+30 The usability of the internet is worse than it's ever been, amirite?

by bmclaughlin 4 weeks ago

The change in Google search results over the last couple of years is by far the biggest sign that the internet is f'ed. I can't find hardly anything any more. Queries that used to return thousands of pages now return maybe five, half of which are some sort of weird list of tokens on a chinese website.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

OMG THIS. Even when searching the exact words for a small channel after the first 5 results it's like videos with millions of views?

by alvenaschamberg 4 weeks ago

All the greats are neurodivergent or throw ball hard

by bernierotilia 4 weeks ago

The search function on YouTube is completely useless. If I'm looking for a video I'll use a browser search engine, hit the videos tab and find it that way. Still not great, but better than getting literally anything but what I asked for.

by Weary_Tackle3077 4 weeks ago

Oh it's so stupid. You mean to tell me the algorithm can't give me only songs from the specific artist I searched? It has to be dozens of others. And they never have the full list of all songs the artist you searched

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

You know the part in the song you really like? That's the best time to interrupt with commercials!

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Ah yes with completely unrelated videos mixed in that you might also like? Annoying and indeed an ADHD style. They want to exploit distractions, more time = more money. Ethics? no thank you, money to extract at their mental health expense = much better idea

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Is there a search engine you do recommend? Genuine question.

by AlpsElegant1062 4 weeks ago

Same, people are so much more consistent in giving actual good answers than trying to search

by Imaginary-Piano 4 weeks ago

So it isn't just me? I'll google things and get "there were no results" and I'm like… it's a basic question? I'm just stupid and can't remember the answer so what do you MEAN there's no results? It's gotten to the point where I'm about to just go to the library and relearn the search system there. I don't remember the Dewey decimal system but by god I'll relearn it to get away from Google.

by Complete_Leading 4 weeks ago

I'm sitting here wondering if Askjeeves or dogpile are still around

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

That's horrible

by Dear-Marzipan9411 4 weeks ago

Really needs to be fixed, could end up killing someone's pet or even a person if they're trying to google medical advice

by eichmannaustyn 4 weeks ago

Recently I have been defaulting to using Gemini or gpt to search for things. Since it digs through the websites for me I don't have to deal with all the crap that google gives you

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

As a GenX web dev who has been here from the start... you are correct. There was a wonderful 'wild west' for about 10 years. Then the sharks smelled blood and figured out how to monetize it and how to use it to control the perceptions of the masses.

by FaithlessnessIll 4 weeks ago

I've realized this about everything in life. Good things never stay good things for long. You could only hope to be there while things are born before they're bastardized. Only sacred places stay sacred.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

To be fair, mangoes have been pretty awesome for quite some time and there's no signs of slowing down.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Idk man, strawberries used to taste like heaven, now they taste like water and lies.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

50 years from now: remember trees and the colours blue and green?

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

It ended the day the us government killed net neutrality that was the beginning of the end I remember thinking "that's it game over the government can now decide wich sites will run smooth and wich won't.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

This isn't true. The internet started to suck before "net neutrality" was a thing. If you had to point to one factor above all others, I'd argue it was the whole "SEO optimization" practices that really caused the overall downfall. Once the SEO crap went into full effect, you could no longer find what you were actually looking for, but instead found keyword manipulated crap sites, almost always sites trying to sell you something, disguised as a site pretending to give you the information you originally searched for. Add to this the fact that search engines were either unable or unwilling to adapt to SEO rigging practices, is what IMO led to the downfall of the internet.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Even the sites that are trying to give you the information you are looking for have shovelled in so many paragraphs of SEO crap. Or those image slideshows that make you scroll through them to get the information you were looking for.

by schmidtelnora 4 weeks ago

On that note Wikipedia is one of the last pure and wholesome bits of the internet and should be protected at all costs

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

This can be extended to other businesses too. Walmart, for example, was very popular back in 2004 for lowering prices on consumer goods. That popularity was what expanded it to becoming one of the largest companies in the US/world. Once they peaked, prices started to rise and quality started to fall. Today their prices aren't competitive and their employee's are awful. Amazon's online store is going through the same thing.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

With Walmart there's also the awful situation that browsing their website mixes a ton of dropshipping trash in with what Walmart sells because they decided it was somehow a good idea to turn their platform into a third party marketplace.

by schmidtelnora 4 weeks ago

The internet, as in the technology, is quite good. The Web, and the way it's been completely co-opted for profits/marketing, is a great shame. The Web generally hasn't been cool for at least 20 years.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I don't think that's entirely fair, I was still having a pretty sweet time on the internet like 10 years ago.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

2010 was when everything started to crumble.

by Ok_Philosophy_9912 4 weeks ago

Agree. It was somewhere around 2010 when it really started to change. I blame SEO practices, and search engines' refusal to adapt to those practices.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I can't tell you how many cumulative hours I've spent trying to phrase a search in such a way that I actually get the information I want.

by bmclaughlin 4 weeks ago

My favorite part is how Google, in the last few years, now ignores quotations when you're looking for exact spelling or phrasing.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Gen X here, nerd from the Gopher days, completely agree with you. If I told stories about my first school computer lab it would sound somewhere between boomer and caveman to GenZ.

by Prohaskamarquis 4 weeks ago

I agree. In comparison to what the internet was, it's been ruined by corporations like everything else in the world. Including the world itself. I've been online since the 90s when the internet didn't have graphics. The amount of information sharing and learning that took place on BBSes, Usenets, and even MUDs was fantastic. It's much harder to find those spaces now.

by marianneglover 4 weeks ago

This reminded me of the Ready Player 1 thing where the head of that evil corporation was going to make like 80% of the screen into ads to monetize game play. What you're saying is true, but it's still not at the detrimental level that we joke about in pop culture.

by wcassin 4 weeks ago

I just wanna go back to 2015, since then technology hasn't really been making things easier and seems to cause more headaches, the unfortunate thing is that you have to follow along to some extent unless you're a hard ass who's ready to go off grid

by Alone_Onion 4 weeks ago

Or Brave.

by vhermiston 4 weeks ago

You've found the point! Look at all the hoops you need to jump through to make your experience tolerable.

by bmclaughlin 4 weeks ago

I'm completely with you. After Napster I used Audio Galaxy. I also used to use Real Player too for music files if anyone remembers that app. I also used to get on Yahoo chat a lot (before that I used AOL). I miss the old days sometimes, before our information was shared so much.

by Sure_Cheesecake819 4 weeks ago

This! I miss the days of anonymous forums and chatrooms actually being fun. Maybe I just got too old and the novelty wore off.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

ah yes.. I was Napster to Kaza to Direct Connect++ to Torrents. I'm sure there were a few other P2P virus factories in between.

by bmclaughlin 4 weeks ago

Agree but not an unpopular opinion 😅

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

You got some very heavily tinted rose-colored glasses. Remember how you had to click a website then take a bathroom break because of how long it took to load? How there was this huge missing void called YouTube? Or how ChatGPT is going to completely revolutionize things? How if someone called your house, you lost internet connection? How rampant viruses/etc were due to poor security? I'd admit the efficiency of google has gone downhill but it's kind of also getting replaced. YouTube alone is better than anything we ever had combined.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Web search has gotten abysmally bad. Back when it was a neutral tool that crawled and indexed the web and related that corpus to your search, it was great. Not it's totally ‘curated' for commerce… and other things… and it's nowhere near as useful without much more effort, filtering, etc.

by Abject_Suggestion 4 weeks ago

I use Linux and qutebrowser i get no pop ups

by freemanhomenick 4 weeks ago

Might I recommend to you the glorious onion of the dark web. A untamed land of whatever you desire, no data harvesting, no ads, practically no search engines. Just you and a the web.

by Adventurous_Week_895 4 weeks ago

Also regarding mobile browsing, every single website/company wants you to download their stupid app. Like, no. I dont want you taking up space on my device when I can just go to your website!

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

It's unusable at this point. Can't sell anything because of all the nonsense. Can't believe anything you read and there are only scammers and crazies. I'm done with it.

by NoBook2573 4 weeks ago

The internet from the 90s was just heaven. Few people, no rules but somehow we all kept everything very fun and civilized.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

an inevitability i'm afraid. and it applies to almost everything. once more and more people started getting online, eventually, the "wrong types" got on it as well and multiplied, and now here we are. you start admiring more and more people to something and eventually conflicts arise and the systems is overcrowded and the rules change and everything begins to deteriorate and eventually collapse into chaos. welcome to earth.

by EconomistKey4211 4 weeks ago

get off your phone and use a computer...

by Unhappy-Dinner-9802 4 weeks ago

You can't Google for anything anymore.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Unpopular take: maybe this will just make people not want to be on the internet as much

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

How is this unpopular, we all don't agree on this???

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I am a damn Boomer, (75 yr old) and I heartily approve of this rant!!!

by Maggioryann 4 weeks ago

That thing where the lave loads, you go to click something, and the page jumps just as you click, so you end up clicking an ad.

by Odd-Software 4 weeks ago

Every. Single. Time.

by bmclaughlin 4 weeks ago

Also almost every company has an app that you have to download in order to access certain features. I'm so tired of having all these apps on my phone that I rarely use but have to keep in order to access certain things. Such an annoyance.

by Sea-Strategy 4 weeks ago

Coming from Fidonet, and a pre-web internet (go archie and gopher) The internet is far more usable than ever. I agree many sights are overloaded with ads and stuff that I don't want. But getting the information I want has never been easier. ​ Also regarding RAM usage, I think this is a silly concern, so what it's using memory that would otherwise be idle. if it makes my usage faster good.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Like a lot of things it was good when it was only for people. Ruined when companies joined in.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Static html pages were great. Or simple generated html without JavaScript. Like old school 90s gamefaqs

by Appropriate_Phone602 4 weeks ago

Yes but its the best than it will ever be

by Top_Hovercraft_5392 4 weeks ago

De-googling is always an option. I am trying it.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I kinda agree and then I remember GeoCities. That place had as much ads as some places do now.

by AlpsElegant1062 4 weeks ago

Gather around, kids. Let's hear a story.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

You think it was more usable when you could only download three songs a night? Genuinely curious how that is more usable

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Yep, this is all true and it sucks. I've also noticed that the majority of websites look and sound like they're written by AI. It's so weird. I'll ask a question about a video game or something and it comes up with a website with 8 paragraphs, all vaguely saying the same thing, all separated by ads. It's infuriating.

by Fun_Block 4 weeks ago

Searched for anything? Needed to quickly help your partner search for something while they were occupied? Welcome to being bombarded with "tailored ads" for that thing for the next few years!

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Shouldn't be but I believe this might actually be unpopular lol

by Away-Sherbert 4 weeks ago

Hence why chat GPT is needed

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Load moving is the worst

by Russell31 4 weeks ago

Sir, I don't think this is an unpopular opinion.

by Lgreenholt 4 weeks ago

It's fine. I don't see the problem.

by armstrongjaycee 4 weeks ago

I'm a younger millennial(30) I 100000% completely agree.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Searching things on Google becam hell..i have to go on chatgpt to get infos

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

That is a popular opinion.

by Careful-Lie-9924 4 weeks ago

It may have gotten worse in the last few years, but you are seriously underestimating all the bad things about back in the day. Antivirus software was not nearly as good. So much was driven by selling porn that any major website with a slightly misspelled name would bring you to the most awful sketchy porn sites that would instantly generate dozens of pop ups for other sketchy porn sites (famously, someone managed to grab the name "nasa . com" and of course make it a sketchy porn site). plus that slowness you are talking about was crippling. There was no streaming, very little music, the search algos may not have been all ads but they weren't great....

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

And it's only gonna get worse with AI generated spam.

by Careful-Lie-9924 4 weeks ago

I'm a boomer. I don't get pop ups, advertisements. None of my searches are sponsored. I learned long ago how to be in charge of the internet that I use. Learn as you go, it's free.

by Striking-Matter 4 weeks ago

I think you're right, it also applies to software in general.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I'm with you, fellow oldie. Dial-up sucked but it was, like everything in the history of human existence, better than after the money guys took over. If you weren't around to witness it, it's hard to believe how many first users of the Web were motivated by sharing knowledge for free. It's enough to make you weep. Pretty much every good idea we've ever had as a species has been had by an artist and then ruined by a merchant.

by leann84 4 weeks ago

AI will only make this worse.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Don't forget all the AI adds with celebrity voices

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Just wait, the government's trying to get more involved. Prepare for it to be just like that, only less functional.

by FixMountain 4 weeks ago

unpopular, sure.. but 100% true on every front

by Sensitive_Gas 4 weeks ago

The endless ebbing and flowing of good and evil, of greed vs charity marches on, but we do seem to be at a bit of a low point in this particular regard. Every day I thank god that wikipedia remains largely uncorrupted (unless you're reading a celebrity's bio but honestly those articles shouldn't even exist)

by Wilma82 4 weeks ago

it was all downhill once normies got smartphones and facebook

by Swaniawskikarle 4 weeks ago

You would probably dig Ed Zitron. He writes a lot about this, which he calls the Rot Economy

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Dead Internet is no longer a theory. It's reality.

by ettie00 4 weeks ago

I remember the days of dial up well. The internet is definitely more usable now.

by greenfeldereldo 4 weeks ago

Another issue I've seen as an amateur screenwriter is that finding niche educational material is next to impossible. I have spent hours trying to research what Victorian upper class town houses looked like on the inside, only to find dozens of articles describing completely different architectural styles. Eventually, I had to settle for making the house older, not because I wanted to, but because I wasn't able to find the images I needed to accurately convey the space my characters live in. If you have any experience in using AI "art," I suspect that a lot of this has to do with the program outright ignoring certain search terms in order to provide "better" results. If you ask for a highly specific image and the prompt is too long, it will discard parts of your prompt without fail.

by IndependentPain 4 weeks ago

Did you ever visit BBSs? My classmate's gardiner had one. I uses to login to play text based/turn based MMOs like Usurper and strategy games like Baron Realms Elite.

by Some-Diver-7818 4 weeks ago