4mo ago

I just wanted to take a moment to enjoy how clean the web can be

I happened to click a link that took me to the associated ~~twitter~~ X account for something I was interested in and was greeted by not one, not two, but four modern day web popups.

I know it's nothing new. I've got a couple of firefox plugins that are usually quite good at hiding this sort of nonsense, but I guess they failed me today (or, I shudder to think, there were even more that were blocked, and this is what got through)

What's the worst new/not-signed-in user experience you've encountered recently?

197 comments

The web. It was good while it lasted.
- robots.txt is the perfect summary of the web era. A plain text file that politely asked web crawlers not to do certain things. Such an innocent time.

Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed
(grumble, unblock, reload)
Verify you are human
(click)
...spin...spin......spin...
Verify you are human
(click)
...spin...spin......spin...
Verify you are human
(click)
...spin...spin......spin...
Verify you are human
(click)
...spin...spin......spin...
Verify you are human
(click)
...spin...spin......spin...
- https://privacypass.github.io/ has helped somewhat
  
  Privacy Pass will generate a number of random nonces that will be used as tokens
  British people making a double take
  
  Interesting. A quick look at the description makes me think it could help with the inconvenience problem, but probably not with the allowing javascript problem. Still, I'll have to take a closer look. Thanks for the link.
  Edit: Turns out it requires installing a browser extension. From Cloudflare. No thanks, but I'll give it another look if the protocol ever gets implemented by browsers.
  
  Doesnt seem to work for many people (Cloudflare has stopped supporting it?), judging by reading reviews on Mozilla extension store.
- ... Spin ... Spin ... Spin ...
  ... Remember that you turned off your VPN
  ... Turn it on
  ... CF: OK, only humans use VPN, no need to show the challenge
- You forgot:
  Click all the pictures of buses.
  (clicks)
  ...spin...spin...spin...
  Click all the pictures of bicycles.
  (clicks)
  ...spin...spin...spin...
  Click all the pictures of traffic lights.
  (clicks)
  ...spin...spin...spin...
  
  I didn't forget; I just chose to highlight Cloudflare's awful captcha instead of Google's awful captcha. :)
  
  Click all the objects heavier than this one
  ...spin...spin...spin...

I have a very hard time believing that these companies are unaware of how auful this shit makes their webpages.
- If this were a competent company, I'd say that they're entirely aware of it and how fucking awful it is, but that there's a mandate coming from somewhere that the page MUST include x, y and z and so they add x, y and z but usually try to at least make the site usable.
  This being Twitter, though, I'm sure it's because a screaming man-child threw a sink at someone and told them to do it or they'll be fired and so they did it in the most half-assed obnoxious way they could manage.
  
  Common language used to dismiss bad decisions like this:
  We need to track and meet our metrics for the quarter
  Engagement for $FEATURE is down, so we have to take measures to get people to take notice
  It's opt-in/opt-out, so it's the right thing to do
  It's only a one time thing and then the system remembers¹ what the user selected
  Only new users are affected - our power users will put up with it
  It's just a minor inconvenience, really
  It's just a website
  1 - Oh, did you turn off cookies or clear your cache? Sorry about that.
- It's intentional, they want you logged in so they can track what you're doing
  
  iT’s bEtTeR iN tHe aPp
- Anyone can make a good website. It takes a real engineer to make a horrible website that people will use just enough while suffering.
  
  That's a very good quote.
- I do a lot of my browsing from an iPhone 11. At least twice a day, a page will crash and reload halfway through whatever article I was trying to read. I get it’s a few generations old, but since when do you need state of the art tech to view what should be a static page.
- It's diminishing customer experience creep, except the company doesn't understand what the user data means. They run A/B tests of different layouts, seeing what kind of feedback each gets to learn more about design choices and users. Each version should get its own feedback and then that data is compiled by data scientists into actionable feedback, things that can be done to improve the website in the direction the company thinks is an "improvement".
  Twitter abandoned those data scientists with the initial layoffs. There is no one to tell them what works and what impacts the customer experience, which is why each time the internal question of "how do we open up for engagement?" they answer it the same way, "Use existing user bases by linking their account to Twitter." The result is several login requests all looking for the same cookie.
  It's lazy or inexperienced management. Knowing the type of person Elon hires, it's probably both.
- Oh they're aware, they just don't care 99% of the time.
- I barely see them pop up, if they do it's for a fraction of a second before a browser extension nukes them.
- Well, unless you're a nerd, you only see those messages once
- I mean, they kinda don't. Companies are entities made out of policies guiding how people split up objectives into smaller parts. The more people involved and the more indirect it is, the less coherent it gets
  Legal says you need one popup for compliance. Marketing or analytics say you need more users to log in. Elon wants to remind people to call it Twitter.
  By the time it filters through managers to the devs, they probably know it'll be a horrible experience, but what are they going to do? It's not their job. They'll get brushed off. There might even be a compelling reason to do it in this way - with this in particular, annoying and intrusive popups are malicious compliance with the EU cookie laws. But everyone seems to be doing it this way - that's probably what legal is going to recommend rather than interpreting the law themselves
  So the problem is the structure. If you want a hierarchy of obedient replaceable cogs, you've made sure no one sees the full picture
- on top of what others have said - directing you to the app and login - it’s also likely just that teams don’t talk and make decisions that solve their local issue without too much for the whole, and then say “ugh team x solved this so inelegantly! we were forced to do our thing that wasn’t as nice!”

GIVE US YOUR DATA GIVE US YOUR DATA GIVE US YOUR DATA
- PLEASE HERE TAKE IT
  (Just please stop yelling at me)

I will say that the Google Auth prompt in particular is just this huge nuisance and a horrible experience. People should feel stupid for including it in their web experience.
- Wait, how can I get rid of google auth pop-ups? I got Ublock but they still come up whenever I go to a reddit page.
  
  The "Sign in with Google" popups on virtually every site? It's nuts. I was just trying to figure this out today. Try these or these.
- Wait, people choose to put it in their website??
  
  Yes. How else would it get there?

If this was your webpage 15 years ago, you'd be almost certain that you'd been infected with malware.
- I really really do miss old school internet and feel kinda bad for people who never get to experience it. I know i sound like a cunt, and maybe it's just nostalgia, but when the internet was bound to a computer and it was mainly "nerds" using it, it was such a better time. I remember a time where the internet was fast enough for pictures and small videos, but having your own picture somehow on the internet was witchcraft to me. Scanner, cameras who are digital whaaat? Now most of the internet is ads and pictures of people who i don't give a shit about. People's opinion, picture of people, fuck off bring back the time where the internet was either forums or someone's weird website, where you only stumbled upon because you typed in a web adress i. The hopes it leads you somewhere.
  I had a girlfriend who was truly fascinated by the fact that i don't have social media and that i'm not "on the internet" like she didn't find me and my stupid face anywhere on the web. She was often wondering what i was doing on the internet if i don't have social media, because that was the internet to her. Facebook, instagram, tiktok and youtube.
  
  Whenever I get to a webpage that looks a decade old (like most recently Ventoy) I get hit with a wave of nostalgia. Yeah, it might not look great or be very responsive to my actions, but my god does it feel great to just get thebinfo you need front and center.
  
  She was often wondering what i was doing on the internet if i don’t have social media, because that was the internet to her
  ~ shudders ~
- There was a screenshot I once saw of a Chinese netizen's web browser in the late-2000's, using Internet Explorer 6 and tonnes of third-party toolbars. I think I saw it back when Digg was still a thing. We've now reached the age where major websites are more cluttered with notifications than a malware-infected browser was 15 years ago, and where everybody is tracking everything that you do online.
  25 years ago, we legitimately drove RealNetworks into the ground for a lot less than what we're allowing Google, Microsoft, Meta, X, etc to get away in the modern day.

EU: "You can't just collect people's data, you have to ask permission first and give people the opportunity to decline."
Site Developers: "Fine, but we're going to comply in the most malicious manner possible."
HEY DO YOU WANT COOKIES ARE YOU SURE PLEASE HIT THE BIG BLUE BUTTON FOR COOKIES THEY ARE HELPFUL AND GOOD PLEASE GIVE COOKIES!!!!!
- It'd be fun if the EU started policing any use of the phrase "We are required to show this dialog".
  They're not. They choose to show that dialog so that they can try to apply commercial tracking cookies. Anything for website function is already covered by EU laws.
  
  There have been a couple of changes to the rule since it came into effect. Originally, the pop up could effectively occlude the "Do Not Enable Cookies" button behind a maze of "Optional" settings. The end result was a big colorful "I Consent" button and a tiny little gear button with a thousand manual checkboxes to uncheck every time you visited the site.
  The regulations were updated since. Now these annoying pop-ups at least tend to have a clearly defined "Yes, I Consent" / "No, I Do Not" at equal scale and opposite color, allowing you to bypass it without going into the weeds on a configuration screen.
- It's hilarious on a widescreen setup how many websites aren't adaptive but that cookie pop-up blocks 3/4 in 5000% font size.

That screenshot looks like the old screenshots from the early browser wars with 20 toolbars stacked.

Visiting the corpse of Twitter was your first mistake
- Digital necrophilia...

We can sell 80 percent of the screen without inducing seizures!
- *without reaching statistically relevant levels of seizure induced deaths.
  
  *without being sued for more than we would make from seizure induced deaths

The different popups just show how bad design the web is today.
Ask cookie question is required.
Login? Always create an account and proceed with all signup questions.
Agreement? Read them 1 hour until you have understood everything.
Webbrowser: can I get your location? And please the mic and video too!
Finally, don't forget the ads!
- Agreement? Read them 1 hour until you have understood everything.
  I one time for fun (cause I'm insane) read the entire Windows license agreement, MSA (Microsoft Services Agreement), and privacy policy. It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes, I timed it.
  
  I could imagine they'd be interested in you over here: Tosdr.org
  
  Back on my Xbox 360 I decided to scroll through the agreement just to see how long it would take. I didn't read it: I just held down the stick to see how long it would take.
  I gave up after 40 minutes of scrolling.
  
  Thank you for your sacrifice
  
  Wow. Is it even legal to have it that long?
  I bet a lot was of details were missing in there as well.
- Ask cookie question is required.
  Thank the European bureaucrats that don't understand technology.
  
  No, it's the website's fault. You only need explicit consent if you're tracking users beyond what your service obviously requires to function, the problem is these sites are stalking you.
  And if it's even slightly harder to decline than to accept they're likely not in compliance anyway so it's definitely not the EU's fault.
  
  Sure, but can we at least agree that 800 "partners" is a tad too much?

This kind of thing getting worse and worse at all levels of tech is increasingly pushing me to the fringes of tech solutions (with all of the handicaps that come with that) as those are getting to be the only places where this kind of thing is not pervasive.
No apps on phone, if the mobile site doesn't work it can wait until I am in front of a desktop/laptop
No NFC payments as that requires the phone to be blessed by lord Google or father Apple
No set top streaming boxes on the TV, just a small Linux powered PC and a cheap Logitech wireless keyboard/trackpad
Only Linux OSes on desktop/laptop
- Yup, I'm in exactly the same boat. I just got a new phone and decided to not install any banking apps whatsoever. I got a check in the mail, and instead of giving in and installing the app, I just drove a mile to an ATM. NBD, and I don't have to see endless nags about banking features, credit scores, etc.
  I'm not part of your system... MAN!, but actually serious.
  
  I have found that local banks like credit unions, and such, seem to have nicer mobile apps from my experience.
  I have worked as a software engineer for a smaller bank like this, and the development was a lot more honest. These kind of banks normally just want a pleasant user experience for their customers, unlike bigger banks that want to deploy all sorts of dark patterns to collect user data and sell extra stuff to their customers.
- At least you can force desktop mode on most sites. No mobiles apps, desktop mode on phone. Usually.
- I’m headed in that direction.
  Minimal apps on my phone, most of them foss apps to access my self hosted services
  Raspberry pi 4 running osmc connected to our TV. TV itself has no internet connection
  Want to move to graphene os, but riding this iphone 12 mini until it dies
  Linux on my server and my primary computer. Have an M1 Mac Mini that my wife primarily uses (too many papercuts for her with asahi linux. We tried and switched back), and iPadOS on the iPad Pro that I have that I’m also riding until it dies.

It took long enough but the pop-ups evolved into new pop-ups.

Did someone say... cookies?
I can just tell that whenever Twitter's user interface has weak attempts at humour, it was put there during the previous ownership, and that just makes me sad.
Like when you delete your account the final message says "#Goodbye", I was tearing up, thinking, like, shit, Musk really fucked everything up, did he?
- Musk made it even worse but Twitter was already shit before Musk
- Musk really fucked everything up, did he?
  Other than no longer being able to use an app to access twitter, I haven't noticed anything else changing for the worse. They even made the "media" tab into grid rather than list which was a welcome update.
  
  How about just the userbase? I'd say that changed for the worse. A lot worse. And if you don't think so, I hope you enjoy yelling about Jews at your next khakis and tiki torches march.

Anybody know why google has a popup on every major website now? And more importantly, how to get rid of that without creating an account?
- uBlock Origin Filter:
  ||smartlock.google.com
  ||accounts.google.com/gsi/$3p
  ||id.google.com^
  ||accounts.google.com/gsi/*$xhr,script,3p.
  
  You mean uBlock Origin, right?
  
  It works 🫡 thank you 😊
- Disable all third party JS in uBlock origin
  
  this comment will not get any upvotes from anyone who follows it 😁
  
  That can cause the page to fail to load in some instances.

It's kind of bothersome how almost blind I am to them now. I habitually find a way to close them without having to read or focus my eyes on anything. That's not to say it isn't still an annoyance.
- This is so common it has a name, it’s called banner blindness.
  One of the important aspects of interface design is supposed to be not showing alerts for everything, so that when they pop up you feel compelled to pay attention.
  Not long ago a nurse killed an older woman by giving her the wrong medicine; she took accountability but called out that the software they use provides so many alerts that (probably unofficial) policy was to just click through them to get to treating the patient. One of those alerts was a callout that the wrong dosage was selected and she zoomed right by it out of habit.
  
  Another term I seen in the context of healthcare is alert fatigue:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue
  Alarm fatigue or alert fatigue describes how busy workers (in the case of health care, clinicians) become desensitized to safety alerts, and as a result ignore or fail to respond appropriately to such warnings.[1] Alarm fatigue occurs in many fields, including construction[2] and mining[3] (where vehicle back-up alarms sound so frequently that they often become senseless background noise), healthcare[4] (where electronic monitors tracking clinical information such as vital signs and blood glucose sound alarms so frequently, and often for such minor reasons, that they lose the urgency and attention-grabbing power which they are intended to have), and the nuclear power field. Like crying wolf, such false alarms rob the critical alarms of the importance they deserve. Alarm management and policy are critical to prevent alarm fatigue.

The absolute lack of any kind of consistency with layout or alignment makes me cringe too.
It's just shows how they're just glued onto the page with no care or planning. Especially no consideration to the user or user experience.
- I've been saying the same for tv commercials. I've always hated them but they were built into the episodes, now they jump scare mid sentence and come back to another speaking.
  I sail quite often but the wife likes the convenience, so.
  It all sucks and getting suckier!
- Oh I didn't even notice that, now I can't unsee it. Thanks (I hate it), I guess?
- The absolute lack of any kind of consistency with layout or alignment makes me cringe too.
  My guess is they're all built by different teams that didn't reuse any of the code written by the other teams. Ideally you're supposed to have a design system with standards for this, but I think all the good developers left (or were fired from) Twitter when Musk took over.
  
  Yeah I agree

Then companies like..."dont use adblock"

I LOATHE that fucking google sign in overlay.
- Omg fuck that thing so hard I hate it
  
  Hey you want to read this article why don't you sign into Google? Why I can already see it

A porn site a friend of mine sometimes visits pops up a "sign in with Google" banner when you visit without annoyance blocker, and a "like this on Facebook" when you open a video.
- Dont be a pussy, do it!
  
  oops, forgot to sign out of the church account. This will be a learning opportunity!
  
  Found Ted Cruz's fediverse account?

web 1.0 wasn't flashy but it got the point across. bring it back.
- As you wish: https://wiby.me/surprise/
  
  That white text on gray background. What a design choice.
  Aesthetic > readability. The user can just select all on the page if they want to actually read it, right?
  Edit: It was pointed out to me that this brings up a random URL every time someone clicks it, so everybody is not seeing the same thing. Whoops.
  
  being back walkmans and discmans too

xcancel.com ftw
- Cancel X period brbgoatftw

The corporates keep finding ways to reintroduce the same shitty popup ads from the 90s to defeat whatever's been put in place to keep it from happening. Absolutely no sense of nuance. It's not the specific delivery mechanism users dislike, it's the whole terrible UX pattern. Stop trying to make me do shit that's not what I'm trying to do!

X gon give it to ya

This is the digital equivalent of walking through an open air market and having salespeople harass and follow you trying to sell something
- The rare Gigachad double top level comment. Well played sir.

Gemini is an attempt at trying to bring the old web back, although with some technical limitations.
- I heavily disagree with this. Stepping back to "walls of text with hyperlinks" is a bad idea that'll service no one and will never succeed in any reasonable capacity.
  Current web technology is not what caused bad web. The exception would be too powerful js where js should only provide interactivity and extra flavor to the page rather than run a full application which can fingerprint and punish user agents.
  Javascript, embeded images and audio are awesome things that can improve content readability a thousand fold. Just look at best docs on the web - all of them use these features to tend their users. Even wikipedia added js flavoring like hover pop ups. Because it works.
  
  I actually prefer a mostly text web. If the trade off for ditching JavaScript is not getting hovering pop ups, I'm fine with that. I think that while JavaScript can help with usability, it's main use right now is being a pain in the ass. Images and video are useful, don't get me wrong, and that will always be the most popular "use" of the internet, but most of the time I just want to go on the Internet and read cool shit without fifty different corporations trying to fuck me over with the promise of "enhanced usability". Like a link has to have some floating bullshit for me to click it. Absolute madness.
- While the web is looked at as a superstore rather than a library, function will dictate form.

https://xcancel.com/HexOS_Official

try opening fanwiki in a phone
- Oh yeah, these unrelated autoplay videos are a great pleasure to stop and hide when scrolling. Waste of internet traffic.
- For minecraft players: Remember to only open minecraft.wiki links

Never thought I'd miss frames. Though really, I always wondered exactly why they got dogpiled into nonexistence. Formatting issues?
- Security nightmare as well
- I imagine coding frames so that they worked well on both desktop and mobile would be a major pain in the ass.
  
  They died well before mobile formatting was a concern. I suppose other aspect ratios were getting more popular then. That and the security issues the other poster mentioned probably contributed.

Hahaha I had the exact same reaction and made an almost identical screenshot of this eyecancer…
- Why are you all on X/Twitter? It's utter trash, I just avoid the whole thing.
  
  I’m not on Twitter, or any social platform, but sometimes a link leads met to a post or an account. Et voilà!
  
  As evidenced by all the prompts, we aren't! But it's still the best place to get the latest info from some companies

I set 2 different people up with revanced over the weekend. I thought I'd typed in the wrong URL because I'm on Firefox mobile and both of them are on Chrome mobile. Literally looks like an entirely different site. On Chrome it's got a big fancy logo at the top, ads....fucking....everywhere...
On Firefox(with various blockers and anti trackers etc etc) it's a plain white page with a bold title and small blurb then links to the various apks. Took me a minute to even figure out where the link for the manager was.....
- Might be better to install it through Obtanium by adding this link https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager
  
  Cheers

Just gotta love what Elon did with the place. Not that it was great before, but now it looks and feels like a seedy Thai hooker palace

I just set all the twitter and meta domains to localhost in my hosts file; no accidental clicks that go through for me :)

Google and YouTube are pretty fucking bad without an ad-blocker installed. From someone who has worked in jobs where I may as well have called myself a 'Professional Googler' and where I do not have permissions to install an ad-blocker on my work computer, the amount of ads I get buried with really sours the experience.
Also, a lot of news sites (particularly anything owned by Reach PLC such as the Mirror) are now flipping the middle-finger at GDPR by forcing users to pay to reject tracking cookies. Here's a screengrab from the Daily Mirror website...
- How do you not have permission to install an ad-blocker? lol
  
  I don't work in IT, and a lot of bigger companies (my employer included) have restrictions on what employees can install on their work machines. It's basic security measures to prevent malware infections.
- How will Daily Mirror remember I paid if they are not storing any cookies for me as they promise? Also,asking to pay just for valuing your privacy, I don't assume this payment will lead to removal of ads or any more exclusive benefits.

I've become quite picky about what sites I visit because of this, and it's why I don't like opening links. I know you can block this crap, but it's seldom worth the effort.

This is something I like to use ublock origin for. Like, blocking ads is nice, but I also love just clearing out clutter from websites.
- Ublock, doesnt block the google login, th cookiebanner and the shitty login question of twitter itself. I looks exactly like that with ublock.
  
  Yeha but it's very easy to set up filters for those kind of elements
  
  uBlock Origin can block whatever you want. That's one of the major features of ad/content blocking extensions - you can write your own rules/lists.
  
  I'm not on Twitter so I haven't tried cleaning it up, but it's super easy to select additional elements to block, I do it all the time to clean visuals rather than block ads.

instagram's login pop-ups will appear if you have seen like 12 posts of a user. that's really annoying. if you are on mobile and open instagram on the browser and then log in, instagram still asks you to log in. how weird!
- I don't have Instagram and when friends send links from it I don't even try anymore.
  
  Pro tip: you can turn the link into ddinstagram to embed on services like Discord and other ones with embeds. This way you don't have to visit the site