3w ago

What is the worst website you have ever been on?

I'd like to see just how horrible someone can make a site. Facebook is a good contender.

147 comments

x.com

Pintrest is the worst website ever built and has caused immense damage to the free sharing of information.
- Together with Quora. Search engine pollution.
  
  There was about ten minutes there when Quora was Yahoo! Answers for people who passed the Apgar test.
- I legitimately don't know why Google hasn't filtered it out of image search results. It's harmful to Google's platform.
  
  It's the top rated blocked website on Kagi.
  I don't know why Google doesn't take a hint.
- me: oh hey I was looking for--
  Pinterest: Sign in or I will come to your house and break your thumbs
  me: well fuck you too then
- It was actually pretty cool when I started and real people used it.
  
  Honestly don't get why they're still around and what they do.

Try using Instagram without an account and no app, basically impossible.
- The only way I've worked out how to even save Instagram images locally is using the page information (ctrl+i) Media tab in Firefox and sort through it to find it there. Terrible for an image hosting website.
  
  It's not an image hosting site, it's a social media site whose goal is to keep you coming back for more. The easier it is for you to save their content locally, the less likely you are to spend as much time on their site.
- It's doable if you open everything in new tabs. Still not a good experience though.
  
  Good to know in a pinch! Luckily I never had to spend time there.

Seemingly every recipe website. They tell a long, unrelated story, cover the page with ads, popups, slideouts, timer triggered ads, videos, etc.
It's almost impossible to see the recipe under all the crap.
- These were some of the first sites to be enshittified. The more you scroll that more ad revenue they got. So they hid the actual recipes and steps under a back story longer than the dune books that forced you to scroll and hit ad after ad.
  
  A lot of these have a link near the top to go straight to the recipe, which helps me avoid much of the dreck.

I thought Twitter was a stupid idea when it first started. 140 character limit? What the fuck is the point? The fact they increased that limit shows it was dumb. Everything else about the site just gives further reason to hate it.
- That limit came from the days of SMS. The idea was that you can't go to the internet, because data is expensive, the network doesn't exist, your dumb phone can't even open websites etc. However, you can send SMS messages, and those things have a 160 character limit.
  
  Do does that mean they took an existing limitation from the SMS protocol, that didn't apply because it used data instead and then shoehorned it into a godawful web 2.0 monstrosity all the same (and bear in mind, this is significantly reducing the unnecessary character limit!)
- It's still very stupid, character limit increase or not.

ticketmaster.com

How are we measuring?
Global harmful impact: it's hard to beat Facebook
Disgusting: long ago, I got a spam advertising a dedicated CSAM site. I looked to see it it was really what it said, and sent it to NCMEC when I saw that is was
Actively malign: 8chan is up there, as are old fashioned hate groups.
- I kinda meant horrible design, but I guess these categories are good measurements too

4chan. When I saw a German shepherd get hit in the face with a shovel full force, I decided the site wasn't for me.
- Ya no. That's when I quit too. That place's ~~hollow~~ got no humanity left.
  
  It was like 20 years ago when I saw it. It never really had any humanity.
- Unfortunately people always go on the "shock site" boards like /b/ and /pol/ instead of checking out the more niche ones like /po/ (papercraft and origami) and /tg/ (traditional games) which are much more like regular hobbyist forums/image boards. I can see why one awful experience would sour the whole thing though and some of the people who post there are sad excuses for human beings.
  Edit: Just as an example this is the oldest thread on 4chan at the moment. It was created in 2016 and is still active. It catalogues OP's struggle to make an origami clock.
  
  the idea of someone unironically using 4chan to chat about origami is so funny to me

Reddit.
Fragile Mods. Shitty trolls. Dishonest engagements. Little to no good discussion. Opinions are seen as attacks. Power-tripping users and mods alike. Karma removed.
- And now, more bots than ever!
  
  Just less users, making the bots more visible. You've had repost bots all through, we just assumed it was actual people trying to score cheap karma.
- Can't stand the staleness. Apart from the frigging bots and automods, it feels like a bunch of boring, shallow, sated establishment guys that like "pretending that one could be hip with a mortgage payment," as Bela Koe-Krompecher once put it.

meatspin.com
An absolute classic
- You spin me right round baby right round.
  Lord I remember my friends throwing this shit on school computers...
- Goatse raises an objection.
- You spin a wheel and they ship you free meat. I couldn't disagree with you more. I recommend anyone try it out. I don't know why it exists, but my freezer is stocked.
- Flo Rida ruined meatspin for me.
- Reminds me of freshman year in college… people would sneak into each others rooms and put it up on each other’s computers, trying to see if they could set a record for most spins.

Ogrish.
Doesn't exist any more, but definitely traumatized me as a child.
If you haven't heard of it, it was basically a video hosting site focusing on extreme violence and gore.
Tons of clips of people being killed or horrifically maimed in war, car accidents, industrial accidents, 'extreme' magic shows gone wrong, brutal gang attacks, straight up snuff videos...
Some videos off the top of my head I won't ever be able to erase from my memory:
The beheading of Daniel Pearl.
Low resolution video of 9/11, but you could make out people jumping from the towers... and splattering all over the ground. The camera man tracked people the entire distance they fell.
Some insane magic show gone wrong where a man chain sawed his wife in half ... she hadn't managed to fold herself into the right position inside the magic box... her screams and twitching legs were not an act.
A video taken in Fallujah (I think?) of an Iraqi hopped up on an absurd amount of drugs, taken from a US soldier who had just dismounted with most of his squad from a humvee.
Him and others advance down the middle of a street towards the soldiers, all holding AKs. A volley of fire from the dismounted soildiers either took out all the group, leaving them with chunks blown off, writhing in agony, or scattering...
Except this one guy. He's clearly seriously wounded, but is still advancing basically blind firing his AK.
The US soldiers are in shock that he's still walking.
Now for a burst from a 50 cal.
Huge parts of this guy's body are visibly blown off of him, but he still advances.
A second, more sustained 50 cal burst basically liquifies him where he stood.
- That and rotten.com have been responsible for a lot of my insomnia, and probably a good chunk of my misanthropy.
  You can't unsee things, folks. Don't give in to the temptation. It's not worth it.
  
  rotten.com actually was a protest website that was supposed to be the last bastion of online freedom of speech.
  it was a fucking eyesore for Gore and mistress Tipper.
  Remember--when they go low and refuse to let you go high, fucking bury them.
  
  2 guys 1 hammer is no joke
  
  Ehhh I was on stile, ogrish, rottten very young, then /b/ when it first came out, then WPD, eyeblech, NSFW__, etc and I’m doing great. Some folks handle things differently… I’ve seen worse stuff than any of those sites and while it was horrible stuff, I’m aite

8chan
Literally 4chan, but worse.
- How do you even land there?
  I only know 4chan through comments, I wouldn't even bother looking for another site like that lol.
  
  4chan wasn't even the first, it was an English version of a japanese site (futaba channel) which was an image board version of a forum (2channel).
  Back in the late aughts, there were a ton of *chan sites. Some even more unsavory than 4chan.

With Facebook and x.com you pretty much understand the risks going in.
But with stack overflow there's so much naivete required to create an account and begin asking questions. The good stuff is laid out right in front of you: people asking similar questions and getting thoughtful responses to deeply technical questions. It feels rewarding to get your first answer approved.
But then after months of "trying" you hit the wall. A sudden deluge of hostility and toxicity. Bipolar moderation staff suddenly deciding your content has no value and dumping you on a curb at night with a shitty smug comment, to the applause of bloodthirsty hoards of bootlicking trolls.
Nothing could have prepared you for this. It's hell. All of your work for nothing, any chance of justice or restitution gone. Every promise broken.
It's insidiously evil and I hope every member of their staff (unpaid moderators included) goes bankrupt and loses their home to foreclosure.
- Yeah, I'm really happy for GPT for this alone. It minimised my exposure to SO.

horserentals.com
- You can, by going to the coupon page of this Web Site, print out coupons for trail rides and receive great discounts.
- This one is gold
  
  Blue, actually. Very, very, very blue.
- I like the random red button on the left with no description. Had to click
- The color blue is not for rent, they're giving that shit away.
- The site says it's closing August of 2020...
- I... Why that sounds dangerous?

literally any restaurant website. I disabled Facebook from my entire network (pihole).
I can no longer order food on a website because Facebook is deadzoned.
Also, about half of big box brick and mortar online stores stopped working as well.

Nextdoor has gotta be in the top 10.
- It is amazing how toxic people on that site are. Especially when you consider it's not anonymous and the people are literally in your neighborhood
  
  It's a shitshow. LinkedIn, too.

In terms of social, political, and geopolitical harm, no platform beats Facebook. At least in X there are community notes. In Facebook, none of that.

Eons ago I made a shocksite-"game" where you basically could trick people into visiting, and you got a point for each unique visit. The site was basically a collage of the usual, such as goatse, tubgirl, et.al. I guess that was the worst, and putting no effort into the design didn't help either. Once the /b/-tards on 4chan found out about it, traffic really skyrocketed.
Anyways, years went by, and I didn't have time or interest in maintaining it anymore, so I let the domain name Expire. I chuckled a bit a while back when I realized that the domain had been bought by a jewelry brand, and they used it as a webshop. If only they knew the history.. they obviously haven't checked out the internet archive for that domain.

Spotify. Only website/service that makes their service intentionally worst and people still pay for it

Publisher's Clearing House.
So this company has ads on local free tv stations in the US about how you could win $5000 a week for life, but when you go to the website it's like 97% ads and maybe 2% contests, and some contests are straight up unenterable if you have an adblocker. Then before you can officially enter, you have to go through 3 pages of 'as seen on tv' crap that it tries to sell you before you can finish entering. Also it lags like a motherfucker with or without an adblocker, cause there's so many ads taking up that much bandwith, cause heaven forbid a webpage ad be a static image. And of course you have to have an account, so your spam folder and paper mailbox fill up with the worst things possible.

I think the time I was like 7 and was looking at hamster photos on Google to print and cut out. Scrolling along I couldn't find any that looked exactly like my hamster named Cinnamon after a black streak along his back.
Getting to the 3rd or 4th "load more" buttons on Google and it started showing me stuff that wasn't hamsters I got desperate. I saw there were a few images that had text along the top and bottom, "for more cute hamster photos go to xhamster.com".
So naturally, I went there.
Turns out xhamster.com was not a site where hamsters share selfies and is, instead, pornography.

fcc.gov. Those goddamn "Sign into the Federal Fucked Up Document System with your FFUDS PIN now" things that just don't actually work. The layers of garbage between you and renewing an amateur radio certificate is truly Idiocratic.
- I just did my GMRS a few months ago. That site is a dumpster fire.
- This sounds very similar to the Kentucky online portal for teacher certification. It looks like it was made in 1996, and it functions slightly less well than it looks like it should.

Comcast. I dare you to try to cancel or change your cable and internet package.
- I finally got my appleTV subscription cancelled, and that took three fucking tries. No, I don't have an iPhone or an appleTV unit, so I'm now free.

Lately, google.com has been absolute trash.
- The landing page for Google looks fine and clean and everything but look at the source and you see an absolute nightmare
  
  Well, the source is minified, so yeah, it’ll look horrendous. Most JavaScript/HTML/CSS is minified on tech company websites though.

Stileproject and rotten.com were absolute horror shows. Stileproject just seems to be porn now, but I saw a photo once in like 2005 or so of a guy standing on his head with his legs apart with a full size fire extinguisher jammed deeply into his ass.
- Ooooo you must be between the ages of 35 and 43 if you’ve been to old-school* stileproject! What a throwback!
  
  I'm 50. We do know about the internet!
- Tame by extreme internet shock content standards
  
  Well it was quite a sight back then when porn wasn't quite so niche.
  There was also a guy on Tumblr who seemed to have turned his entire colon inside out.

Adobe.
Once, you sign in, good luck finding anything you need.

It's hard to pick out one as THE worst, but generally, if I have to use the site for some external reason, the experience is awful.
Health insurance, doctor's offices, etc are generally pretty bad. Oddly, tax sites aren't as rough.
Also oddly, vacation related websites are awful.

Terms and conditions apply. This site was intentionally made to be as infuriating as possible.
- Same here. It worked a few minutes ago, but I guess Lemmy hugged it to death in the meanwhile.
- That was fun!
  But I don't get the one with
  "Answer very, very carefully. Do you agree to the terms & conditions?"

Almost any "pop" news / science / gossip / chat / lifestyle article site with ad and pop-up blockers off. Just. Jesus Christ. What the fuck. The fact that some people browse the internet like this... AND the fact some people actually made it in the first place..

Ratemypoo
- I only know of this site because a friend submitted one he called “The Tempest”

When I was a lot younger and dumber I used to hang out on 4chan. Still can’t unsee shoveldog
- I'll bite.
  4chan both is and is many different places at once.
  It's a huge retro gaming community, a rather tame cosplay community, a fantastic literature community, the largest individual DOOM community on the entire internet, a played entirely straight paranormal board that will take you seriously in many instances, and one of the best music forums on the internet, not to mention many of our first introductions to arch and Gentoo came from /g/, and that fancy neofetch you all like so much(quit using it).
  SURROUNDED BY pedophiles, nazis, lolcows, narcissists and trolls.
  
  That's correct. Then 2016 happened and infected the whole website.
  
  Yeah and /wg/ is pretty good so long as you scroll past the fash threads.
  The decent communities give legitimacy to /pol/

Time Cube (now archived). I feel bit bad saying it, but omg the layout. It was bad even by 90s standards.
Edit: the creator died in 2015.
Edit2: CW, anti-queer rhetoric, but I find it very hard to take it seriously in the midst of waves hands vaguely at the rest of the website
- Thanks for the flashback
  
  Have some brain bleach: a hamster dance clone.

Usually webapps.
- Ugh, still to this day, persistant file storage is either "the cloud" or file APIs that altho secure, don't allow for saving overtop of existing files. really annoying.

Yeah, probably mobile Facebook, Pinterest, or Reddit mobile.

In terms of terrible design choices, the TempleOS home page ranks pretty high.
- It's the way God intended.
- Was this designed by the “CIA n…”?
  Random racism aside, RIP king
- ehh it's fine. color contrast looks like it could pass WCAG AA

Yelp

For horrible design, spam.com does really well

Rule 34?

I once had to use the NY State government website for info. Finally found the page. Open page up and see a blue background with dark blue font. Un fucking readable.

ED’s “offended” page. IYKYK.
- Thank you for unlocking all the repressed memories.
- I do not know, what is that?
  
  Encyclopedia Dramatica was KnowYourMeme but for teenage boys who think calling some one a fggt/goatse is the peak of comedy. The “offended” page was just a lot of shock imagery - gay porn, gore, vomit, shit (iirc it also played stuff at max volume). It’d be linked on articles that were less than nice.

Some government created sites I had to use for byrocratic reasons.

myspace

DHL.
Website designed by hateful people who seem to make it as hard as possible to pay duty fees on parcels.

Oh I forgot Tumblr. I had to create an account to see a thing once, I saw all the users there and I left, never looked back, cringe ass place. Is like being in one of those weird cons with furries...

mvg.de

Anything owned by billionaires.

147 comments