I’d like to see just how horrible someone can make a site. Facebook is a good contender.
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.
This is a baseless but very reasonable theory - because Pinterest pays them a fuck ton of money.
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.
Used to be an easy way to collect and share photos or something from a website with friends. It was especially useful with things like making a collection of fashion that you liked and then discussing similar fashions with friends. It actually at one point would recognize some pieces of clothing and then create links to buy it. Actually a useful advertising kind of thing IMHO. But it became bloated and full of tracking nonsense rather than helping people share things and so it lost its usefulness. It seems it’s mostly populated by bots now to drive SEO.
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.
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.
And the fact that people flock there despite that is a way I feel more and more distant from humanity…
If you’re running Windows, though, you can use the Snipping Tool to grab the part of the screen you want to save, which may or may not have an image in it.
I prefer the PrintScr key on my keyboard, personally.
Doesn’t that call the same snipping tool? Anyway, saving from source may preserve quality a bit better
I don’t think so. I’ve been using PrintScr longer than the snipping tool has existed.
I’m not sure what “saving from source” would be for a screenshot. What do you mean there?
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.
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.
Adobe.
Once, you sign in, good luck finding anything you need.
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!)
In 2006 the restriction did apply. The idea was that you would type the message on a computer, and let Twitter send a few SMS messages to a small group people.
You weren’t supposed to have millions of followers or write a full length blog post using a hundred short messages. The idea was that you cold reach people quickly even though they didn’t have access to a proper computer or the internet. So much has changed in the past 18 years…
So wait, it would convert them into an SMS for you?
Why bother with the middle man…
Back in the bad old days, messages cost you real world money. If you wanted to reach lots of people by SMS, it would be pretty expensive. Might as well let Twitter pay for the messages, especially when you’re just writing a public announcement.
Still does where I’m from! As to why they front up for the 18 cents (or similar), seems mental
I’ve heard some strange stories about a mysterious land on the other side of a vast ocean. In this far-away land of countless wonders, companies are only symbolically restricted by laws. This means that they can legally exploit their employees and customers in all sorts of creative ways, and charge pretty much whatever they want. Maybe you’ve heard similar wonderful tales as well?
It’s still very stupid, character limit increase or not.
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.
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
Yeah but, counterpoint, can you name any other active online origami communities?
Ya no. That’s when I quit too. That place’s
hollowgot no humanity left.It was like 20 years ago when I saw it. It never really had any humanity.
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.
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
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.
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.
Spotify. Only website/service that makes their service intentionally worst and people still pay for it
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
Thankfully that’s one I’ve only heard about and was wise enough not to watch.
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
Sometimes I think back to the shit we saw, and I’m a little amazed so many of us came out so well.
And then elections happen, and well…
The thing is, none of that stuff bothered me much at the time because I was young (early 20’s) and naive about the long term impact that kind of thing can have on a person. It was voyeuristic thrill seeking and I got my thrills and had no regrets for a long time.
It was later in life as I matured and began to appreciate the complexity and wonder of the world, and my sense of empathy truly blossomed, that the things I saw and heard back then started to weigh on me. And that’s where my “you can’t unsee things” comment serves as a warning.
Yes, everyone is different and will be affected differently by viewing such things. But I think most people are going to suffer trauma from seeing that stuff. I don’t think being negatively affected by it makes someone better, worse, more or less empathetic, etc, than someone who is ‘immune’ to it. People have different strengths. The problem is, it’s hard to tell which way your brain is going to go with that info ahead of time, and your reaction to those memories can change greatly with the passage of time. That’s why I say it’s not worth it. This late in life I don’t need the images of mangled motorcyclists, violent suicides, videos showing scattered burning remains of airshow accident victims, or the untold horrors of wars I never fought in, all seared into my brain. The hilariously ironic part is that I have aphantasia, so while I can’t visualize these things, I can still REMEMBER them and be bothered by them when my mind wanders that way. And aphantasia does nothing about remembering the screams of the people who just lost loved ones in horrible ways.
That stuff didn’t ruin my life. But I’d be better off not having sought it out or seeing so much of it. People should think hard before they decide to put that stuff in their head. It’s hard to get out, sometimes impossible.
That’s completely fair! I’m almost 40 though and I guess I’m just… I didn’t have the same experience. Maybe later on in life? But I don’t think so. I’m not immune to it (or anything), I’m a lot more careful in lite after seeing so many ways to die. But when I think of the things I’ve seen, I’m not bothered.
I used to climb on the roof of my house as a kid and shimmy along the narrow in the middle of the night, just for kicks.
I look back on myself decades later and shudder. I am dead in many parallel worlds.
I also came out fine even if I saw those horrible videos. But it’s a bit sad that it’s so hard to find those kind of websites nowadays. Social media just censors everything.
I miss the good old wild west of the internet.
Saaaaame
