1mo ago

Websites: Then vs Now

80 comments

Eh....This is a little rose coloured glasses. Anyone else remember the pre-adblock era of umpteen pop-up ads?
- A crummy history of ads on the internet:
  Starts out mostly used in formal fields and universities. Very usable!
  Businesses get on board and start the horrible ad infestation, leading to scammers and popup hell duw to misuse of a feature.
  Ad blockers start to reign in that shit, and the better browsers kill the popup infestation at the source. Pretty darn usable at this point, except for internet explorer.
  Google, an ad company, decides to make a browser so they can do all the malicious advertising and tracking on the backend.
  uBlock Origin is too effective at blocking the browser based tracking and advertising so google decided to do the manifest 3 or whatever that bullshit is called to openly force ads onto users.
  Based on history, I expect chrome to die a slow death due to the backlash from the manifest crap, but could be wrong since people are apparently fine with ads being forced into streaming services.
  
  Businesses get on board and start the horrible ad infestation
  There were a couple years where businesses were "entering cyberspace" and still trying to figure it out. Mostly this involved static webpages, since they saw the web as a kind of yellow pages. i.e. a business' web page was their ad.
  people are apparently fine with ads
  It amazes me how accepting most people are of ads. I suspect Google's going to win, and their ultimate contribution to humanity will be forcing ads into everything.
  
  I think the difference is that there is not really a Netflix-without-the-ads alternative for the same price. And if you are willing to pay a bit more, well, you can just pay for the higher tier of Netflix without ads.
  With browsers on the other hand, it's all free with virtually no barrier to switching. So I think people will defect away a lot more quickly when a browser starts to worsen in quality (especially since Chrome doesn't have Daddy Microsoft to force users to use it by default)
- pop-up ads? Ha... try pop-UNDER ads.
  also can't have ads when there is no javascript to begin with. Just static content.
  
  hah, forgot img tags?
- Not to mention the internet wasn't as secure as it is now. There was lots of malicious code everywhere. Oh, and if you write a typo in any website's name there was a 50/50 chance you'll be redirected to porn.
  
  There's vastly more malicious code now than there was back then. Every company that has an online presence is constantly under attack. Constantly. There isn't an IPv4 address that exists that isn't scanned and have an attempt at hacking performed within seconds of being connected.
  Not only that but today's malicious code is much better at what it does with hundreds of amazing features and methods of branching out using different attack methods. Today's malware is so good it updates itself very carefully/as secretly as possible so that some old compromised machine that no one thinks about anymore can become the next vector of attack inside your network.
  All it takes is one active vulnerability
  Keep all your shit up to date, people! When was the last time you checked your router to see if it had updates? Hmm‽
  
  Imagine my surprise when Spider-Man.com lead to marvels website but Xmen.com lead to porn
  
  It was such a time saver...
- I think this entire response thread is too young. Back when you connected to the Internet with 14.4k and 28k modems (mid to late 90's), websites were as OP described. Simply put, there was no bandwidth for too much extra crap.
  
  I started using Internet in 2004 (as a school kid) so i didn't actually experience modem Internet era, but still i miss it (i'm kind of nostalgia guy as well)
  Especially in Poland, where for a long time there was only dial-up Internet connection with 3-minute impulse (where each one was kinda expensive at the time), so you wanted to open as many websites in this timeframe that interested you then disconnect
- Came here to say this. They make a joke about how many adds are on the Internet in an episode of Futurama that aired in 2000.
- I remember using internet in mid to late 90s and there were no ads, maybe OP means that period?
- I remember hunting for the actual "Download" button. Got pretty good at it I would say.

You are the millionth visitor to this site!! Click here to claim your prize now!
Let's not fool ourselves, adverts were always there and intrusive, remember those hotbars that your parents would have 100 of installed somehow? Sure things are worse, but they were never perfect.
- Sure, but we had Bonzi Buddy too. These days the best we can hope for is some AI that tells us to eat rocks.

This is a motherfucking website.
- noice
- Who made this?
  
  Since they're talking about JQuery, I think that knowledge is lost to time.
  
  There used to be a link at the bottom for who made it, but it appears to be missing now.

Reeeeeaalllllllyyyy putting on the rose tinted goggles, here...
- Yeah that's not how I remember the early Internet.
  More like gifs everywhere, wild colours, you have to have that fancy html marquee! And terrible layouts, because aligning divs is difficult.
  Good times
  
  don't forget autoplay video and music
  
  Those mouse cursor tracers lol
  
  Why deal with float when you can use a table?
  
  divs were added in the late 90's.... that is not what I'd call early internet
- I remember clicking on a website and getting ABSOLUTELY BOMBSRDED WITH NEVERENDING POPUPS OF HARDCORE PORN PICS AND SOUND and my parents were behind me, and you just panic reboot the computer.
  
  "I was searching around the Internet... Mom- Mom! I was-"

- Ah yes. Before the dark times. When dragons lay sleeping.

the biggest mistake of humanity was (and still is) javascript
- One ring to bind them all...

Are Temu the ones who say "pretend you're a billionaire" or something but their ads always have the most bizarre, undesirable-looking, nasty, cheap, plastic things in them?
- Yep. That's the ones. Or really pornographic or absurd. Cause buying more makes you feel like you have control of your life when you can buy a new shirt that dissolves when you wash it because you can't afford to take a day off to walk around a park.
- "Shop like a billionaire"
  "Uh, ok"
  closes Temu app, calls Sotheby's

Missed the half-dozen boilerplate SEO sites that scraped the most generic and unhelpful information possible that feature links to whatever barely tangential software or product they might be selling.

Why aren't you using ublock origin like a rational adult?
- l use it

I would add that if isa News website, the 1000 words article is just a verbatim copy from Reuters.
I want more info about [something happening], not to read the same article with minimal information again and again.

I think the best way to make the Internet less sh*tty is to get away from Google search.
I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not google ranked ones.
https://search.inetol.net/
It's also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:
https://searx.space/
- I switched to DuckDuckGo a while back and even that was beneficial. I can always tell when I'm on a different machine and I forget to switch the default search... It's wild how fast they've fallen.
  These days I setup ollama with open webui to host my own ai. Then you can connect Searxng to that and have the AI search the web for you and return no nonsense results.

And politically biased content... fuck you Reddit

Ad-blocker dedectors
buy crap you don't needed
Inrelevant information
SO MANY ADS, INRELEVANT INFORMATION, TRACKERS
- It's getting so hard to find outrelevant results these days.

Don't forget cookie settings notifications and a pop up asking for you to subscribe to an email newsletter.

Algorithms
Algorithms? On my website? It's more likely than you think!
- But not needed.

Apart from usual ubo, reader mode and friends trained eyes are very effective content filter. We all can glance on a search result page or an article and immediately know if it's content or low effort craps.
Stay out of mainstream social media, stop consuming 'feeds'. Stay in the realms of personal sites, blogs and sane link aggregators/rss to keep mental peace of not having to filter garbage with eyes everyday.

Yeah but you get it all 1000 times faster and mum can still use the phone at the same time

I think they forgot to mention ads

For what is worth, I have yet to see a temu ad

Can we please not destroy the word algorithm? It's such a nice word....

"Inrelevant Information"? That's unpossible english!

It's called ublock origin and no script and one other add-on I have on icecat that blocks third-party connections.

Or when the search results say "learn about [thing], [insert adjectives here]" or other bullshit instead of just giving you the answer.

inrilevant

I think most websites have better UI now. Sure not all of them, but generally they are more appealing and easy to navigate from any device.
- Man... Try saying that with a non standard size phone screen... Or the terrible UI to force you into downloading an app.
  Can't even check the balance on a Dave and busters card without a masters degree in computer science.

Ok boomer

80 comments