Discussion
Two things that have vastly improved my online life lately:
1. Adding "||accounts.google.com/gsi/*$xhr,script,3p" to Ublock Origin, which comprehensively blocks every Google login popup on random websites;
2. Switching my paypal.com bookmark to "https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_account," which bypasses the "Download the app" nag-screen.
ah, paypal. and linkedin. and so many others.
web nag: "your experience would be better in the app..."
me: "and whose fault is that?"
Keep it locked up in a padded cell where it can't do anything I don't want it to.
I have Meta's entire network piholed. I've not missed a damn thing.
I try to buy used stuff as often as i can. A new kicker i realized, is that FB Marketplace is used way more than Craigslist around these parts, with Messenger being an integral component.
Where, in UBlock does one put # 1?
I can't tell you how much both of these fucking things annoyed the shit out of me, and how satisfying it is to eke out a little disenshittification because I'm using a browser that can be modified to take orders from me, and not giant, stupid corporations that believe that if their customers are too happy, they're leaving money on the table.
And it feels like a losing battle. Is firefox market share remaining low, or looking to take off? Can uBlock lite or whatever the Chromium/manifest V3 option is even do stuff like this?
I feel like most people don’t care enough. And I feel like it’s really hard for independent developers to break into any existing space. It’s hard for people to give new apps a try when there’s so much out there and most tend to get enshittified anyway. The bar is high for features and polish.
It’s encouraging that some European countries are using Matrix and LibreOffice, so maybe things will turn around eventually?
Between “Don't you want to download our app?”, “Can we send you notifications?”, "What's your location?”, “Join our mailing list!”, "Accept our cookies!” and the inevitable popover videos, it can take seven or eight clicks before you even get to the bit where the web page asks you to turn off your ad-blocker.
The web didn't become user-hostile all at once, but now the frog is well and truly boiled.
And everyone ought to be able to tell from ten miles off that any of these patterns is not only anti-user but downright antisocial, depraved assholery that should've been kicked out of any meeting it was ever suggested in. But we're in the most absurd timeline so it's all just normal instead.
The latest version is moving the "I want to read this" portion of the text as you scroll to increase the chances that the reader will fatfinger touch an advertisement.
The "back" icon sends you to the top of the article again instead of where you were.
Imagine if paper books acted like this. You touch the edge of a page to flip to the next page and it sends you to an advertisement instead.
Flipping the page back sends you to the beginning of the book.
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
