guilhermedea

breadandcircuses , 2 months ago to random

Here's a rant from Stephen Moore that I strongly agree with...

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Something has changed.

I feel no sense of joy using the internet. No curiosity. No intrigue. No excitement. That feeling of tapping into an endless world of possibilities is gone, replaced with a begrudging realization that I’ll have to enter it again and battle to find what I need, trudging through ads, paywalls, vitriol, disinformation, and more.

I’ve come to the realization that I kinda hate the internet now.

It's polluted with ads of every form, type and size — popups, banners, baked-in ads on videos, sponsored posts — and they are now invasive to the point that they have harmed the internet experience. They are everywhere.

Worse, we’re tracked around the internet (thank you cookies) in an attempt to make these ads more ‘relevant’; instead, they’re just creepy and have convinced huge swathes of the internet-using population that their computers are listening to them.

Thanks in part to these ads, most websites are bordering on unusable. Huge areas of white space that are really video ads struggling to load. Then, a chatbot pops up to ask if you need help (and if you engage with them, the advice is the opposite of helpful). Then popup windows offering you shitty PDF guides in return for your email address.

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FULL ESSAY -- https://www.trend-mill.com/p/i-kinda-hate-the-internet-now