Is general browsing now just a messy pile of ****?

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 00:21

The other day I was searching about lawn care, and Google being the nice guy that it is, now has realised I am interest in lawn care, so on my Google now page (or whatever its called on mobiles) there is a website with a title that interested me to click and read it, but I stupidly forget every time it's just not worth doing as website browsing these days is just pure crap.

This is the site I was linked to.

https://m.salisburypost.com/2020/09...n-important-part-of-regular-lawn-maintenance/

Is there actually any content on there other than the title? It's just other click bait articles, primarily that tabola service I see it but there's plenty copy cats where they have junk titles made for click bait, and when you view the site it's just adverts every where, some taking so long on purpose that the "next" button they force you to use moves as you go to click it and end up clicking on an advert.

You also have cookie consent, sometimes requiring more than 1 click. Then there's pop ups to get you to allow notifications from that site (does anyone say yes to this?)

I hate it. This feels like my experience now for so many articles. It's daily I come across this junk.

Anyone else feeling this too?

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel it started to get worse the moment Google chrome became so popular on mobiles , and Google wanting you to see ads, didn't put good ways for adblockers, and now it's allowed a new breed of ad styles to grow.

GGizmo · 27 Jul 2021 at 00:33

I don't like the amount of adverts on webpages. Some are big banners that will appear after a minute of being on the page. It will appear on every story page on the news site.

More annoyingly is some sites notice when an adblocker is in action and will block the whole site until its turned off. So its either turn adblocker off and get hit by a mass of adverts or click away from the site.

Nitefly · 27 Jul 2021 at 00:45

More often than not, all the top web results on google are trying to sell you something. Especially when you make the dreaded mistake of searching: “top rated XYZ”

There are loads of ‘prosumer review’ websites that profit off web traffic and commission links. It’s just utter crap.

Add in the mind melting tedium of accepting / declining cookies and, yeah, it’s a chore.

Angilion · 27 Jul 2021 at 01:37

I found that not using Google was a significant improvement. I use DuckDuckGo (silly name, great service) for searching. Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo actually is a search engine. Google is spyware and advertising that uses a search engine as a tool to manipulate its targets (i.e. everyone who uses it).

A script firewall works for me, but it does (like any firewall) add more for you to do as you have to choose which sources are allowed to run scripts on your computer. It also solves the advertising problem, which is now (as you say) deliberately designed to make your time online much worse and to mislead you into things. Advertising is now actively hostile online as well as being a security risk, so I have no qualms about blocking it by default.

Even so, I do sometimes encounter sites that are just clickbait for content that doesn't even exist, solely to throw more adverts at you (while gathering as much information about you as possible).

Cookie consent I'm fine with. Better than not having consent at all. Besides, all the cookies in my browser self-destruct after 30s of not being used and whenever I close the tab that set them and whenever I close my browser. Which I've made a habit of doing frequently. Close/open takes a couple of seconds tops.

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 02:07

Angilion said:
Advertising is now actively hostile online as well as being a security risk, so I have no qualms about blocking it by default.

yes that's the perfect way to describe it. hostile. that's how it feels with far too many sites i visit now.

Rroff · 27 Jul 2021 at 02:17

Angilion said:
Google is spyware and advertising that uses a search engine as a tool to manipulate its targets (i.e. everyone who uses it).

Noticed this lately - Google used to be great for trying to find a song from half-remembered lyrics, now it will try and promote certain songs based on matching a single word and you'll have to wade quite deep into the results or use another search engine to actually find what you are looking for

Same with other stuff it will use individual words from what you are searching for completely out of the context you are searching to try and push you towards certain results instead of what you are actually looking for

BallistixOnZ490 · 27 Jul 2021 at 02:22

On the OPs link, I have to complete a 6 question survey just to unlock a clickbait article???

WHAT???????

LMAO GOOGLE YOU ARE DRUNK!

BallistixOnZ490 · 27 Jul 2021 at 02:23

Rroff said:
Noticed this lately - Google used to be great for trying to find a song from half-remembered lyrics, now it will try and promote certain songs based on matching a single word and you'll have to wade quite deep into the results or use another search engine to actually find what you are looking for

Same with other stuff it will use individual words from what you are searching for completely out of the context you are searching to try and push you towards certain results instead of what you are actually looking for

Wrap the lyrics in quotes to get an exact match.

Rroff · 27 Jul 2021 at 02:29

BallistixOnZ490 said:
Wrap the lyrics in quotes to get an exact match.

Used to work well but now with half-remembered lyrics, etc. it often just returns no results or something completely irrelevant but mathematically related to something in what you entered.

Deleted member 77746 · 27 Jul 2021 at 06:17

Use an ad blocker. Simples.

clv101 · 27 Jul 2021 at 06:55

Angilion said:
Cookie consent I'm fine with. Better than not having consent at all. Besides, all the cookies in my browser self-destruct after 30s of not being used and whenever I close the tab that set them and whenever I close my browser. Which I've made a habit of doing frequently. Close/open takes a couple of seconds tops.

Are there any negative effects of that cookie policy?

Malevolence · 27 Jul 2021 at 07:32

Bouton Aide said:
Use an ad blocker. Simples.

Indeed. Although they can be a right pain too, especially when Google/Youtube causes them to slow your browser to a crawl due to the sheer amount of crap being blocked. Go open the Youtube thread and watch the numbers go mental.

dave28 · 27 Jul 2021 at 07:35

Try Bing, its so bad i thought it was a Virus and is a pig to get rid of

Deleted member 77746 · 27 Jul 2021 at 07:35

Malevolence said:
Indeed. Although they can be a right pain too, especially when Google/Youtube causes them to slow your browser to a crawl due to the sheer amount of crap being blocked. Go open the Youtube thread and watch the numbers go mental.

That proves how much crap websites contain though. This is a fault of the main website and the tracking what they are doing. The blockers just flag up how much is been blocked.

Angilion · 27 Jul 2021 at 20:04

clv101 said:
Are there any negative effects of that cookie policy?

Yes. Sometimes I am logged out of sites I'm logged into because a cookie holding relevant information has self-destructed. It's a minor issue as any even halfway competent site should handle that situation by bringing up the login window. For example, if I'm on those forums and the login cookie self-destructs while I am writing a post, when I click on the reply button I go to a screen stating "You must be logged in to do that" and giving me the standard login. I log in again and the message is posted. No problem. The only negative effect is the ~20 seconds it takes me to log in again.

[FnG]magnolia · 27 Jul 2021 at 20:08

I metaphorically lose my poo poo when articles which I meant to click on actually appear (so, win) but there is embedded video which starts playing with the audio on (so, awful).

That is not cool beans my dude, not cool beans at all.

tom_nieto · 27 Jul 2021 at 20:25

[FnG]magnolia said:
I metaphorically lose my poo poo when articles which I meant to click on actually appear (so, win) but there is embedded video which starts playing with the audio on (so, awful).

That is not cool beans my dude, not cool beans at all.

Even worse when it automatically air plays to the TV, which switches off whatever your kid was watching, resulting in a meltdown and subsequent loss of hair and hardening of coronary arteries.

G J · 27 Jul 2021 at 20:37

[FnG]magnolia said:
I metaphorically lose my poo poo when articles which I meant to click on actually appear (so, win) but there is embedded video which starts playing with the audio on (so, awful).

That is not cool beans my dude, not cool beans at all.

Remember the Smile Emoji banner/flash ad whatever it was that used to scream HEEELLLOOO!!!! at near full back in the day when ad blockers wernt a thing.

yeah people ran with that....

413x · 27 Jul 2021 at 20:40

I hate the cookie consent thing. Drives me mad.
No adblocker makes the Internet basically unusable. I wish this was an exaggeration but it isn't

cheesyboy · 27 Jul 2021 at 20:42

There's no doubt we've passed the pinnacle of the internet.

It's a ******* mess now. Just a generally awful experience, and notably worse than a decade+ ago.

That's objective truth, not rose tinted. There was fun to be had circa 2000, but the peak was probably late 2000s.