[HN Gopher] The 'fuck you' pattern
___________________________________________________________________
The 'fuck you' pattern
Author : keepamovin
Score : 394 points
Date : 2023-06-25 11:48 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cedwards.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (cedwards.xyz)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Reddit does this all the time to me. It simply stops responding
| to my requests unless I turn wifi off on my phone.
|
| Though to be fair, this might just be more Reddit incompetence.
| luuurker wrote:
| Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn redirect me to the login page
| without ever showing me the content. I guess they don't like my
| ISP. Since I'm not going to create an account, now I just avoid
| their links when searching for something.
|
| Last year (I think) Twitter started showing a login/registration
| popup as soon we started scrolling. Not as bad, but the popup
| wasn't dismissible (now it is), so for a while I also stopped
| clicking on Twitter links.
|
| Reddit also hides some subs on mobile and requires us to install
| the app... that same sub is available on old.reddit.com (or the
| now discontinued i.reddit.com).
|
| I started using extensions that redirect these services to better
| front ends. Twitter - Nitter, Reddit - Old Reddit or
| Teddit/Libreddit, etc. I do the same on my phone (Android and
| Firefox, I don't think you can do the same on iOS).
| flybrand wrote:
| FB regularly 'fails' when I attempt to log out - I don't use
| the app. Recently it's been extreme using Safari. It's so bad
| it can't be accidental. Why would the ever optimize logging
| out?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Oh that one... I practice it since forever: I don't have FB /
| WhatsApp and I don't have Instagram.
|
| They're simply not part of my life.
| TheAngush wrote:
| I had an experience like this today when I tried to use GlassDoor
| for the first time. As a student making my first ever job
| applications, I wanted to see what salaries and work environments
| were like at particular employers.
|
| GlassDoor did the same scroll-locking tactic (so an element
| zapper like Ublock Origin's wouldn't resolve the issue),
| instructing me to register or sign in to view any information. So
| I registered an account. Only, it still covered the screen and
| locked the scroll position, now telling me that I needed to leave
| a review for my _current_ employer if I wanted to use the website
| for information gathering.
|
| I find this particularly egregious, particularly for a company
| ostensibly founded around the notion of transparency and freedom
| of information (in regards to workplace compensation and
| culture). Evidently one is only entitled to make informed
| decisions after first experiencing the potential consequences of
| making uninformed decisions. Joyous.
|
| Suffice to say I will not be using GlassDoor in the future.
| bovermyer wrote:
| You've experienced why Glassdoor is the opposite of useful.
| Ironically, I think this is actually the opposite of what
| Glassdoor was originally meant to achieve, and I still think
| the original creators had the best of intentions.
|
| I think it's interesting that despite thousands of years of
| existence, we as a species still can't do better at "quickly
| and accurately evaluate how well you'd match an employer/group"
| than "do you know someone at the group that honestly says it's
| good."
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Dev tools, look at the html and body element, and uncheck
| overflow:hidden. Plus a strategic delete or two on the DOM
| tree.
| DelightOne wrote:
| Why can't UBlock Origin do that?
| lyvxh wrote:
| It can, using CSS injection:
| example.com##body:style(overflow: auto !important)
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I dunno. Maybe it can, and I'm just too dumb to configure
| it right?
| xwdv wrote:
| > Suffice to say I will not be using GlassDoor in the future
|
| You'll cave eventually, they know this.
| acover wrote:
| Caving into lying? That just pollutes their database.
| xwdv wrote:
| It's fairly trivial to detect bad data, especially when you
| know what good data looks like. And once you're in, they
| can still get useful data even if you lied.
| recursive wrote:
| How can you be so sure? I've never used it in my life, and I
| don't even have a particular motivation not to.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| This dark pattern is meant to generate useful data
| jowdones wrote:
| Sadly "giving up" on using "their" services is inconvenient to
| you a lot more than it's hurting them.
|
| Sure you can refuse to use Facebook and Glassdoor and Amazon
| and Google account authentication, but then you might as well
| grow a beard, puton some rags and go live in the woods as a
| hermit. World doesn't change coze some guy decides to stop
| talking showers because the water company is an abusing
| asshole.
|
| The correct response is not to flee from them but fuck them
| back. I have a throwaway Google account that I use for this
| purpose. Glassdoor wanted me to register an account? Sure!
| Review my employer? You bet! I worked as a Principal
| Engineering Architect at Google making 1.5 million base plus
| bonus.
|
| There's no requirement to provide the pay stub so I can and
| will dream up something. And I get the feeling that most
| figures I see reported by these sites are just that: delirious.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| > Sure you can refuse to use Facebook and Glassdoor and
| Amazon and Google account authentication, but then you might
| as well grow a beard, puton some rags and go live in the
| woods as a hermit.
|
| This is a bizarrely extreme form of black and white thinking,
| and not one I understand. Most of what we do in life isn't
| about changing the world, it's about managing our experience
| of it.
|
| Few people are deluded enough or so engaged with self-love
| that they think their ideas and behavior are world-changing.
| Yujf wrote:
| You don't have to change the world, but if no one tries to
| change things that are bad, they will not change.
|
| So don't have a defeatist attitude all the time, but once
| in a while try to actually have an impact. We will all be
| much better for it.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| There's a difference between being defeatist and going
| around thinking that your malicious compliance is somehow
| fixing broken things.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| There is power in avoiding services when many people do
| it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| > I needed to leave a review for my _current_ employer
|
| Perhaps you'd like to join as a disgruntled GlassDoor employee?
| wak90 wrote:
| I believe glass door removes negative ratings
| LanceH wrote:
| You have to pay up first, right?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right, but it's not you, but your HR department. Which is
| also exactly the reason it's a bad idea to write anything
| about your _current_ employer.
| actinium226 wrote:
| Try levels.fyi
| godelski wrote:
| I was about to say that levels blocks too but as long as you
| hit the "I've shared my salary" twice they let you through.
| Which I find acceptable since they depend so much on that a
| little friction is okay.
| ProtoAES256 wrote:
| For a circumvention method, I suggest using the following
| script
|
| javascript:var r="html,body{overflow:auto !important;}"; var
| s=document.createElement("style"); s.type="text/css";
| s.appendChild(document.createTextNode(r));
| document.body.appendChild(s); void 0;
|
| I bookmarked the script and click it whenever uBo blocks the
| site popup but not enabling the scroll. It works most of the
| time in my quite long usage.
|
| Though I agree that we have a bigger problem than the scrolling
| on hand.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Glassdoor is comically broken. It didn't even work with Firefox
| for months. You can't log in, sometimes you get stuck in a
| cloudflare authentication loop, random info tabs on company
| pages crash. It's so bad I don't even know if they have people
| working there, like they aren't aware of how non-functioning
| the website is.
|
| It's slightly better on Chrome but some of the above issues
| still persist.
| sshine wrote:
| Your expectation was that this information was free, and you
| got offended when you realised they trade in information and
| you have to pay with giving some back?
|
| This is not a dark pattern any more than giving a company like
| GlassDoor this information is a dark deed.
| brookst wrote:
| The dark pattern is not mentioning this requirement and
| instead position account creation as the only friction to see
| data, and then springing the new requirement after.
|
| Honesty would mean telling the user upfront that the info
| they are looking for will be available after the set up an
| account and leave a review of their current employer.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Beyond not disclosing the requirement up front being a clear
| dark pattern, I'd think this is self-defeating. The only time
| I need Glassdoor is when I'm contemplating changing jobs.
| Leaving a review for my current employer feels extremely
| risky, as the no. 1 type of users of Glassdoor are HR
| departments.
| emmydee wrote:
| The irony => https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
|
| Scroll down, click "See more Jobs"...
|
| 'fuck you' pattern reveals itself :)
| throwawaymobule wrote:
| isn't requiring signup/login like this a gdpr violation? I assume
| they're relying on the account being 'compliant' or thinking
| nobody would see it that way.
| [deleted]
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Really what needs to happen is like a non profit SAAS movement to
| create minimal modern versions of these services that runs at
| minimal cost. Then they can basically be feature compete and like
| run off an endowment. More like roads or highways that just need
| maintenance.
|
| I guess more like signal.
|
| The alternative will always be enshitification.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I only ever look at IG posts that show up in chats as parts of
| conversations and IG appears to have banned my phone from viewing
| their content at all. Fine with me, as there is zero chance I
| will ever create a login on their site anyway, but I tell the
| people in the chats that IG links don't work for non-users, and
| so they share less of the content. I call this the, "Fuck me?
| Fuck _you!_ " pattern.
|
| Nothing quite says "hemorrhaging MAU," like dark patterns to get
| people to login, and "urgent account information" emails to get
| those same logins. Someone should take a hard look at those
| numbers, as I'd suspect they're a bit soft.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| Instagram doesn't even work for me, any link someone sends me
| just goes to a white blanks screen. I refuse to make an account
| so I just tell people to stop sending me those links because it's
| just a waste of time.
| fwlr wrote:
| The IP-level block you experienced after trying to get around the
| login modal is an anti-scraping measure. I doubt it is based on
| anything like "detecting that you've opened web inspector", it's
| much more likely that Instagram is running some heuristic that
| tries to bucket you into either "potential signup" or "scraper
| trying to download as many images as possible", and once your
| behavior pattern fits into the second bucket they apply a (very)
| temporary IP block.
|
| It comes off as extreme and insulting to a regular user, but it
| is also one of the few methods that scrapers can't _trivially_
| dodge (it's fairly easy to maintain a roster of IPs, but that is
| merely _easy_ , while e.g. changing your user agent to pretend to
| be a different browser is _trivial_ ).
| roughly wrote:
| Insta definitely uses IP blocks to force login walls, but I
| don't think it's anti-scraping, because the limit seems to be
| like 3 images before you get redirected to log in - it's way
| too low and too much of a pain in the ass to normal users to be
| intentionally anti-scraping and unintentionally anti-logged-
| out-users.
| fwlr wrote:
| The fact that it pushes anonymous viewers to log in or sign
| up is definitely a positive (for their conversion rate
| metric, if nothing else), and that might be the main reason
| the number of images is so low. But the specific mechanism of
| IP blocking that is used to achieve restriction - _that_ is
| anti-scraping, pure and simple.
| mhuffman wrote:
| ... except, that "pro" scrapers use parallelized calls from
| rolling ip addresses. It is one of the only ways to scrape
| things like Youtube... so I hear!
| penguin_booze wrote:
| It's for this reason that I've burner accounts with burner
| emails.
|
| Recently, I got this treatment from Glassdoor, too. I've had a
| real account with GD, and had made some honest contributions in
| the past. I haven't made any contributions in a while, because I
| haven't had any. Now, what do I see when I go to look up
| something? An indismissable pop up that says "looks like you
| haven't contributed anything in a while. Make a contribution to
| continue browsing".
|
| I didn't really wanted to, but now I'm going to get a burner
| account for GD, too.
| nottorp wrote:
| Won't work; I made an account like 2 days ago and i got the
| "contribute something" popup before i could browse anything.
| kitanata wrote:
| I noticed a particularly dark pattern when I used Keeps, by
| Thirty Madison. They tell you, that you can cancel or pause at
| anytime but that is a lie. They over-prescribe their medication,
| and if you try to pause delivery, they automatically resume it
| after 3 months. You cannot pause, for longer than 3 months. If
| you want to cancel, you have to call them where they harass you
| into staying.
|
| This is not how you should do customer retention. This is fraud.
| You are making intentionally difficult pathways for your
| customers to leave you so that you can report falsely propped up
| retention number to your investors, Thirty Madison. If you IPOd
| today, I would short the shit out of you.
|
| This is why I reported Thirty Madison to the FTC in a consumer
| trade complaint and it is why I notified their investors of
| potential fraud over LinkedIn.
|
| Thirty Madison is committing fraud against their investors, in my
| opinion and you should absolutely stay away from them as a
| consumer.
| wilde wrote:
| This is what chargebacks are for.
| atomicbeanie wrote:
| I don't wish to be too much of a fly in the ointment. I
| understand the darkness of dark patterns. But if we wish to not
| be secretly tracked (which _is_ dark), then isn't the alternative
| to openly ask if I want to exchange knowledge of my identity in
| exchange for the content I seek, so they can target the ads that
| pay for the content aggregation service I am using? The preceding
| question mark is not rhetorical. Maybe I am missing something? In
| the end though, Cat picture or not, the people that provide the
| service need to get paid.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Sure, but with reddit,their pattern is to push you to their
| app.
|
| If they were just trying to wrangle a user into a simple
| adnetwork proposition, _why can't they do that with a webapp_.
|
| It's because they want far more privacy invasive features.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't really mind blocking ads and that sort of stuff. The
| social contract for websites is that they'll send me what they
| want and I'll render it however I want. But if they don't want to
| send me content because I don't have an account, that's fair game
| IMO.
|
| I mean, it is fine to complain, but I get where the company is
| coming from. They don't make any money off those of us who block
| all their stuff. So, why do they want to do business with us?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Because 90% of their userbase doesn't think about this stuff
| and doesn't block anything. Why waste effort trying to rope the
| last few people into your schemes, when they will just find
| some other way around it or get pissed, write blog posts that
| get posted to HN, and abandon your platform otherwise.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I suspect they don't want to serve anyone without an account,
| and just added the preview feature to get new users. So, I
| suspect the zero-effort response would go in the other
| direction; just block everyone without an account completely.
| mkl95 wrote:
| > I wanted to browse some pictures of Ollie anonymously on
| Instagram today, but to my dismay, Instagram would force me to
| login 5 seconds after navigating to Ollie's Instagram page.
| Unless I'm part of an A/B test, you can give this a try and
| should get the same behaviour on desktop.
|
| I don't know if it was ever A/B tested, but AFAIK this feature
| has been enabled for all users (all IPs?) for years.
| bombcar wrote:
| The Pinterest::Google interaction is the most annoying of these;
| it seems impossible to find an image result from Google on the
| page Pinterest shows you.
| wpietri wrote:
| Which is especially funny given that Pinterest's business is
| basically one giant copyright violation. "We'll boost
| everybody's photos, but god forbid anybody take any of our
| stolen content from us!"
| marcod wrote:
| Glad I checked before adding another thread about how much I
| hate pinterest.
|
| Seriously, no honor among thieves! :p
| ranting-moth wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised that Google let Pinterest vandalize their
| image search.
| isametry wrote:
| I've been running uBlacklist [0] for over a year now on all my
| devices for two sole purposes: blocking (1) Pinterest, and (2)
| Quora from my Google results.
|
| [0] https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs
|
| I can report a general positive impact on 98% of my searches.
| In the remaining 2% of cases (where I'm typically looking for
| some hyper-specific image I stumbled upon months or years ago),
| I can temporarily disable the filter with a single click.
|
| Adding domains to the list is also as simple as clicking "Block
| this site" next to a result. In theory, if you diligently block
| lots of crappy websites, you could gather a collection of
| domains that de-crapifies your searches extensively. But for
| me, results from Pinterest and Quora were the biggest gripes by
| far, and this has worked beautifully just for that.
|
| You can even subscribe to blacklists created by others,
| although I haven't explored that option so far. And your lists
| and/or settings can sync across devices with Google Drive.
| Available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
|
| * I'm not affiliated to the project in any way, just promoting
| what's, in my eyes, quite a useful browser extension.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| This is beyond annoying. But this is directly a result of the
| dumbest and the most popular metric - number of users on the
| platform (which is directly fuelel but dumb VC environment)... it
| doesn't matter if you are profitable or not, but if you have lots
| of users then it means you are amazing (and it will give you more
| VC funding)...
| the_arun wrote:
| This is the same pattern Twitter uses today. If you are on a
| tweet anonymously it shows login page after x seconds. Basically,
| they are interested to know "who" is doing "what".
| Given_47 wrote:
| [dead]
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| The reason for this (unjustified IMO) is bot/scraping prevention.
| On most VPNs you cannot browse profiles unless you're logged in.
|
| TikTok has a much more elegant solution to this problem (while
| still being a nightmare for bots/scrapers), with ByteDacne moving
| bot checks to the client with a mixture of proof of work and
| fingerprinting.
| kome wrote:
| if it was bot/scraping prevention you would allow more than 3
| profiles or reloads... that's just to block humans.
|
| probably bots have a way to bypass this.
| syphermil wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the twitter bot that finger prints?
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| This is the truth, and part of why almost all content based
| apps do it now.
| latexr wrote:
| > Instagram would force me to login 5 seconds after navigating to
| Ollie's Instagram page.
|
| That's five more seconds than I ever got. I don't have an
| Instagram account and can never look at any content. If someone
| sends me a link, it _might_ render inside Messages but forget
| about trying to open it on the website.
| Arnavion wrote:
| >I tried to simply remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It
| sort of worked, but I wasn't able to scroll any further on the
| page.
|
| Usually when sites show a modal they also set CSS on the html /
| body element to disable overflow scrolling, so you'd have to find
| and remove that too.
| smolder wrote:
| And many are smart enough to not load the full page content
| hidden behind css these days, too.
| mateuszbuda wrote:
| That's why people use mobile proxies which rotate IPs to scrape
| Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc:
| https://scrapingfish.com/blog/scraping-instagram
| macNchz wrote:
| Reddit's mobile web experience really embraces this-even as a
| logged in user there is a frequent "Use our app!" popup that has
| been made progressively more obnoxious.
|
| Once upon a time there was a preference option to disable the
| popup, though it would periodically become unchecked on its own.
| Then the option to disable it disappeared. Then the popup started
| appearing not just on page load, but after a period of time while
| you're partway down the page reading, instantly jumping your
| scroll position to the top and making you lose your place. The
| ultimate effect has been that I swore to never, ever install
| their stupid app, and I spend way less time there on my phone,
| which is probably a good thing anyway.
| matthewwolfe wrote:
| My favorite part of Reddit mobile on iOS is that when it
| prompts you to view in app, it redirects to the App Store, even
| though I have the app installed! Then when I open the app it
| doesn't preserve the page I was trying to get to. So it doesn't
| even work!
| ativzzz wrote:
| They probably have an internal KPI of increasing the number of
| mobile installs, and these patterns probably work to increase
| that number
| kobalsky wrote:
| instagram is a step above though. sometimes they ask you to
| login to replay a video.
| electrondood wrote:
| Forcing you to download the app for any sub marked NSFW,
| whereas you previously only had to click to confirm your age,
| is bullshit.
|
| I'm well aware that the reason you want me to download your app
| has nothing at all to do with the reason you're claiming, and
| as a user it just pisses me off.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| What is that reason? (someone driving metrics to get a
| promotion?)
| [deleted]
| gavinray wrote:
| Recently on mobile it's stopped giving me the option to even
| view the page anonymously, at least for adult content.
|
| It gives me: "This is mature content and may
| not be appropriate for certain viewers. To continue, use the
| app to confirm you're over 18 and browse anonymously."
| shagie wrote:
| That has the feel of hitting some regulatory issues (e.g.
| Utah's law) and/or having difficulty with porn in the App
| Store and the content rating of the app there.
| duskwuff wrote:
| No, if it isn't NSFW content the message just changes to
| something along the lines of "This content hasn't been
| reviewed and may not be appropriate...". It's an excuse to
| force users to download the app, not an implementation of a
| legal requirement.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Nah, you don't need to confirm anything except indicate you
| want to see NSFW content, just like you used to be able to
| in the website itself. It's just a dark pattern to convert
| porn viewers to the app.
| Anunayj wrote:
| I noticed this too! The reddit webapp on mobile was pretty
| much unusable before and would constantly ask me to download
| the app. Accidentally visited it a few days ago and was
| surprised it didn't happen.
| khazhoux wrote:
| old.reddit.com
| notfed wrote:
| "Just modify part of your URL bar every time you click a
| link to Reddit" falls into "F you".
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/old-
| reddit-re...
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-
| redirec...
| mcpackieh wrote:
| This is even worse. You can't trust either Mozilla or
| Google to vet the extensions they publish for spyware. So
| you have to trust and/or verify that this extension does
| what it says and no more. But worse, you have to
| vigilantly watch the extension for any changes, even if
| you trust the developer today he may sell it to a spyware
| company at any time.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| This is an open source extension, as stated in the
| description on both pages. The repository is linked in
| both, feel free to build it from source and install it
| locally.
|
| You don't even need these extensions, you can set up a
| redirect rule in uBlock Origin (if you trust that).
|
| I sent these extensions to remedy the stated need to
| manually rewrite the URL, I did not say that using these
| extensions is a better solution than Reddit turning off
| the Fuck You pattern.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| To install an extension locally in Firefox you have to be
| using a special build or jump through other hoops. All of
| this goes back to the point; that Reddit is employing the
| "fuck you" pattern when they force you to jump through
| such hoops to use the version of their website that
| actually works.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Its days are numbered, I think...
| wholinator2 wrote:
| If they are then so are my days on reddit. The whole API
| debacle is already pretty rough for them. I can't imagine
| removing old.reddit could possibly be a good decision for
| them now. I have an account but only i choose when to use
| that account. If reddit removes choice, I'll remove
| reddit.
|
| It's really striking though that all of this hate for
| these terrible dark patterns invariably ends in a
| statement like, 'leaving would honestly improve my life'.
| These companies have become so ingrained and good at
| attention economy that most people feel like it makes
| their lives worse, and yet also cannot stop. I have a
| feeling this whole social media ship could go the way of
| the opium wars is we don't change course soon
| rrobukef wrote:
| If you open any post with a lot of comments and you want to
| load more comments you must create an account - no option to
| disable. They really want to smother all mobile but the app.
| fariszr wrote:
| That's why you use libreddit instead of the official Reddit
| site https://github.com/libreddit/libreddit
| radarsat1 wrote:
| It's actually not that bad a name for this if you think about the
| concept of 'fuck you' money, ie. that some people have so much
| money that 'fuck you' they'll do whatever they want.
|
| Similarly Instagram can only get away with this behavior because
| of their level of following as a social media platform. So many
| people use it that people want to use it to follow others, and
| will consequently put up with this bullshit, and consequently to
| they can get away with whatever they want because 'fuck you',
| people will keep coming anyway.
|
| Unfortunate, but not sure what lessons can be taken from it for
| other players in the market, since (fortunately) few other
| platforms are in a position to get away with this kind of thing.
| luma wrote:
| Reddit is now going through this process. Amazon's ecommerce
| platform made the "fuck you" shift a while back.
| syphermil wrote:
| Twitter has a different 'fuck you pattern' when you are trying
| to sign up a new account and they believe you are a spammer.
| They will force you through never ending captchas that are not
| meant to verify you, but annoy you until you give up.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, absent some very serious events, your 'fuck you' money
| will be there independently of what everybody else thinks.
|
| But the 'fuck you' monopolistic behavior will work only up to
| the point where you annoy enough people. It is an extremely
| non-linear thing, and nobody never has any idea of how much
| further you can go, or even how long you can keep it the same.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Search engines have always penalized sites that serve different
| content to users vs. the search engine.
|
| This fuck you pattern feels like a variation of that trick so in
| my opinion it should be heavily penalized.
| mr_sudaca wrote:
| i found a page to browser public IG pages a while ago,
| https://imgsed.com/
| mozman wrote:
| > Did Instagram catch me trying to bypass their login modal?
|
| Most likely. IG has pretty effective fraud detection heuristics
| and you probably appeared as a bot due to UEBA deviation.
| duckmysick wrote:
| For others who are curious: UEBA = User and Entity Behavior
| Analytics
| barefootjoey wrote:
| kinda like when the app authors make it impossible to disable
| app-delivered promotional notifications. So. Much. Spam
| Glyptodon wrote:
| IG is evil. So many small businesses seem to mostly have
| Instagram. And you can't effectively browse without signing up,
| the sign up will decide you're not real and lock your account,
| etc.
|
| They definitely attempt to detect frequent visits and
| circumvention of their walls to do harder blocks after. When they
| decided my account should be locked every visit to a business
| page started 404ing or something similar.
| [deleted]
| mucle6 wrote:
| This pattern would be better if it "just worked". Many times if
| you make an account it drops you off somewhere else.
|
| I made the account to look at a specific piece of content. Show
| me that content!!!
| Luctct wrote:
| I have a bigger beef with other Fuck You patterns.
|
| 1. The increasingly high number of sites that will show a blank
| page when I disable Javascript.
|
| 2. The increasingly high number of sites that will show a blank
| page when I disable cookies even if I have no intention to login
| and often the site doesn't even involve any kind of membership.
|
| 3. Sites that refuse me their content because my browser "is no
| longer supported" but wil gladly open up to me as soon as I tell
| my browser to lie about its brand or version.
|
| 4. Oh, almost forgot! Cloudflare.
| I_am_uncreative wrote:
| What's wrong with Cloudflare?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11404770
| malfist wrote:
| I especially love the websites that tell me I need to be using
| the latest version of Firefox when.... I'm using the latest
| version of Firefox. I'm just on Ubuntu
| gunshai wrote:
| I also despise this pattern, it's the same on yelp. I have
| friends who swear by yelp (I'm not sure why) but every time I get
| sent links by them their desktop website seems to be purposely
| absolute trash and nagging me every 10 seconds to download their
| app and sign in.
|
| I just refuse to deal with that kind of crap. I'm probably not
| the user they want on their platform and that's fine by me.
| omoikane wrote:
| 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27666455
| syphermil wrote:
| It's not just you. Twitter has done this to me, when they assumed
| I was a spammer. Made me verify extremely difficult captchas that
| were intended not to verify me but to annoy me so I would give
| up.
| omoikane wrote:
| Twitter doesn't do this anymore, probably because they don't
| want any popup to interrupt users scrolling through more ads,
| logged in or not.
|
| Instagram and Twitter's login prompt might have been motivated
| by a desire to increase number of logged in users, and Twitter
| might have given up on that in recent months considering the
| increased ad load.
| galoisscobi wrote:
| I don't think this is a dark pattern per se. You don't expect to
| walk into any restaurant and get free food. With meta products,
| you pay for content by being tracked. If you refuse to sign in,
| they refuse to show you content. It's simple.
| EGreg wrote:
| "They refuse to show you content"
|
| It's other people's content and they should make it available
| in places other than Meta.
|
| All these Big Tech platforms should be DEMOTED to hosting
| trailers and teasers that link back to people's sites where
| they host their own videos and community.
|
| Why do you think people don't just do that? Oh because the Big
| Tech companies have the infrastructure and no one stuck around
| long enough to build a good enough open source alternative,
| that's why!
|
| Until now ... https://qbix.com/communities
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > you pay for content by being tracked
|
| No, the user doesn't know the price and isn't ever informed in
| clear terms about the consequences of using the site. Going
| with your analogy it's not payment, it's theft. We all know why
| Meta and others bury all the details in legalese somewhere in
| their terms of service - they know most users don't know how
| comprehensive and invasive the tracking is, and hope it stays
| that way.
| squirtlebonflow wrote:
| [dead]
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| > If you refuse to sign in, they refuse to show you content.
|
| Ah, but this is not what is happening. They do show content!
| It's just that basically any interaction whatsoever with this
| content immediately triggers the login prompt.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| >you pay for content by being tracked
|
| Meta likes tracking you even outside their own walled jail-
| platforms, too.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/17/facebook_admits_to_tr...
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| I'd say its more like an art gallery where other people provide
| the content, but fuck you if you aren't gonna give your privacy
| up
| galoisscobi wrote:
| That has been Meta's play for a long time. It's why I don't
| use meta products and encourage others to do the same.
| sledgehammers wrote:
| Except in a restaurant, the chef gets paid. In this platform,
| value is extracted from the chef, the waiter, the eater, the
| eaten, and their interaction, while tearing down societies. Not
| a fair comparison.
| EGreg wrote:
| Welcome to shareholder capitalism, extracting rents from all
| sides of the market perpetually to enrich shareholders. This
| is why utility tokens were such a big game changer for me.
|
| Remember Zuck was an open source bro who turned down M$ for
| $1M and ended up open sourcing Synapse. He built Wirehog, as
| a decentralized file sharing network.
|
| I was attending TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 in NYC and personally
| heard Sean Parker speak proudly about how they "put a bullet
| in that thing" -- because it threatened corporate profits and
| rent extraction.
|
| Sean Parker learned not to mess with corporate profits, when
| his company Napster got sued into oblivion by the other "lock
| up the IP monopoly" industries -- music and movies. MPAA and
| RIAA. So he started Plaxo and learned to be VC.
|
| Then he brought Peter Thiel, the guy who seriously advocates
| "competition is for losers, build a monopoly". He gave Mark a
| lot of good advice and the VC industry turned him from an
| open source bro into a corporate golden boy who buys up the
| competition, the founders of which leave in disgust after
| their golden handcuffs are off (WhatApp, Oculus, and yes
| Instagram).
|
| This isn't an isolated story. Elon owns Twitter. Bezos owns
| Amazon. The nicer guys like Ohanian and Jack got out, after
| selling, though. And they all want decentralization now.
|
| Moxie left WhatsApp and started an end-to-end encrypted
| messenger (Signal).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Do you have a 401k or do any kind of index fund investing?
| You almost certainly own some Meta shares. Congrats, you're
| a shareholder.
| EGreg wrote:
| Nope. I don't.
|
| Also, hate the game, not the player. Bernie paying 100%
| taxes isn't going to solve anything. Neither is a few
| people going vegan going to solve what happens on factory
| farms. We need an actual alternative that is good enough
| so people will switch. What the Impossible Burger is
| doing for meat eating, https://qbix.com can do for Big
| Tech exodus.
|
| It happened 25 years ago, when the World Wide Web
| appeared, content creators very quickly left AOL,
| Compuserve and all those other walled gardens. In fact,
| FB, Google and Amazon could only come to exist because
| the Web was permissionless and didn't extract rents! We
| need that again.
| syphermil wrote:
| It's not just you or an A/B test. This has happened to me before
| with twitter.
| bubblethink wrote:
| Most of the internet has "No Trespassing" signs. At least that's
| how I view it. If a site throws up a banner/popup, we respect
| their wishes and leave.
| lbrito wrote:
| There is a very simple solution here.
|
| Say fuck _you_ back. Don 't use Instagram and other loginwalled
| software.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Removed Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp from my life some years
| ago, and then promptly blocked them all from my local LAN (also
| dns sinkhole them on my Android device).
|
| Couldn't be happier with my decision.
| paddw wrote:
| I think what makes this a "fuck you" pattern is the fact that you
| are given a "teaser" of the content before being forced to log
| in.
|
| Like, if IG forced you to login to see anything, you might
| dislike that, but it wouldn't feel manipulative.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I feel like almost every app does this. Pinterest, quora,
| reddit, Twitter. They've all had "features" like this.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I thought this was going to be the "fuck you" software design
| pattern, where employees attempt to cement their job security by
| making the codebase extremely hard to learn or comprehend.
| quattrofan wrote:
| [dead]
| janandonly wrote:
| I feel the same burning hate like a thousand suns for FB/Meta,
| Google/YT and other platforms that monetize their users.
|
| But, let's be frank here: They monetize you and me, us, the users
| because 1 they can and, 2, they have to.
|
| Yes, they have to.
|
| Imagine they provided access to their platforms for free. How
| would the shareholders (your retirement funds included) respond
| when less profit was made?
|
| You see, we view them as public utilities, as a shared park or
| public garden or nice riverside picnic area, but they are not
| anything like that at all. They are companies that have a
| responsibility to the paying user, that is to the advertisers who
| want to track you as a viewer, to know if/how much their ads
| work.
|
| The closest thing to a "public utility" on the internet to this
| day is email, good old SMTP/IMAP email. It's open, everybody
| who's not yet on Hotmail's or Gmail's spam-list can use it, and
| you can even develop an app for it yourself if you so wish.
|
| The closest thing to a social open protocol is: the fedi-verse on
| Mastodon or the relay-based Nostr system. You don't want to be
| the product of a mega corp? Try these open platforms instead...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > But, let's be frank here: They monetize you and me, us, the
| users because 1 they can and, 2, they have to.
|
| Don't let them. No FB. No WhatsApp. No Instagram. I take entire
| IP blocks assigned to Meta and traffic to/from these IPs is
| simply dropped. I take their domains and nullroute them too,
| because I can.
|
| Once you do that, you become harder to monetize.
| wpietri wrote:
| > Yes, they have to.
|
| Nope. They chose to.
|
| Do some incentives encourage them in this direction? Sure.
| That's different than them "having to". Actual people are doing
| this, and they actually made choices toward maximum
| exploitation of human weakness. They are morally responsible
| for those choices.
|
| I agree that people should leave those platforms and move to
| open solutions. That would be some good choice-making. But that
| possibility doesn't diminish the responsibility of the
| monetizers for their choices.
| qwerasdf5 wrote:
| As I understand it, they have to. Google 'Fiduciary Duty'.
| p0pcult wrote:
| [dead]
| duxup wrote:
| And generally users of the web want things to be free / don't
| want to pay directly for these utilities.
|
| I feel like we as internet users are a big part of the math
| here.
| mindslight wrote:
| I'm happy paying for a few personal cloud servers, more than
| I need perhaps. I'm happy paying for a solid Internet
| connection, electricity, computers, hard drives, UPSs, etc.
| I'm happy for paying for VOIP PSTN connectivity, mobile
| connectivity, etc.
|
| With very few exceptions (mostly arising out of expedience),
| _I do not pay for software_. I honestly do wish the dynamics
| of the software ecosystem were different, so that there would
| be any software worth paying for. But the harsh reality is
| that there is a stark divide between software that represents
| my interests aka Libre software, and proprietary software for
| which it 's only a matter of time of _when_ it will betray my
| interests, if it isn 't already doing so out of the gate. And
| if I'm using software that is set up to betray me, such that
| I have to sandbox it to mitigate it (isolated VMs etc), then
| why the hell should I also be paying for the privilege of
| that hostile relationship?
|
| This is the underlying divide that the user surveillance
| industry attempts to arbitrage. Startups offer what appears
| to be convenient software that mostly represents users, but
| then once users become dependent on it, cranks up the abuse
| and extraction. Instead of the shareware nag screen, it's a
| nag dopamine drip of habituated dependency.
|
| One of the things that really needs to happen is anti-trust
| enforcement to stop this bundling of hosted services with
| software. Any company offering a service should be required
| to make that service available in a programmatic way to every
| authorized user, such that users can always use "third party"
| clients. This would drastically curtail the current bait and
| switch dynamic.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Most of the time in the current era you're not paying for
| software. You're paying for software as a service. You're
| paying someone to take on the operational aspects of
| running a service because to you the value is in using the
| software, not in operating it. It's all opportunity cost.
| mindslight wrote:
| Sure, reframing the terminology further onto the paradigm
| of centralization doesn't change what I said. I don't pay
| for software, nor services aimed at replacing what can be
| self-representing software.
|
| Speaking of opportunity costs - yes, you do pay an
| opportunity cost to find, set up, and learn software that
| represents your interests. But then down the line, you
| continually _save_ on opportunity costs from hostile
| software not continually having you over a barrel.
| Because while you 're correct that the value comes from
| using the software, outsourcing the operation of it is a
| trap that will continually try to capture more and more
| of the surplus value you'd otherwise gain from using it.
| [deleted]
| dasyatidprime wrote:
| Do you currently pay for much or any of the libre software
| you use? Of course many published libre software packages
| have no workable monetization scheme attached, but many of
| them have a facility for donations, and then there are
| major foundations and aggregators (of which I regrettably
| do not have a good list compiled at the moment).
| des1nderlase wrote:
| So you said it yourself, it's not really a 100% utility as
| "someone" decides what is a spam and what's not. Try running an
| email service yourself. Being open protocol still gives
| leverage to someone to decide who can and cannot use the
| service, and who can monetize ads.
| jclulow wrote:
| What _does_ count as a utility, then? I expect anything that
| is considered (or even legally classified) as a utility is
| going to have rules and "someone" to decide who to kick out;
| e.g., the electrical grid, or the water supply, or the
| telephone system, or council rubbish collection, etc.
| deely3 wrote:
| Just to add: these arguments are good and valid until company
| become monopoly. And until company start to actively shutdown,
| integrate, prevent any other company from becoming competitor.
|
| Imagine shared park or public garden owners that buys all other
| shared parks in country and actively prevent creation of new
| public parks. And then started to put loud and bright
| advertisement boards on every tree, near every gil and on every
| picnic place. And punish you for wearing headphones.
| slg wrote:
| >How would the shareholders (your retirement funds included)
| respond when less profit was made?
|
| At a certain point, who cares? A company can exist indefinitely
| with any level of long term profit. They don't need to
| constantly be maximizing profit in the short term which is
| where these "fuck you" patterns generally arise. We have
| designed a system that has convinced everyone to never be
| satisfied or say they have enough. But there is no reason why
| that needs to be the case. Companies don't need to grow every
| quarter forever. It is both impossible and ends up degrading
| the lives of both employees and customers.
| [deleted]
| Andrex wrote:
| Exactly. You think Nintendo prioritizes quarterly growth at
| the expense of everything else? No.
|
| Companies are not mindless money machines, they're run by
| people who make decisions. I feel like post-80s Americans
| totally lost the concept that a company can exist for more
| than five years and without constantly chasing a buyout or
| merger for an easy exit.
|
| We need more founders to start companies with the intention
| of keeping them going 10, 20, 30+ years. Just my two cents.
| lamontcg wrote:
| A nonprofit that wasn't a publicly traded company would a
| viable alternative model. It wouldn't need to have the same
| insane up-and-to-the-right incentives and drive to toxic
| monetization.
| mdale wrote:
| Wikipedia "donate now" campaigns can get pretty front and
| center. Maybe not quite the same level; but non profits
| also have a tendency to push hard on donations.
| slg wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a nonprofit. There is nothing wrong
| with turning a profit. The problem is when the company's
| only goal is ever-increasing profit and they are willing to
| sacrifice the wellbeing of their employees, customers, and
| community to achieve it.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| In the context you are using it, "profit" has a very
| specific meaning that's a little incongruent with what
| you're trying to say.
|
| In that context, "profit" is the idea that earnings above
| cost are distributed to shareholders. The stock market
| mechanism then guarantees that companies unconcerned with
| that sort of profit will see someone gobble up the shares
| once they dip low enough (and they will), install a new
| board of directors, and dismantle the company for parts
| or some other endeavor-ending inevitability.
|
| From a stock price perspective, it will just be too
| tempting.
|
| Nonprofits are disallowed from distributing earnings
| above cost or any other profit mechanism. While they
| might have their own set of pathologies, they're immune
| to the one I've described, to the best of my
| understanding.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Isn't it possible to maintain ownership among founders
| and initial investors and maintain a minority share
| (<50%) of public stock? Although there's nothing wrong
| with staying entirely private either.
|
| It seems almost impossible to run a public company
| without having the place be taken over by bean counters
| these days.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I believe that it is possible for that to happen, and I'm
| too ignorant to say whether it is common, or what
| circumstances might prompt it.
|
| There are probably quite a few ways such a company would
| be vulnerable to takeover.
| slg wrote:
| > The stock market mechanism then guarantees that
| companies unconcerned with that sort of profit will see
| someone gobble up the shares once they dip low enough
| (and they will), install a new board of directors, and
| dismantle the company for parts or some other endeavor-
| ending inevitability.
|
| There are all sorts of ways to defend against a hostile
| takeover like this. I already mentioned Zuckerberg having
| majority control of the voting shares despite the company
| being public. There was also the attempted takeover of
| Netflix a decade ago that was prevented with a poison
| pill to issue more shares.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Which every for-profit company seems to wind up doing
| these days.
| OJFord wrote:
| Every for-profit _public_ company. And so they should
| /have to.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Why should they? Why does there need to be a dichotomy
| between doing something good and living in poverty, or
| else do everything possible to squeeze out the next
| short-term dollar. It strikes me as a profound failure of
| imagination to think there's no possible way to structure
| our economy where more companies could pursue profit in
| balance with other goals that can not directly be
| translated into next quarter's P&L statement.
| OJFord wrote:
| Hence the '/have to', I'm not saying they philosophically
| or morally 'should' - I'm not commenting on that at all -
| I'm saying they have a duty to 'maximise shareholder
| value', a legal obligation to owners to (aim to) make as
| much money for them as possible, basically.
|
| A _privately_ owned company can do as it (that is: its
| owner(s) without state oversight) wishes.
|
| --
|
| If you want me to comment on the philosophy or morals of
| it though, I suppose I think 'meh, whatever' - a private
| company is free to spring up and compete, free of public
| shareholders and free to maximise customer satisfaction
| instead. Of course it's easy to say 'free to spring up',
| and really there are all sorts of barriers to entry in
| many almost monopolistic markets, but that's rather a
| separate issue I think - it's just as much an issue for
| any less customer-oriented, perhaps public or wannabe
| public, company trying to compete.
| slg wrote:
| No, it doesn't have to be every public company either.
| Meta might be a for-profit public company, but Zuckerberg
| still has the majority of voting shares. If he wanted to
| get rid of the annoying IG "feature" that this blog
| describes, no one could stop him. He could prioritize the
| long term health of the company over their quarterly
| results. He is the one that is ultimately making the
| decision, not the public shareholders.
| danaris wrote:
| They do _not_ have to, regardless of whether it 's what
| the shareholders would _prefer_.
|
| They only have to do what the shareholders demand if the
| shareholders actually vote to make them.
|
| The meme of the "fiduciary duty" meaning that profit must
| be maximized at all costs has been debunked so many times
| by now it's really not funny.
| OJFord wrote:
| In what sense is it 'debunked'? I'm not aware of a meme
| nor trying to be funny.
| danaris wrote:
| The idea that execs of public companies have a legal
| requirement to maximize profit for shareholders, which is
| false and based on some misunderstandings of _actual_
| requirements, has been frequently stated (at least by
| commenters and pundits) as justification for companies
| taking awful and inhumane actions. ( "Frequently
| repeated" makes it a meme; the word doesn't just mean
| image macros.)
|
| The "fiduciary duty" rule that _actually_ exists simply
| means (as I understand it) that execs can 't legally
| enrich themselves at the company's expense beyond their
| agreed-upon compensation, without the approval of
| shareholders/the board.
|
| So no; "every for-profit company" _should not_ and _does
| not have to_ take steps to maximize profit at the expense
| of their employees, their customers, and the public at
| large. Frankly, many of the ways they currently do this
| either _are already_ or _should be_ illegal, and are
| definitely immoral and detrimental to a healthy and
| functioning society and economy.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Which is every for-profit company once MBAs take it over
| and want to cash out in an IPO.
| Tanoc wrote:
| This is relatively new behaviour that only showed up
| around fifteen years ago, during the crash. Before then
| publicly traded companies such as DuPont or IBM would
| settle for a very gradual increase if it meant they had a
| stable market and dependable revenue stream. Especially
| if they had majority control of that market, since they
| could already squeeze customers for whatever amount they
| wanted, as Bell and Microsoft did. It was the smaller
| volatile companies like Keurig that disregarded five and
| ten year market projections and went for massive market
| expansion and quarterly or yearly profit increases
| because they were competing against giants in their
| respective or adjacent industries and needed to grow big
| enough fast enough not to be squashed. Between 2000 and
| 2008 the DOW and NASDAQ indexes stayed around the same
| level, then they cratered in 2008, and by 2011 they just
| started going up and up and up like they had back between
| 1982 and 1989. Except so far we're twelve years in and it
| hasn't slowed down, unlike the slowdown that started in
| 1987.
|
| Companies changed up the way they did things starting in
| 2008 in order to survive, but sticking to that short term
| panic survival tactic is coming to a head. They've done
| almost everything possible in order to ensure growth, but
| the public just can't handle it and things are starting
| to collapse under the weight of near maximum
| monetization.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > Yes, they have to.
|
| you say that like we don't all know it already. _Most_ readers
| of this site likely work at these places.
|
| No kidding they have to do this, if they exist. Their existence
| is the problem, whatever the cause.
| amelius wrote:
| We just have to take their stupid ad-based monetization scheme
| away, so we can just pay for what we use like in the good old
| times.
|
| We can start with a law that applies to all social media
| systems that have more than 1M users.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| They can monetize by presenting ads, and they can identify you
| with cookies when you don't log in (or later when you do). They
| don't need to restrict their content to monetize. It's more
| likely that they are restricting their content to prevent
| scraping and/or indexing.
| henriquez wrote:
| It's definitely to prevent scraping. Used to be you could
| scrape and hydrate any profile or hashtag. It was sort of a
| cat and mouse thing a couple years ago and now the Instagram
| website is locked down tight.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Yep, and Reddit in particular is the culmination of over a
| billion dollars' worth of VC funding. The changes we're seeing
| are unsurprising when you take that into account--even though
| Reddit has never been profitable, those investors are still
| expecting their return, which forces Reddit to either start
| bringing in serious revenue or have a promising IPO (or both).
| None of this has ever been _for_ users; we 're merely a driver
| of growth/profit to them.
|
| Investor-backed platforms offer the illusion of "free public
| utility," but they were never meant to serve us in the first
| place. Their goal has always been to cash out.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > even though Reddit has never been profitable
|
| they sure had a good trajectory before huffman fucked that up
| and bought moonshot projects and hired 2,000 employees and
| did everything possible to mess up that trajectory so they
| could pump and dump for an ipo.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The alternative is OSI or Xanadu with microtransactions for
| everything and every action tied to an identity.
| sroussey wrote:
| > we view them as public utilities
|
| Maybe that is side effect of age. I certainly do not see
| YouTube that way. Maybe growing up with it is different.
|
| And when they started it seemed like a fools errand--copyright
| issues, giant costs (OMG, so much money down the drain), no
| real way to monetize at all at the time.
|
| In other words: giant heap of risk. I had a friend that was a
| competitor to them (but was more on top of copyright issues,
| thus their downfall). This was not for the faint of heart, and
| the exact opposite of a public utility.
| baxtr wrote:
| And at the same time many people don't want to pay for
| software.
|
| Either you pay or you are the product.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| We've seen too many times how bogus this saying is. You can
| pay top dollar for a high-end TV, and it'll still spy on you
| and show you ads in the menus [1].
|
| You either _control the software_ , or you are the product.
| No amount of Danegeld will buy you freedom.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/3/10/22323790/lg-oled-
| tv-...
| guestbest wrote:
| It's a Trojan Horse pattern, really. They give away the service
| for free membership with billions of VC until their competitors
| collapse or fade away, then they start becoming more aggressive
| with ads and/or charging for premium access which used to be
| free.
| jitix wrote:
| This is not new, Gillette used to give out free razors to get
| people used to their ecosystem and get recurring revenue.
|
| It's just more "in your face" now.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Well, I think Gillette's purpose was also very much in your
| face.
| benjaminbachman wrote:
| But there's no network effects with razors.
| jitix wrote:
| Exactly! This is a strategy that works even for markets
| without network effects. It just gets even more amplified
| (and profitable) when network effects exist.
|
| In todays terms the equivalent would be an invite to a
| closed Gillette page/group/discord that has exclusive
| videos from the latest influencers (or whatever teenagers
| like and talk about).
|
| For example OOP could get their daily cat based dopamine
| fix from a myriad of online sources, most open or easily
| bypassed but they want to see this one particular cat
| which is behind Meta's wall and requires additional
| payment (in terms of data) from them.
| silisili wrote:
| Did they stop? It used to be every guy got a razor for
| their 18th birthday, which was creepy as nobody even signed
| up for it(unsure about women?). Myself and all my
| classmates got one.
|
| I tried Googling this, and the last article I found was
| from 2019...
| LanceH wrote:
| Veering off topic, I started using safety razors for just
| as good a shave, for 10cents a blade. At ten cents each, I
| use a new blade every shave and it's so much nicer than a
| 2nd use top-of-the-line gillette.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Loss Leader is not the same economically as Dumping.
| Gillette is the former, VC-backed companies are the latter.
| Loss Leader tactics are sustainable in a competitive
| market, but Dumping is profit negative until someone
| (hopefully your competition) goes out of business.
| DMell wrote:
| I noticed this same thing recently with Arcoss golf sensors
| which are now essentially free everywhere.
| w_for_wumbo wrote:
| I think Nestle wins the most egregious example; where they
| gave free baby formula in developing countries for just
| long enough for the mothers to stop producing milk and then
| started charging them for the right to feed their babies.
| wak90 wrote:
| While telling the mothers it was healthier for the baby
| to use formula
| jitix wrote:
| Great point, in the 90s people used to spend a fortune
| (relatively speaking) on taking, sharing and discovering
| pictures, consuming media and getting their news.
|
| Now everyone wants everything for free, but won't give anything
| in return. And they also want market returns on their stocks,
| 401ks, etc at the same time.
|
| That being said, Meta/Google could implement a guaranteed
| privacy-first, ad-free option for something like $10-20 a month
| to give people the option to be a "customer" instead of
| "product".
|
| And as you said there is the whole mastodon/pixelfed/lemmy
| network that people could use, although many mastodon instances
| seem to be running into financial problems lately.
| iamleppert wrote:
| If giving people the choice of an ad-free premium
| subscription was more profitable, they would do it. The issue
| with doing that is the users who pay are also the most
| desirable audience for advertisers.
|
| A premium model also eventually creates two separate
| products. The free product is (at first) built for the needs
| of the users to attract them and get enough volume to support
| an advertisement model. Then, it is gradually built and
| focused toward the needs of the advertisers. That gradually
| shifts over time once the company has captured the market on
| both sides (this is a two-sided marketplace after all) to
| optimizing for the needs of the company. It's harder to
| achieve this final end goal if you have a product that is
| optimized for the needs of the user, because you don't have a
| two-sided marketplace anymore that can be exploited on both
| sides. Collecting money from businesses (advertisers) in bulk
| and providing them support can be easier and less costly than
| managing millions of premium users and supporting them.
| jitix wrote:
| I understand how the market works and how the Gompertz
| curve looks for new product lifecycles. I have a
| (professionally useless) masters degree in that.
|
| My question is, what's your solution?
|
| The shareholders/stock market (largely represented by the
| board) will replace any CEO who doesn't employ patterns
| (dark, fu, whatever) to maximize revenue. And private
| companies can't raise capital easily nor can they give
| Options/RSUs to employees.
|
| We are in the current state due to market equilibrium
| driven by people's willingness to pay, and since I
| personally don't like meta or Zuck I use Reddit on Brave +
| Mastodon + Dev.to for my social media dopamine hits. OOP
| could do the same.
|
| I don't know how old you are but growing up in the 90s I
| certainly remember (parents) paying for many of these
| things we now take for granted. The net negative result is
| that independent journalism is dead.
| pnt12 wrote:
| Won't someone think of the shareholders?
|
| This denial of responsability is a cancer on society. Poor
| devs, they can do no better because their manager ordered them
| to. Poor managers, they can do no better because they must
| reach their OKRs. Poor CxOs, they can do no better because they
| must please the board. Poor board, who must maximize the
| returns of the shareholders. Poor shareholders, who just want
| their retirement funds.
| epylar wrote:
| The next step in the chain: why do shareholders need
| retirement funds?
| akudha wrote:
| We can keep debating this all day long, nothing is going to
| change. The best thing to do is stop using these services.
|
| Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok... We can easily live
| without them. Our lives might actually be better without
| them. Why are we spending time debating the ethics of these
| services? It is like fast food - just avoid.
|
| When entities like banks, hospitals, insurance companies etc
| do shady shit, _THAT_ is a problem. Those are necessary
| services, social media is not
| thethimble wrote:
| The idea that everyone involved in the economic system of app
| development simply lacks moral character is a pretty weak
| take. Most apps/companies exist within a capitalistic
| framework. They likely wouldn't exist without early external
| capital providing upfront funding for R&D.
|
| In your mind, who should bear the cost of building and
| maintaining large services like Instagram?
| dgreensp wrote:
| Yup!!
|
| When I criticize Google, or some other company, I am not
| forgetting that they are motivated by making money.
| AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote:
| I'm really hating the signin with google on nearly every website.
| I don't want you to know who I am, I might never even return to
| the site. Stop asking me to login so you can data mine me.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| Turn it off at
| https://myaccount.google.com/connections/settings
| wpietri wrote:
| You have made my life so much better. Thank you.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Except now you have to be logged in to a google account in
| order for that setting to work...
| drivebycomment wrote:
| The automatic "sign in with Google" prompt only shows up if
| you're already signed-in. So if you're not signed-in, it
| doesn't (and can't) display - because there's no logged-in
| session, there's no existing user.
|
| In case you're misunderstanding what we're discussing here
| - the feature in question is https://developers.google.com/
| identity/gsi/web/guides/offeri... .
|
| If you use extensions like Privacy Badger or other
| ads/tracking blocking extensions, it blocks that by default
| so you may not have seen this on the web, though if you use
| certain apps on mobile, you may still have seen it.
| AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote:
| Wow how did you find this? Thank you so much!
| sneak wrote:
| Delete your IG account and block all facebook/meta domains in DNS
| and at your router to solve this problem permanently.
| more_corn wrote:
| This is an important insight. What is the correct response when
| someone says "fuck you"? The answer is obvious. "No, you"
|
| The correct thing to do is to acknowledge the relationship they
| have expressed by their distain for you. That relationship is
| adversarial, other. It's "you're nothing to me" if you're nothing
| to them they probably oughta be nothing to you.
|
| For me "fuck you" patterns are a signal you should have no
| relationship with that company.
|
| As are: nag forever patterns and hard nudges (a hard nudge is a
| shove, I don't like being shoved -- google maps uses a hard nudge
| to force login so they can bypass US data privacy rules. Thanks,
| but no thanks)
|
| Delete your account, add to your pihole block list and use
| wireguard to teleport your mobile home so you benefit from that
| while out and about.
|
| You'll be surprised at how liberating it feels to be able to
| forever sever ties with products that express "fuck you"
| patterns.
| fma wrote:
| AFAIK Instagram was always like this? Whenever I get stopped I
| just hit the back button and thank for them saving me time.
| TikTok does it right - it annoys you with a pop up to login/open
| in app...you can dismiss it and watch the video. I believe if you
| want to do more than that it'll annoy you again - but I usually
| go back to what I was doing before (responding to someone who
| sent me that...)
| cevn wrote:
| I had something similar today with Microsoft. Just to use their
| OS, MS tried to force me to log into an account. After signing
| out and back in, I was able to bypass the prompt.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| If it was possible to bypass then someone would write a
| bookmarklet, browser extension, etc. that bypassed it.
| vbo wrote:
| My fuck-you-right-back response is I don't sign up and give up
| using the app. I had an instagram account and deleted it years
| ago. I don't want a new one. Sadly instagram is sign up only, so
| good luck to them and good bye.
| faangsticle wrote:
| [flagged]
| sira04 wrote:
| I make burner accounts on these platforms for this use case.
| No profile image, random character usernames. works fine.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > So you either have to ignore your friends, bore them with
| your morals or just give in anyway.
|
| Is it really so hard to just say "Gah, sorry, I don't have an
| IG account"?
| albert_e wrote:
| Like the archive.ph bypass for soft paywalls on news articles
| ...
|
| Isn't there a website that simple records a GIF of the said
| tiktok/ IG reel and lets you share that instead?
| sheepishly wrote:
| Don't know about Tiktok, but this site seems to work for IG
| to some degree:
|
| https://www.picuki.com/
|
| Don't know exactly how much it captures, but you can toss
| the page it gives you into archive.ph at least.
| mnsc wrote:
| Yup I have a friend that sends link to shorts(?) videos on ig
| and I usually open them in a private tab and accept only
| necessary cookies. The annoying part is that I only get to
| watch it once, if I miss something and want to watch it again
| I need to create an account... Nope! And it's usually just
| rehashed tiktok videos so I go there and search for it
| instead.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I think it was Carl Newport who wrote that you should only use
| social media for your intended purposes and that you should use
| what technology (I think he said tool) is most effective for
| your particular needs.
|
| The above is obviously my words and not from a direct quote,
| but I am using that strategy - for me Facebook is great for
| finding things that happens around here and so I visit it for a
| few minutes a couple times a week. Sadly most of my friends are
| on messenger, so I have that installed on my phone.
|
| I haven't seen a need for Instagram, so I don't use it. I used
| to use it as a strictly photo posting place, but I stopped that
| hobby.
| nocoiner wrote:
| Yup, this is how I respond too. While occasionally it leads to
| missing content I used to enjoy (miss u, /r/dogelore), for the
| most part I wind up never noticing the absence and having more
| time in my day. Win win!
| einpoklum wrote:
| Take that as a hint, and stop going on Instagram. And Facebook if
| you can manage it.
| totallywrong wrote:
| It's most annoying when businesses make IG their actual website,
| or restaurants have their menus there, etc. I've never been on IG
| and can't access the content, so they don't get my business.
| voytec wrote:
| From my experience people making decisions on setting up these
| websites have no clue that such services are walled gardens.
| They saw an opportunity for free hosting with easy to use
| WYSIWYG editor and it looked like a no-brainer.
| guestbest wrote:
| Not only that, they get likes comments and free protection
| from spam which is easy to moderate from their standpoint.
| nunez wrote:
| at least they are all on google/apple maps
|
| you'll lose out on special events and deals, but that's
| probably an okay compromise.
|
| though there are some special cases where their hours on social
| media are more accurate than maps...
| tough wrote:
| You can still go to the restaurant to eat presumably they'll
| have some paper menus in there, or QR's or whatever
| luma wrote:
| Or I can go to any of a hundred different places that don't
| lock their info behind Zuck's paywall.
| faangsticle wrote:
| Sure, you could also just go to a supermarket. If you don't
| know what to expect, why risk it?
| [deleted]
| mr_mitm wrote:
| It's not that big of a risk to be honest. People did it all
| the time before the internet. Some people are not
| pathologically risk adverse and might even enjoy being
| surprised.
| mhb wrote:
| risk averse
| bee_rider wrote:
| It was how restaurants worked for a long time. Of course,
| if you prefer the predictability of seeing the menu before
| you get there, that's your preference, fair enough. But I
| wonder if you might miss out on some places run by cooks
| who put all their talent into cooking, and none into
| technology. Could be some good stuff...
| aaomidi wrote:
| Talent isn't a zero sum game.
|
| It takes next to no effort to throw your menu as a photo
| on google maps for example.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That would not have occurred to me as a thing to do. It
| takes non-zero effort to think of these things in the
| first place.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Every business needs marketing, even the most basic
| coffee shop. Maintaining an online presence is just part
| of running a modern business.
|
| You're free to not do it, but the market will push you
| out in favor of businesses that do.
| pdntspa wrote:
| It would be nice if the technology people would stop
| expecting everyone to cater to them.
| aaomidi wrote:
| You mean market forces that pushes the companies that
| make their business less accessible?
|
| I personally don't expect anything. I'll just not go to
| places that don't have information. That's the market in
| action.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Example of how this falls apart: you change your prices.
| You change your menu. You have different menus for
| different times of day. You have different menus for
| special occasions.
| unnah wrote:
| Good point. Also, once the customer is accessing the menu
| through their smartphone, modern ad tracking technologies
| also enable pricing to match the expected buying power of
| the customer. This way the hospitality industry and their
| adtech partners can extract more value from the
| transaction and thus increase the efficiency of the
| market.
| derefr wrote:
| AFIAK those pictures-of-menus don't come from the
| restaurant owner, but from the people dining there. I
| believe they're partly scraped from restaurant review
| sites like Zomato (where the pictures-of-menus are
| interspersed with pictures-of-the-food-itself) and partly
| the result of Google doing Google Lens things to your
| Google Photos to figure out that you took photos while
| inside a restaurant, and then asking you if it can use
| them.
| totallywrong wrote:
| I've actually stood up and left restaurants when their QR
| menu sends me to IG.
| silasdavis wrote:
| Perfect on a first date.
| bombcar wrote:
| You've got to case the restaurant, run background checks
| on the staff. Can the menu be read without a phone? If
| not, I gotta go somewhere else.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| Excellent reference.
| kergonath wrote:
| The risks of picking a place you don't know for a date ;)
| tough wrote:
| Hahahaha I was picturing this idea before asking tbh...
|
| We sometimes get some customers who hate the QR's, or claim
| not having phone/signal/whatever.
|
| I'll lend them my phone to check...
| totallywrong wrote:
| I'm one of those customers. QR menus must die.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I'd refuse to touch your phone and insult you for the
| offer. If you don't have a paper menu the question of me
| giving you money is already off the table; the food is
| forgotten and my new mission in your restaurant is to
| punish you with my vindictive attitude. If enough
| waitresses complain about obnoxious boomers giving them
| grief, I think the business owner will eventually wisen
| up.
| pierat wrote:
| You're nice. I replace them with "HaCKed" videos from
| YouTube.
|
| Obviously a YT vid doesn't hack anything, but it does
| scare the companies out of complacency when it's trivial
| to swap to real malware.
| shagie wrote:
| At The Fish Market, they had menus printed out each day
| with the current market rates of all the fish that they
| had and modified it for that day's availability.
|
| Each day, they had new paper menus (
| https://menucuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-
| Fish-... - note the top)
|
| Their menu is now also at https://order.online/store/the-
| fish-market-palo-alto-723242/...
|
| I'm not sure if they still have paper menus or what the
| expense of those menus were.
| tough wrote:
| I'd just try to get rid of you as fast as possible.
| kicking you out if needed.
|
| You can be doing all this nonsense to an owner serving
| you.
| throwanem wrote:
| You don't know how the restaurant business works, for one
| thing. For another, acting like an asshole to waitstaff
| just makes you look like an asshole, and gratifying
| yourself in public over your supposedly principled stand
| in acting like an asshole doubly so.
|
| QR code links to menus are bad, sure. I'd still rather
| eat at ten places that have those than one place that has
| you.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _I 'd still rather eat at ten places that have those
| than one place that has you._
|
| If my making a scene makes other customers upset, then
| it's working. I know businesses hate it when people do
| this, and that's why I know it's an effective tactic. The
| whole point of the protest is to sabotage the business by
| making everybody else in the room upset.
| throwanem wrote:
| The only person unclear on who the asshole is here is
| you.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Acting like an asshole is the means of protest I
| consciously choose. Another commenter here chooses to put
| stickers over the QR codes instead; I think that's pretty
| clever and I applaud that, but I prefer to keep it
| strictly legal. Stickers are technically vandalism, but
| ruining your day by acting like an asshole is completely
| legal and very effective.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Or you could just print a goddamn paper menu?
| wpietri wrote:
| Who still has a printer? Maybe they could fax you one
| instead?
| godelski wrote:
| Businesses
|
| Come on, you can get one for under $100
| duckmysick wrote:
| Print shops.
|
| Restaurants already source their materials and equipment
| from other suppliers. They don't grow their own food;
| they don't need to print their own menus.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure, the same is true of anything written. But much of
| that has shifted to digital media because it's more
| convenient. A print shop has much higher latency and
| change costs. The newer restaurants in my neighborhood
| mostly use flexible ways of conveying prices. QR codes,
| menus on big screens, chalkboards, or computer-printed
| paper menus on disposable paper.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| More convenient for the restaurant, less convenient for
| the customer.
|
| This defeats the whole purpose of a restaurant, which is
| to be convenient. If I wanted to be inconvenienced I
| would just buy groceries and cook them at home.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I wouldn't even make it this far, I'm not scanning their
| QR. Give me a paper menu or gtfo.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| This. I've never scanned a QR code and I don't intend to
| learn how.
|
| And because the premise of a restaurant not having
| printed menus available is so absurd, I think I'd be
| compelled to stick around for a few minutes loudly
| insulting their business acumen before leaving (as I have
| done before at bars that didn't accept cash!) I consider
| this a service done for those who think like me but
| aren't brave enough to speak out themselves.
| AeroNotix wrote:
| The sad part is that practically all patrons that could
| hear you will just label you as a "Karen". The owners
| will not change their ways. It works for them, their
| client base and the vast majority of potential clients.
|
| People do not care at all whatsoever about their privacy
| being invaded, generally.
| luuurker wrote:
| Imagine you go out for launch and see this random guy
| "loudly insulting" the staff because of some random
| internet stuff you don't understand or care about.
|
| Maybe you won't call the guy "Karen", but I'd be very
| surprised if you approved of the situation... Unless, of
| course, you think that insulting low paid workers loudly
| is something good and to be proud of.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The point is not to persuade you of my point of view, the
| point is to ruin the mood of the workers and customers.
| So if I leave you fuming about the Karen (eg me, but
| wrong gender fyi), mission accomplished. If it were legal
| I'd pull the fire alarm on my way out.
| tough wrote:
| It's just sad that such a great tech like QR's has caused
| you so much pain
| luuurker wrote:
| > I've never scanned a QR
|
| That's okay. It's also okay to prefer a paper menu (I'm
| the same).
|
| > I don't intend to learn how
|
| I mean, no one is forced to learn, but knowing stuff is
| not a bad thing. It takes less time to read a QR code
| than to type that reply.
|
| > I'd be compelled to stick around for a few minutes
| loudly insulting their business
|
| What happened to calmly explain your position and then
| leave without giving that business your money? You don't
| have to be an asshole to the person serving you... in
| fact, they probably don't have a say on the matter.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The point is to sabotage the business in a more impactful
| way than merely walking away. Harming employee morale,
| and consequently employee retention, is an effective
| means of protest. If the employees get a sour mood about
| it and give other customers worse service, all the
| better.
| luuurker wrote:
| On the other hand, you're being an asshole to someone
| that has to stand there and take your shit because they
| have debts and a rent to pay. And, since they deal with
| people all day, they know that moving to another work
| place with a paper menu won't fix anything because
| there's always some asshole that will do their best to
| make them feel like crap.
|
| Not to mention that the average person doesn't understand
| how online menus can be a problem. Most don't understand
| how tracking works, for example. So when you leave,
| things go back to normal because that was just one of
| _those_ customers.
|
| Menus on QR codes is a problem. People that behave like
| you are also a problem. I dislike both.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiter_Rule
|
| > "If someone is nice to you but rude to the waiter, they
| are not a nice person."
| [deleted]
| Garvi wrote:
| Aren't QR codes just a fundamentally flawed system due to how
| much easier they make phishing attacks?
| stOneskull wrote:
| i found out the hard way about that network of scammers.
| recently a friend had a serious motorbike crash and the
| hospital where he was at had a QR code registration. i
| hadn't slept and wasn't thinking. i just downloaded the
| first free QR reader from the google app store and scanned
| it. there was tiny writing saying 'open this link in
| browser' then a big green box in the middle saying 'OPEN'.
| i didn't even see the first link and just hit the big
| button. and yeah that took me to a registration page asking
| me to enter my credit card to verify my identification,
| which i thought was the hospital. d'oh!
| rcfox wrote:
| Your standard, built-in camera app should be able to scan
| QR codes...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Part of the motivation is to avoid having to produce
| Braille menus. Force your customers to use a device with
| built in accessibility features and you don't pay extra for
| ADA compliance.
| DropInIn wrote:
| How does a blind person use a QR code?
|
| Not like they can see where the camera is pointing, let
| alone locate the code in the first place.....
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The staff or someone with them scans it upon request.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Ok, done! The QR code encodes the URL to download a 19.8
| MB beautifully designed menu in PDF format. Now what does
| the blind person do?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Great straw man, but luckily the solution is easy. Inform
| the restaurant to use one of the many dozens of menu
| services that are designed specifically with screen
| readers in mind. There are also PDF screen readers, but
| that's less ideal because the PDF needs to be designed
| with accessibility in mind.
|
| https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/using-
| technolog...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| ...or a physical menu in braille.
| mindslight wrote:
| This sounds like "compliance" attorneys gone crazy. It's
| appalling, but does check out with the bureaucratic
| cancer eating our society. Waitstaff or the cashier
| reading menu options sounds like wonderful accommodation.
| Certainly much more so than impersonally telling a
| customer to solve their own problem by turning their
| dining session into a web browsing session.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| That's an extremely bigoted way of looking at it. Blind
| people deserve autonomy too as much as possible. How
| would you like it if the waitstaff just stood next to you
| to read the menu to you and wait for you to make a
| decision?
|
| Having a braille option is ideal, but not every vision
| impaired person can read braille and it puts a
| significant burden on every establishment. Readers
| provide a great alternative to that that restores a lot
| of autonomy to blind people.
|
| Why have ADA at all? Just have every disabled person wait
| for an able-bodied person to just help them with whatever
| it's they need, right?
| DropInIn wrote:
| So blind people are required to give a stranger thier
| unlocked phone?
|
| Really, there's not a single thing that can be said to
| make it less stupid.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Or they can touch and feel the QR sticker and scan it. QR
| and bar codes are also increasingly more embossed or have
| borders specifically for that reason. There are special
| QR reader apps for the blind that help with that more. It
| is generally the more recommended way by AFB for making
| your products accessible for the blind
|
| https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/using-
| technolog...
| [deleted]
| tsukikage wrote:
| > presumably they'll have some paper menus
|
| Increasingly commonly, that's a "nope". If I don't have an
| internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code
| about my person, eating out is no longer for me. Perhaps it's
| time to go back to the old people's home, the nurse has been
| searching for hours.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Or, I have no idea how these QR providers work, I wouldn't
| be at all surprised if this was the sort of low-effort
| service that restaurants don't want to pay for. So, maybe
| ad/tracking funded.
|
| It is annoying when a transaction that for ages has been
| all-paper gets bumped into the panopticon.
| toast0 wrote:
| QR codes can encode many things, including a url. If your
| restaurant already has a reasonable menu online, you can
| just link to that. No need to pay anyone, other than if
| you fancy print the qr code notices.
| bee_rider wrote:
| If I owned a restaurant that's what I'd do, but the ones
| around here typically end up linking the QR code to some
| complicated website for some reason.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of
| dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no
| longer for me.
|
| What kind of dystopian city do you live in? QR codes are on
| the decline again1, fortunately.
|
| 1: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/may/23/off-the-
| menu-wh...
| derefr wrote:
| I can think of a large number of restaurants in Richmond
| BC that are still this way. (And only Richmond;
| neighbouring Vancouver/Burnaby/New West/Surrey are fine.)
| bavell wrote:
| I feel like my IQ has dropped 10 points after reading
| that article
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If QR is the only option, I make the server tell me what's
| on the menu.
|
| I'm an old guy with bad eyes I'm not going to try to read
| your menu on a 5" phone screen in a dim restaurant.
| klausa wrote:
| Genuinely asking: wouldn't a phone be _better_ for you?
|
| Reading a _paper_ menu in a dim room is a miserable
| experience, but you can zoom in as much as you want on a
| phone, and you control the brightness of it, and don't
| have to angle the piece of paper to catch as much light
| as possible?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I too make the server tell me what's on the menu, because
| I grew up in the 8th century BCE when literacy hadn't yet
| overtaken the strong oral chanting tradition of
| preserving and transmitting information, and I believe
| that the written word is a debasement of human intellect.
| afandian wrote:
| If there's no written menu available what's the other
| option?
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I hate this so much. I don't want a Facebook account but there
| are several accounts on Instagram that post things I'd like to
| view.
|
| There's some kind of shady black market for Instagram scrapers
| that bypass the hard wall the OP describes and publish the
| content with their own ads injected. I can't vouch for anything
| about these sites other than the fact that they do work. I highly
| recommend using noscript or ublock at the very least before
| checking them out.
|
| https://imgsed.com/
|
| https://dumpoir.com/
|
| https://wizstat.com/
|
| There are likely others, these are just the ones I'm personally
| aware of.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| How I spell "fuck you" when it comes to instagram:
| grep '0\.0\.0\.0.*instagram' /etc/hosts | wc -l 387
| squirtlebonflow wrote:
| [dead]
| thih9 wrote:
| This was the status quo for most users for years, tech users just
| used to work around the front end security via dev tools /
| content blockers.
|
| So now they implemented it on the back end too.
|
| After all, why should they allow you to view the content on their
| servers?
| mikewarot wrote:
| The evolved response from internet "power users" such as us, is a
| superpower
|
| We're really good at holding a grudge
|
| AND telling others why we have that grudge
|
| Thus, we route around it, with some grumbling along the way.
| shmerl wrote:
| Instagram requiring to register is such trash.
| krayz8 wrote:
| https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/forced-...
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| The same from my side. Login-walled portals are second to pay-
| walled. And when you login, you pay, but with you and your data.
| So we can put them in one bucket
| asylteltine wrote:
| [dead]
| dave333 wrote:
| Is there a search engine that shows only results that are free
| open access - no registration or paywalled sites?
| uwagar wrote:
| cloudflare is the biggest employer of the fuck you pattern.
| making people captcha shit.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Twitter has basically the same policy
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| I could give two shits if Google wouldn't keep returning results
| for websites you can't see without an account.
| [deleted]
| parentheses wrote:
| I don't agree with this at all. I do concede that some of these
| patterns use manipulation and visual trickery to send you down a
| particular (typically more profitable) path. That said, we all
| enjoy these services for free. The companies that provide them
| are for profit. I feel the intense hatred people have for these
| companies is extremely biased.
|
| As a person who avoids Meta products for the most part, I still
| benefit from them greatly. I pay $0 and get a lot of
| conveniences. I do agree that it's not a nice feeling that they
| own the things I may post, but it's the deal that gets us what's
| app, facebook and instagram with near unlimited access to really
| nice social networking tools.
|
| I similarly pay for YouTube premium because I don't want adds. I
| enjoy hours of video content ad free - often watching it more
| than I'd watch netflix or whatever other streaming service.
|
| I agree that they're monetizing user content, but they're also
| providing access to compelling and often high quality content for
| free.
| spuz wrote:
| The "fuck you" isn't that they require you to login in order to
| view a page. It's that they tease you with the promise that you
| don't need an account, and when you try to take them up on that
| promise they slam the door in your face and say "nice try but
| you gotta create an account first".
| badtension wrote:
| This drives me crazy in substack. Gradual fadeout with the popup
| sliding down as I scroll... This is a small thing but utterly
| frustrating.
|
| You're evil substack, I'm not going to give way to your shady
| tactics and login. I'd rather not read anything as a protest.
| squirtlebonflow wrote:
| [dead]
| indus wrote:
| Why not call it the 'Coward pattern'
|
| Why?
|
| I'm a coward to not allow not logged in user.
|
| I'm a coward to not let Ollie have a day.
|
| I'm a coward to not allow good UX judgement prevail.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Instagram was like that for me ever since I know it, couldn't
| bother creating an account though. If it's important, there are
| scraping sites to visit Instagram profiles by name without an
| account.
|
| Regarding the block/redirect: technically they could have used
| the MutationObserver API to track your usage of the DevTools to
| remove the modal. Have had the same experience a while ago if I'm
| not misremembering. But I'd also assume they're just counting
| requests without login per IP, much simpler.
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