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

The walesonline news page is particularly bad. It has everything
Horribly slow to load due to all the rubbish
"Download the app" / add to your homepage
Vast amounts of clickbait rubbish ("this man removed his own gallbladder and turned it into a luxury home. Find out how!!!")
Autoplaying videos, with sound

It could hardly be worse. Though no doubt it will get worse.
 
BallistixOnZ490 said:
On the OPs link, I have to complete a 6 question survey just to unlock a clickbait article???

WHAT???????

LMAO GOOGLE YOU ARE DRUNK!
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That reminds me of sites that says "checking your browser..." before it lets you in. This is with the VPN turned off, and my browser is just the standard Firefox, not any fork / off-shoot of Firefox. In fact, the Overclockers shop was the last site that did it to me! What's that all about then?

In the main though, I use an ad-blocker and I block cookies on most sites except for sites on my whitelist.
 
cheesyboy said:
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.
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I agree completely. It's just because the internet is fully engrained into the common life of society now. With so many people on their phones 24/7, or their phones actively data sharing when in sleep mode, it has just added to the problem. Radio/TV stations are bombarded by ads but is accepted, and i guess the general public find the current internet to be the same. I accept they have to make their money, which is completely fine. But in the end i just avoid such places. I use Brave browser which is good enough for ads. But if phones ever start having popups integrated into the o/s, i'm out. I already don't use apps such as facebook etc, and keep all internet off on my phone when not in use.


In regards to annoying webpages, i just search for, "search quote forum", or, "search quote reddit", to find answers. It does literally feel like every website when looking for a review or information is just a ticket selling website. No information, just specs listed and no real order to 1-10 of best items. I found one the other day for watering cans, what. I was after a decent metal watering can, they probably exist outside of the internet, but on the internet they don't appear to.
 
yeah, all these things need sending to room 101
- ads (takes clickbait with it)
- cookie prompts
- paywalls, sick of people sending me links to things I can't view the content of.
- single-page applications, supposed to perform well but are clunky in reality.
- 'reviews' need banning as they're too easy to game
- social media needs ID to prove accounts are human and to punish abusive ppl
- social media needs 16+ age requirement
- social media needs narrowing so you can't see a whole planet's worth of stuff, just stuff for your country. so american trump-related garbage for example doesn't pollute it for the rest of us.
 
You need a bunch of addons running now just to filter out all the rubbish. An ad blocker on it's own isn't enough anymore, you also need something to hide the adblocker from scripts which can detect it, a cookie blocker, then something to generally block most scripts from running in the background.

Other things are you need to switch to encrypted DNS and use a VPN to stop the whole world spying on your activities. Then use it against you in 20 years time.

throwaway4372 said:
yeah, all these things need sending to room 101
- ads (takes clickbait with it)
- cookie prompts
- paywalls, sick of people sending me links to things I can't view the content of.
- single-page applications, supposed to perform well but are clunky in reality.
- 'reviews' need banning as they're too easy to game
- social media needs ID to prove accounts are human and to punish abusive ppl
- social media needs 16+ age requirement
- social media needs narrowing so you can't see a whole planet's worth of stuff, just stuff for your country. so american trump-related garbage for example doesn't pollute it for the rest of us.
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Social media just needs killing to death.

It's feeding most of the other crap we now have to put up with online.
 
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cheesyboy said:
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.
Click to expand...

Early to mid 2000’s peak I would say, just enough to get good pings on counterstrike with ADSL. Once everyone got smart phones and they let idiots loose on the internet and on social media things went downhill rapidly.
 
tom_nieto said:
Early to mid 2000’s peak I would say, just enough to get good pings on counterstrike with ADSL. Once everyone got smart phones and they let idiots loose on the internet and on social media things went downhill rapidly.
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Yep, noticably. Once it stopped being a nerdy thing and became fashion the quality of the internet nose dived.

Like with all things I suppose. Once the dumber sections of society get hold of it, it's past its peak.

Social media is a place for eco maniacs and attention seekers to post increasingly dumber content, but that has spilled over in to the rest of the internet.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
That reminds me of sites that says "checking your browser..." before it lets you in. This is with the VPN turned off, and my browser is just the standard Firefox, not any fork / off-shoot of Firefox. In fact, the Overclockers shop was the last site that did it to me! What's that all about then?

In the main though, I use an ad-blocker and I block cookies on most sites except for sites on my whitelist.
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That’s cloud flare firewall checking you out. If it thinks you have been doing something suspicious their firewall will block you.
 
+1 to early to mid 2000s being the peak of online.

2002 was the year when Netscape became Mozilla (then Firefox) and that had a pop-up blocker from the get go. Faceparty was a precursor to Facebook where it was about having a profile (like MSN profiles) and linking up with new and old friends. 2006 was the early days of World of Warcraft when it was still nerdy and had a great community spirit because of that.

2007 onwards was the decline. Facebook became the new Faceparty but with politics added. Politics in my mind is one of the biggest decline factors of the 2007-present internet. Twitter and Facebook Wokery vs gammons etc. Warcraft became accessible to everyone and their dog. The word meme got overused. Back when there used to be a few big memes per year, a new "meme" is created every day now passing them off as memes when really they aren't. In the browser wars, more browsers are turning to the Chromium engine. If Firefox falls down the same pit, then that is gameover for the mainstream WWW.

Bouton Aide said:
That’s cloud flare firewall checking you out. If it thinks you have been doing something suspicious their firewall will block you.
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Edit: just saw your reply. Fair-dos then, but not sure what they're looking for when I'm not using a VPN IP address!
 
BowdonUK said:
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.
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ublock Origin on desktop and mobile. Never see ads on anything ever again.

Browsing these days is way more convenient than back in the 2000s. I can find something on Google Now, open it on mobile Firefox, continue reading it on desktop, find something else on desktop, then continue reading it later on mobile seamlessly.

Back in the 2000s mobile websites were only really possible through a WAP browser on phones until a bit later when the first editions of browsers came out on tiny screened phones making them still useless, but with some colour this time round.
 
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Pawnless Endgame said:
+1 to early to mid 2000s being the peak of online.

2002 was the year when Netscape became Mozilla (then Firefox) and that had a pop-up blocker from the get go. Faceparty was a precursor to Facebook where it was about having a profile (like MSN profiles) and linking up with new and old friends. 2006 was the early days of World of Warcraft when it was still nerdy and had a great community spirit because of that.

2007 onwards was the decline. Facebook became the new Faceparty but with politics added. Politics in my mind is one of the biggest decline factors of the 2007-present internet. Twitter and Facebook Wokery vs gammons etc. Warcraft became accessible to everyone and their dog. The word meme got overused. Back when there used to be a few big memes per year, a new "meme" is created every day now passing them off as memes when really they aren't. In the browser wars, more browsers are turning to the Chromium engine. If Firefox falls down the same pit, then that is gameover for the mainstream WWW.
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That was when everybody and their granny and dog got a smartphone with Facebook.
 
BowdonUK said:
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.
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From personal experience any site that won't let you on the site of adblocking software is detected is a blessing in disguise.

As mentioned you can pay for adverts on top of Google search, not sure how much you have to pay but I'd imagine a lot and pretty sure nothing is vetted as many scam sites have made it up there in the past. Using an alternative search engine helps, although I still get bombarded with pay to win carp on Google play.
 
cheesyboy said:
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.
Click to expand...

The internet was great when you needed a modicum of intelligence to access it. It's strive to make it accessible to all, including those with the IQ less than a carrot (which is where Social Media comes in) was it's own demise.

Pawnless Endgame said:
That reminds me of sites that says "checking your browser..." before it lets you in. This is with the VPN turned off, and my browser is just the standard Firefox, not any fork / off-shoot of Firefox. In fact, the Overclockers shop was the last site that did it to me! What's that all about then?

In the main though, I use an ad-blocker and I block cookies on most sites except for sites on my whitelist.
Click to expand...

The OCUK one is an anti-DDOS measure I think, it flashes so breifly that I haven't managed to read everything that's on the splash page.
 
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