Technology

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.

https://privacypass.github.io/ has helped somewhat

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.

It's intentional, they want you logged in so they can track what you're doing

Anyone can make a good website. It takes a real engineer to make a horrible website that people will use just enough while suffering.

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.

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.

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.

*without reaching statistically relevant levels of seizure induced deaths.

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.

Musk made it even worse but Twitter was already shit before Musk

uBlock Origin Filter:

||smartlock.google.com
||accounts.google.com/gsi/$3p
||id.google.com^

||accounts.google.com/gsi/*$xhr,script,3p.

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.

Dont be a pussy, do it!