I just don't look at it if I have to make an account.

Haha, so true. I really really miss the "old" interwebz. Imagine the content of back-then with the hardware of today. The dream of yesteryear would come true. A blazingly fast net. Just html with a bit of JS (when really needed). Not 10 frameworks (each used for one function), dozens of mb of graphics, a gazillion of cookies and tracker-scripts and... Jeez.

Today i need so much stuff to fight the other stuff, it's stuffmageddon.

Oh and if you're also European you can also fight (for free!) the silly cookie-war.

Ha! Recently went to breakfast with a couple of new neighbors (partners).

They were asking me what apps I enjoyed and I told them that I WAS enjoying Apollo. Told them I left Reddit. They sort looked at me. They later said they both worked at home. Their job was creating ad space for the web. One of them gave me the enshitification face. Sigh.

The browser in my computer at work doesn't have an ad blocker. I haven't installed one because I most of the time I'm using it to access our intranet. But when I do happen to use the internet, damn are there so many ads! They literally block the content I'm trying to read, and come back even when I try to close it.

All that to say, due to enshittification I will forever keep my ad blocker on my personal computer.

Cornerstones of the internet:

• social media
• content sharing (video, audio media)
• e-mail
• websites

Internet resources ruined by ads/corporate greed:

• social media (full of ads, borderline unusable without ad block)
• content sharing (account sharing blocks (Netflix) war on adblockers (YouTube) etc)
• e-mail (spam)
• websites (ads, borderline unusable without adblockers, refuses to load with adblockers)

gg everyone. Time to reinvent everything.

Web 2.0 desperately clinging to life. FOSS self hosted web is the future. Internet speeds are fast enough on home networks that self hosting is perfectly viable for essentially everything, and for the few things that can't be self hosted by just anyone, FOSS alternatives and work arounds to existing paid services exist.

Internet is becoming harder to monopolize, and increasing amounts of power and control are being handed back to the working class online. FOSS has become a movement that has grown exponentially over the last few years.

Their next recourse will be attempting to make jail time a thing for piracy. Both for hosting it and downloading it.

Lets be real - This isn't going to change on it's own. The only way for it to change is if everyone collectively took a stand against it. Which simply just won't happen. The most reasonable thing to do is to focus your energy on collectives that actively reject such practices. Oh hey, you're already in one: Lemmy, good job. As long as we work together to create a small corner of the internet that remains true to what the internet should be, we can grow it and create a better internet in the long term.

It's not a solution, but as a mitigation, I'm trying to push the idea of an internet right of way into the public consciousness. Here's the thesis statement from my write-up:

I propose that if a company wants to grow by allowing open access to its services to the public, then that access should create a legal right of way. Any features that were open to users cannot then be closed off so long as the company remains operational. We need an Internet Rights of Way Act, which enforces digital footpaths. Companies shouldn't be allowed to create little paths into their sites, only to delete them, forcing guests to pay if they wish to maintain access to the networks that they built, the posts that they wrote, or whatever else it is that they were doing there.

As I explain in the link, rights of way already exist for the physical world, so it's easily explained to even the less technically inclined, and give us a useful legal framework for how they should work.

For me the internet is still just about bearable but only because of the following....

Firefox + unlock origin for web browsing.

RedReader for Reddit when I occasionally need to go there.

Lemmy for the best Reddit alternative.

Revanced and NewPipe for YouTube.

Recently moved from Google podcasts to Podcast Republic after Google moved podcasts to you tube music.

Never had Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram.

Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.

It feels like I'm swimming against a strong tide just to maintain a good experience, in no other industry do the major players want to cripple your goods and services if you don't bend over and accept their increasingly poor goods and services 🤷🏻‍♂️

I'm actually glad for it. It made me switch to Linux, discover Mullvad Browser and their VPN combo, get a GrapheneOS phone, find an amazing Freetube YT desktop client, and dabble with Home Assistant and PIHole. Plus I migrated to Protonmail and Kagi as my search, and Lemmy instead of reddit is also an amazing change, the discussions I've seen so far feel better and more in depth, and I'm enjoying my time here so far. The lack of endless content is also great, to help with implementing Digital Minimalism.

So, while I hate any large corporation and their greed with more and more passion, it has lead me to a nice privacy journey, for which I'm glad.

I'd suggest the Firefox extension libredirect. Automatically redirects Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and more to alternative front-ends.

I haven't noticed any slowdowns with Firefox and Ublock Origin.

Not to mention sites blacklisting VPN IPs

Lemmy is getting pretty good. I'm optimistic that more of the internet will be like this in the future.

It’s mostly people who refuse to stop using these services who ruin it for those who don’t. I think the solution is to make slick, idiot-proof and easy alternatives with sexy UIs so even the most insta, TikTok, YouTube addicted person wants to switch over. There’s no solution to monetization or ads which doesn’t fuck the experience of the alternative solution. Creating, instilling and appealing to an ideology will also help conversions.

That said, if you like someone’s content, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with you hoping for that person to be paid for it. Forcing ads is such a disgusting move, but any reasonable person wouldn’t mind paying to not to watch ads—there’s a cost to infrastructure maintenance that needs to be met, so it’s understandable. But I’d rather pay to a non-profit or utility.

In general, everyone should oppose big tech monopolies, and ask their politicians to legislate against them. Monopolies are the biggest threats to democracy.

I don’t watch YouTube any more.

Firefox still runs fine.

Most of my online reading is RSS feeds scraped into one place which is generally concise info.

My friends know not to send me Reddit, TikTok, or Insta shit.

Welcome to the New Web

Browsers are leading slower and slower

That's because of heavy use of JavaScript and frameworks like React. Websites like Facebook are a nightmare to deal with.

++ social media has killed personal blogs. Which is one of the biggest losses to me.

Peak internet was like 10-15 years ago

It's time for a new Internet with some guidelines. Like your content isn't viewable without account, you get kicked out of the DNS.

Honestly, I just use the internet less. I'm never going to pay. I can't be bothered with the loopholes anymore. If it bugs me to pay or subscribe, I leave. I'm fine with them not wanting me as a user, and I hope they're fine with me not wanting them as a supplier. They don't have anything that I actually need that badly.

Oddly enough I probably use the internet more than ever. It's just not that internet.

It's actually making me go outside

I'm disgusted XD

Thing is, most people don't want to pay for services that to them seemed to be free since forever. And this creates collective social pressure to follow suit. Nothing a big company offers is ever free. You're just paying in alternate currency.

No.1 Apparently not present on uBlock Origin, which makes it not a problem for me (though it's shite that they are doing it anyway). I don't use YouTube that often anyways.

No.2 You are not loosing a lot - it's most likely some crappy video about a guy slipping on a banana peel or some shit like this - 99.9% you are not missing on much :D

I look at Lemmy far less than I did Reddit.

I read only one subreddit still and it is Am I The Asshole, it is very easy to spot the ads because only one add matches the format of the posts. Anything that doesn't start with AITA is an ad.

That gives me way more time to read books that I have been putting off. Starting with a few books by Cory Doctorow who coined that term enshittification.

It is a lot easier to make time for reading when watching a video will mean an ad before, during, and after every 5 minute clip. I subscribe to a few news shows so I can listen to them as podcasts while I work to support without having ads.

Maybe this is why I’ve been so ready to fully embrace Lemmy for my internetting. It’s the opposite of enshittified, as FOSS often is.

I’ll admit though, I pay for YouTube and get more bang for the buck than any other money I spend on entertainment. I’ve had it for a while though, and did not sign up because of their renewed war on ad blocking. Plus it’s nice that the creators get paid from my view, even though it’s not much.