sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
Good lord. Talk of the ruination of the web on here today I decided to see what it was like just straight up raw dogging my browsing habits for a little while. No ad blockers, no blocking cookie popups etc.
People actually USE this?!
It's insane to me how people go on about their day without any adblock at all. Ads on your phone, fricking smart TV and on your laptop/PC - it would drive me nuts!
@babe Yeah, I have that same reaction every time I see someone use the web without an ad blocker.
Seems absolutely surreal to me that people can use the web this way and not go absolutely crazy.
@babe Absolutely hideous, isn't it.
Our local newspaper site is very keen to have subscribers, but the experience is just so dreadful that I'm surprised that anyone pays.
In seeking revenue - and, sure, they have to pay their staff, hosting bills etc. - they've made a product which is virtually unusable without an adblocker etc.
@neil Every news site is an absolute mess. Donate! Subscribe! Give us your email! Accept our cookie partners!
@babe you could switch on some old dolt's computer from the early 2000s and even with 17 malware toolbars it would probably be more usable than the average website today
@babe Honestly, I think this is the biggest reason people just stay on Facebook or Insta or Tiktok. Keeps the popups down.
@babe All the time. You end up basically blind to it. Or you end up channeling into the same sites over and over, which will tend to minimize the popups (once they have cookies on your machine, the popups start to relax; if you're always browsing with no cookies stored, they don't know who you are and they frontload all their questions).
@babe
I can't stand watching anything streaming without an ad blocker. The pharmaceutical ads feel like psychic warfare at this point.
@babe shocking ain't it. I'm right now trying to add an extra layer - pihole - on top of using waterfox/librefox/zen browsers, adblockers. Honestly I don't mind odd ads, but one after each sentence that is a bit much.
@babe What amazes me is that for some people this is normal. They've adapted and can actually kinda-sorta use the web when it's like that.
Not me. I'm easily distracted, and so many websites use video style ads. My eyes keep getting drawn away from the text to the video, just because they're distracted by the motion.
Maybe in time I would get used to it. But, at the moment my eyes / brain haven't been toughened up so the "raw dog" web is unusable for me.
Just now I saw an article describing Bluesky as the “billionaire-proof” social platform - you should have seen my eye roll. Sure, “billionaire-proof” (quote marks necessary) AND funded by the crypto bros at Blockchain Capital.
I wonder if the person who came up with the hype of Bluesky decentralization is the same who built up the myth of Space Karen as a genius.
Sure Jan - but you can’t fool me.
Media literacy and digital literacy are more needed than ever. I miss the late Neil Postman 🥲
a well known con artist aspect of #cryptocurrency is that it promises a lot, and delivers little
and people buy into that
then they rabidly defend the empty promises
because they also literally bought into it: they purchased the #crypto, they need a financial return
same is happening with #bluesky "#decentralization." because bluesky promised it, people have to believe it. and if you doubt it, you're being "unfair"
(and i miss professor postman too: he was my thesis advisor at NYU)
@benroyce Ben your last sentence made me GASP. What!?! Neil Postman’s writings (and speeches) have had such a profound influence on how I see the world. I think about him on a daily basis (as in “what would Neil Postman think about THIS?”). I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have had him as a thesis advisor. I’m in awe 🤩
@_elena while
i had to go into his office alone which was intimidating while he gave me pointers. but he was warm and outgoing
however, him and the faculty set up this retreat for the entire Media Ecology dept up to the Hudson Valley with all faculty and students, and i do remember the look of disappointment on his face when the students played a mock "Jeopardy" game with neil in the alex trebek role and i couldn't answer some rather rudimentary Bible Old Testament trivia 😅
Indeed...
"Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems." - Neil Postman
https://mdpaths.com/rrr/books/amusing_ourselves_to_death/index.html
edit: most of my posts are missing. I thought they were there after the move, but maybe it was just browser cache? I'll have to hook up the old drive to my laptop and see if I can resync