ve come to the conclusion that new Facebook is better Facebook. I don’t want to see my second cousin’s rant about Tofu. Sometimes its just better to know your friends, family in the old fashioned way by getting together and talking in person. Pictures are better shared via google photos amongst limited groups. Group chats are for distance. Facebook just failed because its too public by default. Now its next door / reddit with a better interface and advertising platform.
Oh ffs, there is no “cloud” and there is no “internet”, it’s someone else’s computer. Your ISP bill pays for access up to the IXP, anything else is someone else’s property or someone else’s lease.
If you don’t have something locally, you don’t own it. It’s the reason some people are again turning to UHD Blu-Rays for stuff they want to own for real (and without random changes in the content, for example ad breaks appearing where they weren’t before).
Nazi? Do you really feel okay towards society calling someone that, knowing what the Nazis did? Are you claiming that the owners of X are murdering people in camps? Because if not, by equating them, you are downplaying the actions of the Nazis.
Marshal Jim Raynor,
Agreed.
As the term is being thrown around willy nilly, it becomes much harder to convey the meaning to newer generations. This might be partially the cause of uptick in holocaust denialism, or romanticized look at fascists leaders, even hitler in some cases.
So. Mastodon is awesome because it attracts a small counter-culture of internet users. Twitter used to be the same in the long ago to be honest.
lunatic fringe -> growing popularity -> normal folks move in -> trash increases -> dumb folks move in -> trash increases
Look at myspace, facebook, twitter, twitch, ebay, or pretty much any community service. The things that make services new and unique die off once everyone uses them.
Why do *YOU* enjoy Mastodon? Probably because boring is low, and counts of people doing neat stuff or being generally interesting is high.
People are boring and suck en-masse.
I think the only thing mastodon (and activitypub in general) has going for it is the concept of social silos. If you can herd the general masses onto their own silos, you then can ignore them and silence their instances.