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13 ways the Internet is broken - #9 will shock you!

Erry Kostala on December 21, 2019

The web has been changing the past few years, not necessarily always for the better. There has been an emergence of anti-patterns, which are patter...
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Chris James • Edited

People giving up on RSS.

In the good old days I could subscribe to people's blogs and get content delivered to one simple app that i could read through at my leisure. Now I have to surf between 5 different websites, all of which want me to give up my privacy and bombard me with adverts and irrelevant content.

This sounds so cliched but honestly the internet was so much more usable 10 years ago.

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Tomas Fernandez

I also miss sites having RSS. The problem with RSS is that is not easy to use. I think Google Reader's death had a big impact on RSS adoption, at the time there weren't a lot of easy to use readers out there.

There's also that websites probably didn't know how to capitalize on RSS. It's much more profitable to get the views and ad clicks.

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rhymes

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that decommissioning RSS was by design to boost traffic

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David Wickes

Here's 14 for you

Bloated SPA sites which could easily be written either server-side or (gasp) as static sites.

JavaScript is killing the Internet.

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Ghost

If I may add to your point.

It's always good to pay a visit to

1: motherfuckingwebsite.com/
2: bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
3: thebestmotherfucking.website/

Of course those are satire but, really,... give it a good thought about it.

Probably sometimes you'll need more, but ask yourself, honestly, how many times you added something that will hurt or annoy your viewers just to show off?, just because is what everyone does? who really need carousels?

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Erry Kostala

Hadn't seen those. Yeah, I agree :)

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DrBearhands

I share your general feeling on the subject but disagree with your attitude towards changing browser settings. A website is essentially foreign code being executed on your computer, it makes sense to restrict what it may do. I don't think we should be reliant on 3rd parties' altruistic decisions (and competence!) for our own safety. Unfortunately the general public is poorly educated on the subject.

I for one blocked location requests, notifications, autoplay and tracking cookies.

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Ben Calder

It's broken in far more fundamental ways:

  • it's used as a platform for anyone with an agenda to push; which in theory is fine... But less so when the agenda revolves around something scientifically unproven (anti-vax, flat earth, climate change denial etc.) or is deeply negative and intended to spread division in society (e.g. far-right (and left); religious extremism etc.)
  • it's used to spy on users. We're only just beginning to see the negative potential this has: e.g. it's given bad actors the ability to target biased ads at groups of users with the specific intent of affecting the outcome of a democratic process.
  • corrupt politicians have also figured out that the easiest way to get away with blatant lies is to simply repeat "alternative truths" (AKA BS) on the net until apparently no-one understands what is the truth any more.

In comparison a few technical content issues seem pretty irrelevant :(

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Erry Kostala

Yeah, the way it's being used to spread misinformation is worrying. We don't yet have the infrastructure in place to stop fake news. Facebook is sort of trying now, but it's too little too late

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Andrew Smith • Edited

I doubt if there will ever be a viable way to stop "fake news". People in charge have a hard time staying honest, and news that they don't agree with will become "fake news", imo.

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Ben Calder

Sure there is: most of the fake news is spread via unregulated social media platforms. Those platforms need to take proper responsibility for the content posted on their sites - or have it imposed upon them. They're making enough money that they can invest properly in tackling this; instead of brushing it off and claiming they're protecting people's right to free speech. All they're protecting is their profit margin.

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Robert Myers

Mainly a problem because of 12, but WHY is the signin link always smaller and harder to find than the sign up link? Annoys the heck out of me.

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emptyother

Tumblr is one of the bigger sites I know about putting sign-up before login (it used too be smaller, too). They also have a relatively short-lasting session cookie, a 3-pages login form, and a constant ad for their non-functional android app even if you arent using android.

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Erry Kostala

Yeah, also makes no sense. I just want to log in, why must I click some obscure button?😂
See also aws, the first aws job I had I legit didn't know how to log in (you need to enter your organisation's account name... they don't make it obvious 🙄)

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Mahindra Shambharkar

Next in the list: Serviceworkers.
Sites which I visit only once in lifetime will still install serviceworker on device and keep consuming resources (bandwidth,memory).
This affects specially on cellphones (no wonder we have 12 GB of RAM) where resources are limited.
Frequently I need to clear site data on chrome for cellphone for smoothly rendering of web pages

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Renato Byrro

I agree that we developers have a long road ahead to start respecting other people's devices. We usually treat as if it was our device. We speak about "saving the planet", "respect", "tolerance", etc, and yet we fail to live by those standards on the most basic stuff we do on a daily basis...

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Joe Buckle • Edited

11 is interesting as I have seen this before. I echo your curiosity as to why these sites are unable to comply with this regulation.

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Renato Byrro

I agree mostly, but will have to disagree on #11. When I travel abroad, sit on a cafe and receive a service, I'm under that country legislation. The same should be in the internet. But if the EU finds itself entitled to rule sites based on other countries, completely overruling legislation authority from other sovereign countries, then non-europeans should be able to ignore Europeans at a minimum. I'm not saying they should or that I think it's a good idea, but I would totally understand and support if that's their decision.

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Rafi
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Richard Schloss

I think there's still room for a 4th hashtag.. #takeBackOurInternet maybe?

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Lizard

Genius title haha.