[HN Gopher] The 'Fuck You' Pattern ___________________________________________________________________ The 'Fuck You' Pattern Author : c7DJTLrn Score : 778 points Date : 2021-06-28 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (cedwards.xyz) (TXT) w3m dump (cedwards.xyz) | surround wrote: | Bibliogram is an unofficial front end to Instagram. Among other | features, it won't prompt you to log in. Here's Ollie's page on | Bibliogram: | | https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official | | Reddit on mobile is also beginning to require logging in to view | certain pages, in which case you can use: | | https://libredd.it/ | | Or | | https://teddit.net/ | lxe wrote: | If you think forcing to log in to consume content is a 'fuck you' | pattern, then what do you think of paywalls? | Groxx wrote: | Yeah - this is why I stay out of Instagram. They're repeatedly, | blatantly hostile to any non-user use. | | At least they're not as bad as Pinterest, which has done this for | years, plus their million alternate domains polluting search | results. | avalys wrote: | What exactly is a "non-user use"? | Groxx wrote: | E.g. sending links to your post to friends and family. Many | family members don't have accounts, and some days all they | see is a login prompt. Many times, my recipient is on a | different device / using a different browser / cleared their | cookies because their ISP tech support somehow thinks that | helps - some days, all they see is a login prompt, and don't | remember their password, and don't want to go searching for | it. | | All of this has ensured that none of them like Instagram | links, and do not want an account. | insomniacity wrote: | Anyone who hasn't signed up for various tracking! | seanp2k2 wrote: | "Non-member use" | suzzer99 wrote: | Pinterest is the absolute worst at this. I died a little inside | when I finally gave in and made an account (using google | login). But I needed to use an image for some research I was | doing. | B4CKlash wrote: | I was actually under the impression that what Pinterest does | was against the ToS of Google. I can't find the link or | reference, but I believe it was along the lines of 'You can't | post images just to farm user account creation on your | services' which is exactly what Pinterest does. | | I would love if we could do away with these sites and those | websites that insist I use their 'app' to view simple text | data. | miohtama wrote: | I recommend trying to hit Reader mode button to defeat Fuck You | patterns. This simple trick works on surprisingly many websites, | because they need to conform with Google SEO rules. | abdusco wrote: | Yep. Works on many paywall sites, too. Whenever you hit a | paywall, turn on the reader mode, then refresh. | cabalamat wrote: | I don't like stikcy header,s so I use the Kill Sticky bookmarklet | ( https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ ) | | When I do this, some websites do the same thing, i.e. don't let | me scroll down. | | I think calling this the Fuck You pattern is entirely | appropriate. | ajharrison wrote: | Such strong opinions for something you don't and aren't willing | to pay a dime for. Why don't you just shut up and use what you're | given for free? | klyrs wrote: | I _love_ instagram. It 's the best social media site. Last time I | checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop | computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my | G-free phone. | | When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't | need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information | that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles | consist of a bunch of embedded Instagram crap, it doesn't even | load on vanilla firefox. That's cool, those stories are usually | celebrity gossip that I don't actually want to read but got | baited into clicking on. | | It's my favorite social media site, because their hooks just | bounce straight off me. | | Thanks, Instagram, for the consistent signalling. I never wanted | to be your friend anyway. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | you can make an account from desktop no problem | [deleted] | subsubzero wrote: | This was a dark pattern they launched almost a year ago, as a | non user of mostly every social media site, instagram is | probably the worst in terms of forcing users to login to view | public content. | | I wouldn't normally have a problem with this but public content | should be just that, viewable by the general public and not | being forced to install a tracke.. err, their app on my phone. | | Where I have a huge problem with this is public health or other | official announcements from community leaders or essential | information and its being put out on facebook. So now I can't | access a public message by a publicly elected entity for | general consumption. It seems extremely slimy and it feels | illegal on some level as I don't want to be forced to login to | facebook to view local updates. | seanp2k2 wrote: | Also, it's 2021 and their iPad app is just the non-iPad app | where it's just a scaled portrait-only version of the iOS app. | Do they not have the resources to do a proper iPad app? | xmprt wrote: | My favorite feature is how when someone shares an Instagram | post of Whatsapp it's blurred out. I realized this today and it | just hit me that they don't care about making the apps actually | good. All they care about is that you go back to the main app | where they can advertise to you. | mercury_craze wrote: | I'll stick my head above the parapet and say that as a content | consumer I really like Instagram and it genuinely is my | favourite social media platform. I'm probably an atypical user | but now that I'm well out of my 20's the friends I still | connect with online I have real connections with so it's a joy | to see what they're up to. My interests (food, 70's sci-fi, | cats, modern art) are well catered to and I've done a good job | of curating the accounts I follow to get a good mix of | interesting content. Even my promoted posts are mostly local | restaurants and businessess so I've never really felt aggrieved | that I'm getting controlled by big corporates. I've also found | my experience mostly apolitical with the advantage that because | commenting is so tacked on I don't feel the urge to interact | with anything beyond liking images or sharing the ocasional | post with my friends and family | | I understand it's mindless, but I dont want it to be anything | else. It's a toy platform for looking at device sized images | and short videos on my mobile and that's all I want it to be. | drdeadringer wrote: | Perhaps I'm "old" for this. | | I don't "get" Instagram. I'm not on it, I don't use it, all | that "I just don't just because". | | I have a room mate // romantic partner who does use Instagram. | OK, that's great, that's fine. They're younger than I am so | perhaps they get something I don't; times change, I get that; I | still don't get "The Insta". | | Maybe some social media will ding on me the next time around. | I'll wait. | freewilly1040 wrote: | Instagram is terrible but I can defend forcing account creation | via app only. It seems likely that such a route would draw a | disproportionately large interest from scammers and | disproportionately small interest from real customers. | wlesieutre wrote: | I don't know if it's just me or what, but I can no longer view | Instagram posts while logged out. | | Other people report being able to, but it just sends me | straight to a login page. | iamwpj wrote: | Instagram allows you to create an account in the browser. | | https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/ | | I don't understand this post and the blog author's comments | about using desktop. I get the appeal of not having apps | installed on your phone, but wasn't Instagram phone-first? I | remember not having a smartphone in the early 10's and not | being able to use Instagram because you couldn't use their | site. I would argue the phone-based experience is far superior | to the browser... | handrous wrote: | Is the way that Twitter links often fail to load on the first | _several_ tries (then finally, mysteriously, work as if nothing | happened) one of these "force you to log in and use the app" | dark patterns? It's been that way for years now, so I have to | think it's not accidental. | easrng wrote: | It always takes exactly 3 reloads for me. | bserge wrote: | Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok. Just... No. Funny enough, I was a | big Imgur user until one day I somehow realized I'm wasting my | life on the dumbest shit in the dumbest format possible. | | Reddit on the other hand, is trying hard to push me away and I | thank them for it, but a lot of info you can only find there. | Like real measurements of graphics cards and just real | information from real people. | | Kind of sad, but Reddit has attracted all the people who used | to frequent niche forms in one place. | dheera wrote: | > From TFA: "Since I'm a technical person, I tried to simply | remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, | but I wasn't able to scroll any further on the page." | | You need to not only remove the modal, but remove the | "overflow:hidden;" in the <body> tag. After that you should be | able to scroll. | | I have CSS/JS injectors that do this for me already, I really | fucking hate popups and scrolling impediments of any sort. | LegitShady wrote: | i don't do social media anymore, but I used to use instagram to | browse favorite artists. I found chrome developer tools would | let you change to mobile view and then you could browse | instagram/upload photos/etc like normal. | | Haven't tried it in a long time so maybe doesn't work anymore. | lmilcin wrote: | Best part, it is all conveniently grouped on a single site | unmarred by useful content so you can easily just ignore it all | without anxiety you are going to miss out on something | important. | anikan_vader wrote: | Thanks for this comment. I've been annoyed by the fact that | click-baity articles don't load Instagram content in the past, | but re-framing the issue as a bullet dodged and time saved is a | surprisingly powerful shift of perspective. | specialist wrote: | I organize a puppy meetup. Right now via a group SMS. Sub- | optimal. Sharing event pics is flakey (mix of android and ios). | The responses (LOL, hearts, etc) become their own text messages | (?!). Etc. | | Since some of us have Instagram, I thought to try it, if only | to share pics. Sign up was brutal. I can't figure out how to | use my phone account on my desktop. Sharing existing pics | _sucks_. Taking pics with Instagram _sucks_. | | I can't even figure out how to simply browse a friend's feed. | | I legit can't imagine why anyone uses Instagram, for any | purpose. | recursive wrote: | Is this way I always get text messages from one of my friends | that say > Liked "{$ENTIRE_CONTENTS_OF_PREVIOUS_MESSAGE}" | guscost wrote: | Most people don't really _use_ Instagram, it's more like | Instagram uses _them_. | jamal-kumar wrote: | Cute babes. It's like the point of contact now for them | because none of them want to be on facebook with their mom | commenting dumb shit on their page. | | if it wasn't for them i would so delete this shit | cdstyh wrote: | I had the same experience. I wanted to watch someone's podcast | Livestream that was being broadcasted on Instagram (I don't | know why they didn't just use YouTube). But I couldn't even | create an account. I tried with my desktop and phone on | different networks. It wouldn't work. | limeblack wrote: | I run the web app on my google free phone quite easily. Just | add to Home Screen. | tgtweak wrote: | Pinterest and Reddit are not better these days. The amount of | things you can view on reddit on your phone without creating an | account or installing the app is dwindling daily. | | Every time my wife sends me a Pinterest link I just ask her to | screenshot it as I can't see shit on the default mobile page. I | don't even know why Google continues to allow them in the | results when there is clear-cut policies around showing | something different to the crawler than the user. | | Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the | Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear. | newacct583 wrote: | > The amount of things you can view on reddit on your phone | without creating an account or installing the app is | dwindling daily. | | Like what? The phone browser works just great. IIRC there's a | nag dialog that prompts you once to install the app, then it | caches the answer and shuts up. | EastSmith wrote: | > The phone browser works just great. | | No, it is not. I can not access any subreddit without | installing an app (which I am not going to do). | newacct583 wrote: | Sorry... I literally do this every day of my life, across | several devices. I'm just on Firefox on Android, it's not | like it's a weird setup or anything. What are you running | that reddit won't let you into a subreddit? | zdragnar wrote: | Really? I still occasionally visit a handful of subs, | almost exclusively through android chrome. I'll certainly | never download an app to do it though. | diogenesjunior wrote: | >a good workaround is setting your user agent to the | Googlebot | | Can't believe I've never thought of this. | eitland wrote: | > Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to | the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens | disappear. | | Hmmmm. Now that I think of it I'm fairly sure that serving | different content to Googlebot compared to what you served | ordinary users used to be a good way to call down the wrath | of the SEO master upon your (or your clients) website. | | Then again, that was before. Back when Google was a nice | company and acted in the best interest of its users. | js4ever wrote: | In fact it's still forbidden by Google ... Except if you | are very large like Pinterest | ipaddr wrote: | It might not be forbidden if it works. Google is famous | for undocumented workarounds. | cjohansson wrote: | Only the most expensive SEO-experts know the occult | methods of success on Google's search results | davidkunz wrote: | Just go to https://teddit.net/ | fullstop wrote: | old.reddit.com is still around, for now, and does not have | any of this garbage. | kgwxd wrote: | old.reddit is ok, but it's rarely used for links. I know | there's a plugin, but I can't stand the idea of adding | plugins for things like that. The only reason I have a | reddit account is because you can change preferences to be | even better than old.reddit (e.g. turn off custom themes, | disable outbound click tracking, no thumbnails, compact | list, etc.). It basically looks like HN after what I do to | it. I know it's all arranging deck chairs on a sinking ship | but I hope a decent rescue ship gets here before it's all | gone. | marto1 wrote: | And you just KNOW it's going to disappear. Not immediately | of course, some slight visual breakages here and there. | Then some hotshot manager is going to point out how it | doesn't bring any "value" to the company and how in fact it | actually hurts reddit's image. Then it will be gone. | beaconstudios wrote: | And then somebody makes a substitute UI that calls the | api, then reddit tries to take it down, then someone | builds an open source version, then github gets a C&D | letter and the creator makes blog post about it that | reaches the front page of HN. I'm looking forward to the | journey. | scott_w wrote: | The first part happened: https://teddit.net ;-) | mdaniel wrote: | > then someone builds an open source version | | Damn, I went to dig up the URL for reddit's source and it | seems it is no longer open :-( | | https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit | mike_d wrote: | From my time at Reddit I can say the reason it has lasted | this long is there are no hotshot managers. | | Chris Slowe is the hand guiding the ship day to day, with | a bunch of really passionate hackers underneath him. They | are maintaining like 4 different code bases and keeping | feature parity as best they can with a team that could | still comfortably go on a ski trip together (compare that | to the 60k+ at Facebook). The users hate change while | also demanding new features. The business makes no sense. | Steve is off doing... something, to ads or something and | make investors happy so they keep the ship afloat. UI is | going to hell to drive DAU metrics for investors. Banning | shitweasels brings down the wrath of the conservatives. | Yet they are still working their assess off to keep a | mound of spaghetti from bursting into flames with 1/10th | the staff they need to do so. | throwawayboise wrote: | Good to know that a major social media platform is built | on the same shit and bailing wire that most of us have to | deal with every day. Sort of makes me feel like the SV | companies really aren't any different than anyone else, | they just (typically) have a lot more money. | Syonyk wrote: | It doesn't... but the nature of Reddit has been clearly | driven by the "new" interface. There's a lot less text- | based technical content, and a lot more image/gif meme- | based content because that's what the new interface is | optimized for - and it goes out of its way to make it very, | very hard to see the deep text nested comments that are the | dominant feature of the old interface (and HN). | | So, while you can browse the place with the old interface, | the nature and trends of Reddit are mostly driven by the | new interface. | | Which is fine, if they want to go that way, it's just a | shame that what used to make it any good is dead or dying. | mcbutterbunz wrote: | It'll eventually be removed with the reasoning that its | hardly used and most traffic uses the new Reddit and now | they can focus on improvements without having to support | this legacy code. | thatswrong0 wrote: | And then I will stop using Reddit for the most part | (although it's still the best resource for finding | authentic reviews of things / services.. I Google | "<thoughts on something> reddit" more often than not | these days). Which is probably for the best for my | productivity / sanity tbh | | The redesign is still a slower, worse experience, | especially on mobile. | Qwertious wrote: | If they do (and it wouldn't surprise me), people will | start making third party desktop clients (or rather, | they'll start getting popular). | | If they ban _those_ , then we'll see some major | migrations methinks. | ineedasername wrote: | I wonder what their relative market share is. Lots of the | people that have been on Reddit for years may user | old.reddit. I certainly do. | | I really can't stand their hostility to no using their | app on mobile though. The UX seems purposely difficult to | drive users towards the app, for the obvious reason of | greater access to user data most likely. | dmoy wrote: | One of their biggest hurdles to overcome is, I gather, | that a lot of the super large subreddits' moderator teams | are exclusively on old.reddit.com for moderation. If they | break old.reddit.com completely right now, a lot of the | biggest subs would implode with bots, spam, and angry | human word-vomit. | | If they fix the moderation story for new reddit, I'd | imagine they have a pretty quick path towards obsoleting | old reddit by just not caring about anyone else still on | old reddit. | | They've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I | think they're actively working on that problem. | ansible wrote: | > _They 've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I | think they're actively working on that problem._ | | Though that has had some funny issues. One thing I | noticed was the enrollment for the new modmail. It is on | the settings page on old reddit for a sub, but I couldn't | find it anywhere for the new reddit UI. Wacky. | boring_twenties wrote: | For Android at least, there are multiple free-as-in- | freedom reddit client apps available. Two I know of are | Infinity and Slide. Both are way better than the mobile | website, and I'm sure better than the official app. | VRay wrote: | Yeah, it's really infuriating.. Reddit consumed most of | the cool niche forums on the internet, and now it's | slowly mashing them all up into a bland Facebook clone | Scoundreller wrote: | A lot of those niche forums were already being killed by | VerticalScope and InternetBrands. | | It's a lot of what lead to Reddit's popularity in the | first place. | malka wrote: | Embrace, extand, extinguish. | | Never, ever trust an incorporated company. | throaway3141593 wrote: | Does that include the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned | subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation? | fullstop wrote: | And then something else will replace it. They'll digg | themselves their own grave. | ineedasername wrote: | Maybe Ycombinator will incubate a rival that uses the HN | model. | tomrod wrote: | I thought they already did, this little company called | Reddit that went on to benefit from the banality of digg. | ds206 wrote: | "digg themselves their own grave" ;) | fullstop wrote: | Ha, thanks for picking up on that! I was hoping that | someone would notice. :-) | rcfox wrote: | old.reddit.com is clearly beginning to rot: | | 1. The new Reddit seems to have a different markdown parser | which allows surrounding unindented code with ``` lines. | This doesn't render on old Reddit. | | 2. New Reddit seems to be saving links with escaped | underscores and correcting for it at render time? I've | started to see people posting broken links like | https://example.com/some\\_path\\_with\\_underscores when | it should be https://example.com/some_path_with_underscores | | 3. Posts with multiple images sometimes don't work? I | haven't been inconvenienced enough by this yet to | investigate. | scrooched_moose wrote: | I've started having weird redirects on any v.reddit.com | posts too - they redirect back to main page instead of | taking me to the video. | | I haven't fully tested what's causing it, but it feels | like the beginning of the end of old.reddit.com. | frereubu wrote: | I'm starting to find that title links to posts with | multiple images just link back to the page you're on. It | feels like it's just going to slowly disintegrate. Which I | think on balance I'd be happy about because I spend too | much time on there anyway. | 867-5309 wrote: | for Reddit, you can "sign up" with a bogus email address and | still interact (browse, join, comment, vote, message) freely. | the only possible downside is it asks you to verify your | email address every launch, but I don't see this as a | downside since I am using Reddit anonymously, and it is | easily dismissed. been doing this for over a year now | axguscbklp wrote: | You can actually just click "Next" on the sign-up screen | without having entered any email address at all. It works | fine, for now at least. | ReaLNero wrote: | What's valuable is your interests so that they know what | ads to put in your face. Whether or not your email is | linked to you is irrelevant -- you can click on ads all the | same. This solution doesn't save you from the data mining | they do on your usage. | klyrs wrote: | > Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to | the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens | disappear. | | This is _hilarious_ and makes so much sense. God, the | internet is broken | spinny wrote: | Yup. Googlebot can also traverse some paywalls | colejohnson66 wrote: | Does Google not check for this at all? They could _easily_ | spoof their User-Agent to see if sites lie about what they | show. | klyrs wrote: | I dunno, folks might get salty if google's bots used | misleading useragents. And it just escalates the existing | cat&mouse game | seanp2k2 wrote: | How are they not getting absolutely destroyed by the Google | search algos, since that's the definition of cloaking: http | s://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline... | simfree wrote: | Big players like LinkedIn, Facebook, et all play by | different rules. Losing LinkedIns results would damage | Google. | | Half the reason I use Qwant is it works better than | LinkedIn's paid search results. Google does much worse. | bingidingi wrote: | The content is pretty much the same _if_ you log in. | Google doesn't seem to care in instances like this, I've | worked on multiple very large sites that do the exact | same thing (further in so e instances: present a JS app | to users and a faster JS--less experience to google). | Many news sites do it too, for example. | einpoklum wrote: | This should help: | | https://sumtips.com/software/browsers/set-user-agent-on-a- | pe... | e12e wrote: | Hm, nothing for Android - for either ff or chrome? | SanchoPanda wrote: | You may be looking for iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome, | the chrome repo has the firefox extension as well, fyi. | mdaniel wrote: | It's been reported[0] that Firefox Nightly has a Debug | menu through which one can bless a custom collection of | allowed extensions to get around the new Mozilla Nanny | State(tm) but I haven't personally expended the energy to | try it | | 0 = https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now- | install-any-ad... | matt123456789 wrote: | Those Windows 7 screenshots evoke a sense of nostalgia | for the time before a Windows that broadcasts and | monetizes my every action. I think an even bigger "fuck | you" pattern is when an OS that I paid for tracks me and | monetizes my private information. | | Maybe I'm just getting old. | einpoklum wrote: | Nope; Windows is getting old :-P | | Time to switch to another OS. Consider some newbie- | friendly Linux, like Mint (linuxmint.com). | jude- wrote: | Pretending to be a robot, in order to not get caught by | robots. Kinds makes sense. In a sci-fi dystopian way. | pessimizer wrote: | > Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to | the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens | disappear. | | Cloudflare slaps you for this, though. | EamonnMR wrote: | Pinterest is by the far the worst because it takes content | from the rest of the world and strips away all context. It's | the anti-wikipedia, an information black hole. | ineedasername wrote: | I couldn't put my vague dislike for Pinterest into words | until this: you have it exactly. | wnkrshm wrote: | I hate Pinterest with a passion. If you want to find | reference images for whatever topic, all you get is the | medium res crap with a 'make an account' pop-up instead of | the original source they stole it from. I think alphabet or | whatever will acquire it in the near future (or have they | already?) because there is just no other explanation for | letting Pinterest poison image search that much. | EamonnMR wrote: | Image search is practically dead and Pintrest | singlehandedly killed it. I just use Wikimedia Commons | now. | klyrs wrote: | I fully agree, but do they count as social media? I kinda | categorize them as crowdsourced SEO spam | Bilters wrote: | Whenever I put a google search down, and see one page of | Pinterest on there I immediately go back to the search box | and go for; "-site:pinterest.*". I absolutely hate that | site with a passion. | Solocomplex wrote: | Unpinterested is an extension do do this automatically | Scoundreller wrote: | Is there a Google option to perma-ban a domain? | | Maybe a place I can upload a HOSTS file? | | Or an extension that adds this to every search? | 9dev wrote: | There is: uBlacklist[1]. I've been searching for the | exact same thing to get rid of Indian tutorial scamsites, | bad GitHub and StackOverflow clones and, of course, | Pinterest results :) Can recommend. | | [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/ | pncfbmi... | Laforet wrote: | You can try this extension. It was forked from a project | once maintained and abandoned by Google themselves. | | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- | blocklist... | | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal- | bloc... | seanp2k2 wrote: | Even though I have the app and an account, I still | despise using it. They break things like zoom and saving | images. Clicking on something interesting takes you | to...a site that doesn't actually have that. | | I truly don't understand how Pinterest is so popular when | it's also so awful. Tumblr was so much better until | Verizon destroyed it with management incompetence. | taftster wrote: | > a good workaround is setting your user agent to the | Googlebot | | Be sure to follow the site's robots.txt rules, though. | Otherwise, you could end getting googlebot banned! /s | nvr219 wrote: | Reddit (the service) is tons better than Pinterest, facebook, | instagram... I think it's totally out of line to group Reddit | in with them. The new reddit website is total trash but you | can use like 99% of reddit without ever visiting the website. | I use Apollo for example, and there are many other apps you | can use or develop your own. You can also use old.reddit.com. | Access to reddit is much more open than any of these other | networks that require you to use their app only. | CodesInChaos wrote: | Reddit on desktop is still okay. The mobile version of | Reddit is deliberately broken in order to force you to use | the app. Many subreddits can't be viewed, you can only view | the first couple of comments in each thread, the front page | is hidden behind a huge nag screen,... | nvr219 wrote: | Yes, but again, you can use their official app, or | literally any other app developed. Those third party apps | can view anything. Contrast that with Instagram where if | you don't want to use their app, sucks for you. | davesmylie wrote: | > The mobile version of Reddit is deliberately broken in | order to force you to use the app. | | fyi - if you use old reddit, the mobile site is fine - | I've never seen a subreddit blocked or threads truncated. | | new reddit is a pile of steaming dogsh | CodesInChaos wrote: | old.reddit isn't deliberately broken, but not really | suitable for small screens like phones. | | i.reddit is better for that, but it doesn't support many | content types inline and has issues showing comments in | some cases. | | teddit.net doesn't support loading more comments inline | and the icon to unfold post content is tiny. | mewpmewp2 wrote: | My main issue with Reddit is when I'm doing mobile research | about something, I usually Google about something, probably | something and put site:reddit.com to read people opinions. | When going straight from Google without having an app, the | experience will be obviously horrible. Now I use an app | called "Relay", but this also has some issues, it will open | the Google link, but it will usually open the content and | there doesn't seem to be a good way to get back to comments | unless I'm missing something. Maybe I should try some other | app, where I can either choose whether I want to see the | link, or the comments. Usually comments are more | interesting to me. | | There's also an issue with going back to search once I am | finally in the all context. | | Ps: using android. | nvr219 wrote: | I use Apollo on iOS and I have to long press on a link to | do "open with Apollo", which is fine but pretty annoying. | Would love to be able to set the default handler so that | I can just regular press. Of course would be nicer if | Reddit's mobile website just worked and I didn't have to | rely on an app to consume the content in a civilized | manner. Nonetheless I still maintain that reddit is more | user-respecting than the other social networks mentioned. | Low bar, granted... | gumby wrote: | > Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to | the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens | disappear. | | All those robots sharing data among themselves with no humans | needed or, apparently, wanted. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | >>> when there is clear-cut policies around showing something | different to the crawler than the user. | | yes .... | getcrunk wrote: | I have not been able to to get this to work. what is the | exact ua string that works for you guys | [deleted] | gabes wrote: | Speaking of fuck you patterns, has anyone else been part of the | A/B test where navigating to an Instagram page prevents you from | using the back button? They somehow clean my tab history so that | I can't go back to Google. It's been happening to me for months! | fleddr wrote: | I'm glad you mention this, thought I was the only one. I've | been experiencing this on facebook.com, for years. | | I'm puzzled how this is even technically possible. A website | isn't supposed to be able to clear the history of where I came | from? | greenshackle2 wrote: | It's Firefox doing it to prevent Facebook (and Instagram) | from scraping your history. | | If you're not on Firefox, then I don't know. | fleddr wrote: | That makes total sense, thanks! | commoner wrote: | Is there an announcement, help page, or issue/commit | explaining this feature? | darepublic wrote: | > Since I'm a technical person, I tried to simply remove the | modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, but I wasn't | able to scroll any further on the page. | | ^ try finding the container of the content that has its overflow | set to 'hidden', and change it back to auto. Then you should be | able to scroll again | [deleted] | snickerer wrote: | We urgently need a functional P2P protocol for social media. | Something where I can quickly and easily show my stuff to my | friends - and vice versa. From my device to your device. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | this is not news about the content hidden behind login. Like come | on. This is just a whiny post from a guy that for some reason | didn't know this from like a 2 years ago! Nothing about a pattern | or simply coming to the realization that IG wants only users of | its platform who log in, to use it and see its content! Not | really knew considering in the early days it was an APP only | platform....we've only been lucky to have the web desktop version | for a short number of years. | | Do I like this behaviour - No. But am I not surprised from a | company, as mentioned, hasn't exactly supported anything web/open | over its existence. I mean look at the never-resolved feud | between twitter and instagram that means you stillllll can't post | pics to twitter from Instagram or see preview cards on twitter of | IG links etc --all because of a spat like 10 years ago. | | But not posting nerdy rants about how I have to use bots and shit | to workaround logging into a site I am apparently interested in | the content of, but don't want to actually use or participate in. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | "Wow, fuck you. I just wanted to look at cats." | | "Well, fuck you, too. We're here to sell ads." | | It's not about dark patterns, that's just a second-order effect. | It was never about dark patterns. | | This is the implied agreement. You understand it, or you don't. | And if you don't, I guess you haven't been on the web in the past | decade or something. | | What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in | technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and | spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your | attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who | will pay for it. | ozim wrote: | People constantly think that Facebook/Insta/Google is trying to | do good things for the users or that whatever is good for users | is good for BigCo-s. | | So sometimes it is true, but most of the time it is not and | BigCo-s have to push users to do things. | c7DJTLrn wrote: | If that's the case then Instagram should not entice people in | by temporarily granting access. It should be upfront about | requiring an account. | seanp2k2 wrote: | And furthermore all the content should be delisted from | Google for cloaking https://developers.google.com/search/docs | /advanced/guideline... | arrosenberg wrote: | > This is the implied agreement. You understand it, or you | don't. | | I'm fine with businesses who use that model and make it clear. | Those kinds of tactics are galling coming from a company whose | literal mission statement is "Give people the power to build | community and bring the world closer together." | | If you want people to make an account, make a more compelling | business proposition. Gatekeeping seems like the most | vulnerable, monopolistic position to take. | ajharrison wrote: | Thank you! The entitlement is disgusting. | isaacremuant wrote: | Until they populate all the top search results with those | patterns. | | This apologies for any unethical practice by companies in | Reddit/HNs are really interesting. They side completely with | the authorities. Properly trained. | jude- wrote: | You can advertise without abusing the user. | SavantIdiot wrote: | They can still have ads for people that don't create an | account. | | I think the point you are trying to make is that people are | demanding free (as in beer) content, a la WinAmp of the 1990's. | In the past 20 years, we've come around out of that greedy | phase and have come to accept a certain amount of advertising | for content. But when the non-free content dominates the free | content (e.g. pinterest's SEO), it's a fuck you pattern and not | consumer greed. | | EDIT: IMHO | mdavis6890 wrote: | An important point is that WinAmp was not hosting content, so | the cost was limited to the relatively small development | cost. And there's still lots of that around. | | Once you get into actual hosting, it's very hard to get past | a small number of users without a lot of funding. And since a | lot of users don't want to pay, well... | SavantIdiot wrote: | That's a good point. I was referring to the sentiment at | the time where people thought there was nothing wrong with | sharing music files that one person paid for and then | millions copied, rather than buy. Putting aside the ethics | of $1/song as good or bad, there was a sense of entitlement | that I think has been tempered. Maybe? | NelsonMinar wrote: | The users of Instagram create the value though. The ones | posting the cat pictures. | rq1 wrote: | 1/ They bait people in to destroy any sane competition. Then | they milk them. | | 2/ Well fuck you even further and go to hell for defending such | behaviours. | | 3/ ps. Their infra is ridiculous. A team of 100-120 engineers | can do way better. They can't get their user base though | because of 1/ | charwalker wrote: | Either you're the customer or you're the product. Recognizing | that nearly all internet companies do this allows you to | identify what level you're comfortable with and duck out or | move on if needed. It's always good to review your social media | habits and scale back. | | I recommend doing this the same time you're spring cleaning or | after you prep for winter. Also go through and unsubscribe from | emails and update passwords. | tshaddox wrote: | > What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions | in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home | and spend your time looking at cats for free? | | Is that really fair? Would there be nowhere to see pictures of | cats without their millions of dollars in infrastructure and | staffing? Or could it be that their millions of dollars in | infrastructure and staffing for selling ads is the reason the | goto place for pictures of cats is BigTechCo instead of a ton | of smaller forums and communities each of which is relatively | inexpensive to operate. | dmkolobov wrote: | So, which do you want? A go-to place to see <insert arbitrary | interest here>, or a ton of smaller forums and communities? | pietrovismara wrote: | Have many smaller ones and aggregate them by yourself with | RSS feeds. | maccam94 wrote: | Ahhh, I remember the good old days of forums where people | would "hotlink" an image into a thread, and after enough | people started viewing/forwarding that link around it would | break because the image hoster's account would get suspended | by their host for going over their bandwidth limit, or the | original hoster would panic at their bandwidth costs and | delete it and/or try to block hotlinking going forward. Maybe | something like IPFS could solve this problem soon, but right | now freely available image hosting on these centralized | providers is the most reliable it's ever been. | xfalcox wrote: | On Discourse (open source forum software) we default new | install to downloading hotlinked images so we can prevent | this very specific problem. | tmearnest wrote: | I always loved it when someone hotlinked to an image on | someone else's server and instead of taking the image down, | they'd replace it with something funny (or more frequently, | horrible). | whoisjuan wrote: | Aggregation and distribution are virtues of large | communities, not small ones. The sophistication of Facebok's | business is what allows the creation and distribution of | content. I agree that if Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit, | Nextdoor, Twitter etc, didn't exist, small communities would | fill that void... But they would do through a fragmented and | siloed user experience that is hardly discoverable for the | majority of the connected world. | | This is the equivalent of running a taxi business vs running | an airline. Sure, a taxi can fulfill several transportation | needs but it could never replace what an airline does. | bun_at_work wrote: | Once upon a time Google Search was there to help you find | those small online communities. | w0de0 wrote: | "All of this is for the very best end, for if there is a | volcano at Lisbon, it could be in no other spot; for it is | impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is | for the best." | meepmorp wrote: | Pangloss knew what was up | teawrecks wrote: | "X is self evident, but maybe not to you," seems to me like a | fundamentally flawed argument. | omgwtfbbq wrote: | Of course it is and if you can't see that you probably work | there implementing dark patterns. | e12e wrote: | > You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in | technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home | and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have | your attention and they're going to connect you to | organizations who will pay for it. | | "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's | the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs | millions. That's the irony. | cyrux004 wrote: | Shouldnt you include engineers compensation in "The | infrastructure" thats where a lot of money goes. | tomc1985 wrote: | A bloated payroll to support a bloated advertising platform | with a bloated AI-based recommendation algorithm when all | it should be doing is loading a descending-order list of | most recent submissions meeting the category criteria.... | | Don't talk about costs, this crap is self-inflicted | saurik wrote: | The hosting and bandwidth costs of images and especially | video is non-trivial. I agree that the vast majority of | the costs of these overly-large companies comes from what | happens while trying to make them profitable, and then | all of the engineering work that goes into that... but | that all starts because running the site in the first | place wasn't free and you have to do _something_ to make | them at least sustainable, with your "obvious" options | being to either: 1) ask for donations (which likely won't | pay for the site if you get popular: I know this from | experience); 2) require people to pay some small | subscription fee (which will make the site less fun for | everyone); 3) pray ubiquitous micropayments eventually | happens (i work on this problem as part of Orchid, but it | still hasn't happened ;P); 4) sell "something else" to | whales, like t-shirts or the ability to "guild" messages | (the strategies reddit was trying to do as they resisted | ads for a long time... maybe these work well enough?); or | 5) start trying to sell ads and become the thing you | hate. The only other strategies I have seen tend to | either drag you towards #5 or simply cause other dark | patterns, such as taking a cut of "tips" (what TikTok and | Twitch do), which at bare minimum incentivizes the "don't | you dare talk about alternative payment systems in our | ecosystem: all payments must go through us" model sin | (which can be fought against if you have a lot of | willpower and remain private--I never required this with | Cydia as I considered it the original sin my entire | market existed to undermine--but I see the motivation and | it feels kind of inevitable). I personally bet the only | real "correct" solution is essentially #3... if we ever | get to the point where the fees for that are as easy to | pay and as low as the fees you pay for electricity (which | works on a similar model). | tomc1985 wrote: | How about running ads but not letting them dominate your | product? I see nothing wrong with running a costs-plus | business model but VC comes in and demand all these | stupid companies dominate the world so they can get their | 500x return or whatever. Then they go public and now the | only thing that matters is shareholder value, fuck the | users and OG supporters... | mdavis6890 wrote: | You make a great point that I hadn't considered before. | | It's like rocket fuel! The faster you want to go, the more | fuel you need. Which adds weight, so now you go slower, so | you need more fuel... | | I want to serve a cat picture, which would cost 1/100 of a | cent. But at scale, it adds up. So now I show adds that | generate 1.2/100 of a cent in revenue but add .5/100 cents in | serving cost, which I can optimize with user data to add an | additional .7/100 cents in revenue, but which adds .4/100 | cents in serving costs.... | user123456780 wrote: | > "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts | | lol at this. Go setup that infrastructure and see how far you | get for peanuts. | symlinkk wrote: | I honestly don't think it would be hard, especially with | AWS abstracting away all scaling issues from you. | jopsen wrote: | A single server can host an awful lot of cat pictures. | Especially if you apply a little compression. | | In fact: I'm sure there are many cat image sharing sites | out there. A random search landed me here: | https://www.funnycatpix.com/_pics/Hmmmmmm890.htm | | Seems like a high-quality HN-like website, hehe :) | panny wrote: | >You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in | technical infrastructure | | You almost had me, right up to this point. Then I realized you | are posting pointed sarcasm about instagram's owners. | andai wrote: | Kinda offtopic but Instagram's ads changed my attitude towards | ads, and my attitude towards Facebook's creepy level of insight | into my life and personality. If they have that data anyway -- | and hundreds of companies do -- I might as well benefit from | it, and Instagram's ads were the first ones that I actually | found interesting. First of all, it was obvious when something | was an ad. Second, they weren't intrusive or obnoxious. And | third, they showed me cool stuff I actually wanted to buy! It | was actually an enjoyable experience and that's so weird to say | about ads. | | The surveillance part still creeps me the hell out, but if | they're gonna do it anyway they might as well use that data to | benefit my life. | | (On that note, I often find myself wishing I could ask the NSA | for a copy of an old message or photo...) | derangedHorse wrote: | I second this, the only ads I've ever willingly | clicked/tapped on with the intention of buying were from | Instagram | eitland wrote: | And that is quite a feat given how little information I | hace willingly given Facebook compared to how I - until a | few years ago - more or less volunteeres my data to Google. | | Google knew everything about it and yet couldn't manage to | serve anything but the sleaziest ads. | | Instagram got the table scraps and yet convinced me to buy | at least one thing that I'm actually happy with. | mszcz wrote: | Yep, seconded. Stopped using FB years ago and I use | Instagram for two of my passions - tiny houses and boobs. | And, somehow, Instagram figured out that I wanted to buy | a Remarkable 2 ;) | | But yeah, joking aside, Instagram was the one of few | places I actually saw ads of things I wanted to buy. | Sure, the ads tried to rip my eyes out for those products | ($50 for a product I found for $5) but still... | andai wrote: | As an aside, people complain that Twitter is a toxic | place, but if you exclusively subscribe to art accounts | _, it 's one of the most beautiful places on the | internet. | | _ Asian artists are an even safer bet: they only post | art. How refreshing! | tablespoon wrote: | > If they have that data anyway -- and hundreds of companies | do -- I might as well benefit from it, and Instagram's ads | were the first ones that I actually found interesting. | | I always feel a little depressed when someone describes being | more effectively manipulated as "benefiting." | andai wrote: | Subjectively it's the difference between "why am I getting | ads for pregnancy tests and skirts, I'm a basement-dwelling | troglodyte" and "wtf, they're actually showing me things | I'd want to buy (if I had money)". | | Joke's on them either way, they somehow haven't figured out | I'm broke! But the difference is between "spying + garbage | ads" and "spying + a bunch of cool shit I didn't even know | existed" I'm gonna go for the latter. | | Obviously the correct answer is neither: just use Adblock | and/or pay for services you use and enjoy. For example I | paid for YouTube premium so I could get an ad-free | experience on mobile (because YouTube ads are somehow both | horribly intrusive and horribly irrelevant, despite | Google's apparent omniscience!). | | By all accounts Google should know much more about me than | Facebook does, but somehow their ads invoke a response | somewhere between mild irritation and outright rage and | disgust. Meanwhile on Instagram: "hey, I really like this | backpack", "wtf they're selling psilocybin in capsules now? | And I can just buy it? Nobody even told me that existed! | Thanks Instagram!" Like I said, that was a pretty surreal | moment for me. | forty wrote: | Funnily, I always had the impression that Instagram main | (maybe only?) purpose was to watch ads ("influencers" as they | call them these days), so I figured out they must be pretty | good ads since people are coming there just for them ;) | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Personally, I don't particularly care if companies have my | data. However, I _vehemently_ don 't want them to use it for | algorithmic recommendations--including ads--because it puts | me in a filter bubble. | | All these technology companies are making assumptions about | the type of person I am, and then _molding me_ into that | person. I can 't learn about topics I don't see, so if the | tech giants are convinced I like technology and computers, | that's all I will ever learn about. | | Maybe I'd be happier if I took up ballet dancing, or basket- | weaving, or something else I can't begin to imagine. That | seems much less likely to happen when I'm trapped in an | algorithmic box, that assumes my past will dictate my future. | afc wrote: | Anecdotal evidence, but my experience with IG ads was very | different. I ordered stuff (mostly clothing) a few times (4 | or 5) from IG ads and was _very_ disappointed with the | quality and service every single time. I now refuse to fall | for IG ads ever again. | driverdan wrote: | Instagram ads are the most obnoxious out of all social media. | When looking at stories they often come up every other user. | The volume alone is absurd. | xiphias2 wrote: | Facebook/Mark Zuckeberg didn't spend $1B on the infrastructure | of Instagram. He bought the network effect that he knew is | impossible to beat by a better product. | hhs wrote: | Seems this would fit with surveillance capitalism: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism | grishka wrote: | I'm pretty sure that if they had non-targeted (or at least | targeted not based on tracking), unobtrusive ads, and zero dark | patterns, they would've been still earning enough money to | cover their expenses and then some. Unfortunately, they've set | out to earn all the money in the world for no benefit to anyone | at all. | bbarnett wrote: | If you manage to build a large enough empire, then... and | only then, can you make the world a better place. | thesausageking wrote: | Ads are fine. The "fuck you" pattern is letting you see the cat | picture for 5 seconds before covering it up and requiring you | to create an account and share your data with Facebook before | you can see it. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | Everyone everywhere has realized throughout the ages that | conversion of anything is higher when you get a demo of the | product. | | This isn't a "fuck you" pattern. They gave you a social media | Costco food sample. | Falling3 wrote: | Except Costco is very upfront and honest about what a | sample is and how it works. The food-based analogy would be | they offer you an entire meal then slap you after you take | your first small bite letting you know you have to pay to | continue eating. | thesausageking wrote: | I have no doubt it converts better. Facebook are masters at | using little dopamine hits and denials to get users to do | whatever they want. | | It's still an obnoxious thing to do, which is the point of | the article. | pnt12 wrote: | That's quite a ridiculous claim. Surely they can display ads to | anonymous users, That's not hard at all. But then they can't | track you and profile you, which is a big no. | | Now is it fair for a company to track and shape the behavior of | millions of people? | easterncalculus wrote: | Just looking at how this post got 400 points in an hour says a | lot about how people feel about this. Internet fame isn't the | arbiter of truth, but practically everyone here knows and relates | to this post at one point or another on the web these days. | skillpass wrote: | I use a Vim extension in my browser which converts 'j' and 'k' | into scroll keys. I've found that on many sites which employ the | modal overlay and suppress scrolling I can still scroll around | using these keys even when arrow keys and mouse scrolling don't | work. | seanp2k2 wrote: | Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter also do this, and I wish I could | exclude them from Google search results. | | The worst offense IMO is that even if you do take their bait to | "use the app", they punt you to the App Store page, losing the | URL you were on in the process, so even though I have all of | those apps installed, it's not possible to click through from a | Google result then open that same post in the app. At that point, | I don't try to search for the same thing in the app, I just | convince myself that it's not worth it and abandon any attempt to | access that content. They can keep it. | kderbyma wrote: | for the areas where you may not want to use profanity, we could | also call this a 'Hold-Up' or Bank Robbery pattern - essentially | they are holding you at gunpoint for your data which we know they | will immediately sell regardless of if you want to use their | platform for anything other than that one link | baby wrote: | I feel like most websites used to be like that. And then suddenly | we got a load of great websites that just gave us what we wanted | without ads. Facebook, youtube, reddit, google maps, gmail, etc. | Now things are changing once again. | hnarn wrote: | Funnily enough the Instagram link in the blog post worked fine | for me, because I use the "Privacy Redirect" extension which sent | me to https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official | fleddr wrote: | The dark patterns are not a sign of misunderstanding good UX, nor | are they a sign of pure evil by their makers. | | Big social networks only come into existence via an aggressive, | exponential roll-out. The main feature of such a network is | having your friends on there. None of the other features matter | as its plain to see how they copy concepts from each other all | the time. It's about getting you in there. | | Once in existence, producing revenue means keeping you in the | experience for as long as possible. Which is best done in an app | and preferably logged in. This allows for the personalization and | notifications. | | Put another way, publishing all of this on the open web, with | many users using ad-blockers, just doesn't cut it. Further, you | don't want to give away all content to the open web | (cough...Google). | | We gave them this power. None of us want to surf the open web. We | want 3 apps that do everything. And we won't pay for it, not a | penny. | polartx wrote: | Oh, I've got a perfect example of a 'Fuck You' pattern in the | wild, and it's served with a side of 'user gas-lighting'. | | The gun.deals app, (specifically the iOS version, though I | suspect android is engineered the same way), is your typical | design of stacked rows of links for deals on, you guessed it, gun | stuff. | | As with these apps, the user scrolls down the list by dragging | their finger upward. Except on gun.deals, the app will | [intentionally] misinterpret the first contact of the finger as a | 'click' on the row item. This causes the user to have to back out | of the item they had intended to scroll past. (While almost | certainly delivering fraudulently obtained 'impressions' that the | app maker can represent to advertisers and vendors they are | selling data and screen share to). | inostia wrote: | I haven't used Facebook or Instagram in about 3 years. | Occasionally I'll get sent a link to something on Instagram | before having this exact experience. Whatever I'm missing out on, | it hasn't been enough to convince me to make another account, my | quality of life has significantly improved ever since I | extricated myself from the social media hellscape. | | Indeed, "fuck you" Facebook. | rusk wrote: | It's a good one actually cause even if it's falsely triggered e.g | by users on NAT sharing the same address it's only going to tell | them "fuck you" but they can still login | edem wrote: | This is the reason why I don't use Instagram...and that it also | tries to force you to install an app instead of using the browser | because you know...they can spy more from a phone. | Q1312 wrote: | bnb1kaz843ecm0qnsp5gvpk6fjkca789hr3xa62lyg | shmiga wrote: | I would say - fuck Mark!!! | avalys wrote: | This seems like an anti-scraping measure to me, they are limiting | how much content you can access on the site without an account? | | Seems like if they did not have protections like this, another | group of people would be complaining about easy FB makes it for | nefarious actors to violate your privacy, etc. and how careless | they are in not locking down access better. | pjerem wrote: | No because the first thing they do is to show you all of the | content, ready to be scraped. Then they add their modal and | then, after three reloads they store in your browser storage, | they stops to show you the content. | | So they don't protect any data, they just leak it all. Then | they hide it. | draw_down wrote: | The inability to scroll is from a body-level element that has | `overflow: hidden` set. Set that to visible and you should be | able to scroll | Y_Y wrote: | Maybe it's time for shit like hiding scrollbars to be opt-in. I | bet there are great use-cases for messing with scrolling, or | right-click, or the back button, or whatever else. I bet there | are benevolent websites that make downright acceptable use of | these things. But this is not the hot path. There is far more | abuse than good-use, yet I don't know any browser that does the | right thing. | oneshoe wrote: | My challenge with this is that, I believe, you think instagram is | a free service. It isn't, you pay for the service by selling your | data to advertisers and using your data for advertisement. If | they don't have your data, you aren't paying for the service. | | I hate this and also, I don't use their service - same for | facebook. | tonymet wrote: | It's a cynical way to interpret it . The desktop experience is | only 30% of mobile. Brand perception is tarnished if people use | the reduced experience . | | Think of web as a preview experience and mobile is the complete | product. | qwertox wrote: | Yesterday I wanted to see something on Instagram. I think it was | inside Relay for Reddit, where a WebView would open the Instagram | page. | | Not only was there this delay, but the cookie consent was | ridiculous. I now checked and it's the same on the Desktop in | Chrome. | | I have no option to reject/disable cookies. Usually you get to | choose which things you want to reject, like user tracking, | personalized ads, but you usually need to keep the functional | cookies. | | This popup only has one button "Accept All" and one "Manage Data | Settings". The latter would be the one where I get to choose what | to accept. But all I get there is an explanation telling me that | "your browser or device may offer settings that allow you to | choose whether browser cookies are set and to delete them. These | controls vary by browser, and manufacturers may change both the | settings they make available and how they work at any time." | | What is wrong with them? Honestly, Facebook is the worst disease | on the internet, even Pinterest doesn't reach their degree of | hostility. | loosescrews wrote: | I don't understand why Zoom doesn't get more flak for this. Their | web version is intentionally crippled and broken in an attempt to | force users to download their app. They won't even show the link | to join a meeting with the web version until you have failed to | join with the app (it used to require 3 failed attempts, but they | seem to have dropped that to a single failed attempt). | icco wrote: | Their API is the same way. Instagram really hates its users and | developers. | rexyg wrote: | Ah, the classic "bait-and-switch" | kristopolous wrote: | The pattern is real but in this instance they're blocking bots | and scrapers. | alpb wrote: | My theory is that Instagram is probably trying to prevent bots | capable of rendering pages and making changes on the DOM (e.g. | Selenium or chromedp) from harvesting their unauthenticated | access rights to Instagram's frontend to crawl/collect images. | | Hence, as the author tried to circumvent it, they probably got | IPbanned. | sneak wrote: | I have all Facebook properties (fb, instagram, whatsapp, all of | it) blocked by DNS via NextDNS on my router. | | You're encouraged to try it. | pentagrama wrote: | Instagram have a paywall, to be able to see the content you must | pay with your data by creating an account, and later hopefully | become addicted to the platform to give _more_ data _and_ eat as | many ads as possible. | vimax wrote: | Where are the developers implementing this stuff on large social | media, especially Reddit who had such a user friendly founding? | Surely they're here on HN. I'd love to hear their thinking in | going along with this, assuming it's something better than "fuck | the users I want to get paid." How do you join the dev team for a | service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it? | bserge wrote: | Hey, I would if 1. I got paid for it; 2. I'd justify it with | "fuck this platform, everyone should go back to individual | websites/blogs/forums". | jraph wrote: | Sabotage by executing the given orders? | fleddr wrote: | The word "destroy" is questionable. These types of user-hostile | patterns may in fact be needed to secure revenue or to exist at | all. | | The standard internet user doesn't pay for anything and | increasingly blocks ads. That's why these patterns exist. | | Surely it would feel uneasy to developers with a passion for | UX, but there's nothing you can do about it. Go ahead and quit, | it's not going to be very hard to find another developer | willing to do it for 200K. | bob1029 wrote: | > How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, | and then knowingly destroy it? | | You start with priorities that are fucked up before you even | interviewed for the job. | | The world of today is not like the world of 10+ years ago. In | 2001, if you met a developer, there was an exceptionally high % | chance that they were fundamentally into technology in a very | deep & personal way. In 2021, you will find that most people in | technology see it for the cash cow that it is and utilize it | accordingly. | | I would say that maybe 10-20% of the tech employees today | actually give a fuck about these sorts of things. The rest just | want their paycheck and as many other benefits as they can | obtain. Raising a stink over dark patterns is not a good idea | if you don't bring a whole lot of other meaningful value to the | table. | shrimpx wrote: | I think this is because "tech" is quickly becoming a business | utility, and every company is becoming a "tech company" just | by augmenting its business with an app stack. "Tech" has | become watered-down by proliferating everywhere, and | accordingly developers have grown in number and diminished in | average passion and skill. | | Coupled with this, everyone knows these tech-driven ad- | distribution companies posing as "social media" are pretty | shady, because they're based on coyly mining user attention | for $. So I you get a job there, your moral bar is low enough | that a dark pattern here and there is no big deal. | VRay wrote: | Good news, my friend, you can see their sentiment right here in | this very thread! Scroll up or down and feast your eyes. | | My personal story: When I interviewed for a job at Amazon many | years ago, all the recruiter e-mail kept going into my trash. I | finally realized that I'd just directed *@amazon.com into my | trash years earlier because they kept filling my inbox with so | much useless bullshit, and I'd always hated the company. Turned | out, though, that when presented with the chance to make twice | as much money by working half as hard, those feelings became | very malleable.. "Well, we're a bunch of assholes, but nice | guys finish last" | | Really, I'm just following orders every day at my job | NiceWayToDoIT wrote: | There you go, an idea for business :) - an "mutual" account that | will crawl pages on those sites - then share them without login | | I am to sleepy and this idea is stupid as hell ... | rglover wrote: | It sounds like they disabled the scroll event on the body by | setting overflow: hidden;. | colordrops wrote: | Another fuck you pattern from Instagram is hiding the keyboard | when you go to search for a user to encourage you to get | distracted and tap on a suggestion rather than what you were | searching for. You have to tap search three times to actually see | the keyboard. It has to be intentional because it's been | happening for years. | Spivak wrote: | Wait wha? What's the flow here to produce this? | | I open IG, tap into the search tab, tap the search bar, | keyboard appears, type in user, tap result. | | Do you want tapping into the search tab to autofocus the search | bar and open the keyboard. I can totally understand that but | IG's search tab is more a discovery thing now. Which like | evil's of social media aside was a sorely needed feature since | finding people to follow has always been hard on Twitter and | IG. | colordrops wrote: | Are you on Android? You have to tap search icon, then the | search bar, after which the keyboard pops up then disappears, | then tap the search bar again. | Spivak wrote: | I'm on iOS so I don't think that's supposed to happen. | Definitely wouldn't be the first time Android gets the | shaft in terms of app quality from large companies. Looking | at you Google whose iOS apps are better than their Android | apps for some reason. | colordrops wrote: | Perhaps iOS doesn't allow it. It's a valuable "bug" for | Instagram, so they have no incentive to fix it. Otherwise | the app is relatively bug free, and this issue has | existed for years, so I'm not giving them the benefit of | the doubt. Facebook absolutely doesn't deserve it. | owlninja wrote: | My Android device works the same as the iOS user | described. | colordrops wrote: | I've seen it on multiple android devices. But even if | only one tap on the search bar is necessary, it's still | an antipattern, as the user clearly wants to search, and | the keyboard should come up right away. Recommendations | and suggestions should not be conflated with search, or | at least shouldn't override search. | owlninja wrote: | Yea fair enough - and that page is always incredibly | jarring at first. | burlesona wrote: | Wow, I don't use Instagram so I haven't seen this, but that's a | very nasty pattern. | binarymax wrote: | IMDB is doing this now too. Infuriating. | stevenwoo wrote: | I scrape imdb for some personal web pages and imdb has the | weirdest things now to prevent scraping like custom media | viewers and obscuring most of plain text inside deep, almost | indistinguishable hierarchies. | rav wrote: | I just tried in a private browsing window: Without refreshing the | page (to trigger the "forced HTTP redirect to login") I could | delete the modal and disable the overflow:hidden on body and keep | scrolling down quite a bit until I hit a post from January 18, | 2019. So if you're prepared to try hard you can view a lot of cat | pics without creating an account... | mrtweetyhack wrote: | what dumb fuck visits instagram in the first place? serious | question. | swyx wrote: | Linkedin has one of these too. Displays your full information to | Google to index you, but if a human user visits, up comes the | login wall. | | F you for treating bots better than humans, linkedin. | tantalor wrote: | There are some instagram mirrors you can use: | | https://dumpor.com/v/polite_cat_olli_official | | https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official | | Suffering the ads is preferable to whatever fb wants. | np1810 wrote: | Thanks for these mirrors... I used to visit picuki website | which used to work great until recently... | c7DJTLrn wrote: | Thank you :D | zoomablemind wrote: | > https://bibliogram.art/u/polite_cat_olli_official | | Works for the Olli, but for another profile returns for me a | "permanent error", blocked by Instagram. | | See | https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/cadence.moe/gemlog/2020-12-1... | "Future of Bibliogram after restrictive IP blocking" | nkingsy wrote: | Q: But what about the unauthenticated existing users we might | alienate? | | A: There's no way to gather data on that so it's not a thing. | | This is the problem with "data driven" decision making in a | nutshell. It has annoyed me to no end at every company I've | worked for. | lainga wrote: | >US Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale reportedly told | McNamara,[3] who was trying to develop a list of metrics to | allow him to scientifically follow the progress of the war, | that he was not considering the feelings of the common rural | Vietnamese people. McNamara wrote it down on his list in | pencil, then erased it and told Lansdale that he could not | measure it, so it must not be important. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy | jandrese wrote: | Sentiment analysis is a real thing. Of course collecting poll | data on questions like "How much do you approve of the US Air | Force turning large parts of your country to a moonscape? | Rate from 1 to 5" probably wouldn't have gone over so well. | | On the other hand, virtually every study of the Vietnam war | said it was a huge mistake and Domino theory was bullshit. | tantalor wrote: | Who says you can't collect user metrics from unauthenticated | users? | [deleted] | saba2008 wrote: | Users are not consumers, but product. And untracked users are | lower quality, so culling them can be beneficial. So no problem | here. | turtletontine wrote: | ... but if you can't collect data on them, you can't target ads | to them or sell their data elsewhere, and therefore they're | worth nothing to you. | | At the end of the day every company wants to make money, or | will be bought out by cutthroats who think it's all there is, | and this kind of thinking will take hold. Users you can't | profit from = leeches. | Groxx wrote: | You can still collect (a lot) more information than classical | advertising in print or on TV gets, and that seems to work | alright. | Traster wrote: | Actually I think it's the opposite - online advertising is | so ineffective all this micro-targetting is the minimum | required to persuade people to throw their money away. In | reality how do I target someone in New York? I buy an ad in | the NYT. | Groxx wrote: | It's frequently ineffective because it's frequently done | mindlessly, because it's possible to do so at enormous | scale for low cost. | | The equivalent in the online world would be to pay site X | to show ad Y at times Q-Z. And then you just trust that | they'll do so, like you have to do for print/TV ads, and | pay the site. That _does happen_ , and you can find quite | a lot of company blog posts out there saying that it | works, but it's much more manual so yeah. It isn't the | majority. | loloquwowndueo wrote: | Use an app / webpage like ingramer | (https://ingramer.com/downloader/instagram/photo/) :) | | Instagram will probably notice and break/ban them eventually but | meanwhile, this works. | axbytg wrote: | Reddit is full of these patterns in order to drive users from | mobile web to app. Reddit mobile web really sets the bar for | user-hostile UI in my opinion. | rescripting wrote: | What is worse, is that even though I installed the official app | to squelch this nonsense (the Fuck You Pattern is effective) | the mobile site still prompts with "Open in the Reddit App". | | When I click it my iPhone opens the App Store. The App Store | then has a big blue "Open" button to launch the app, but of | course all context is lost and opening from there brings you to | your Reddit front page. | bo0tzz wrote: | I'll one up this - I use an alternative, unofficial app for | reddit. Until recently the 'open' button on their website | would take me into that specific app - as you would expect - | but since last week or so it's started sending me to the | Google Play store page for the official app instead. | lonbigtech wrote: | What browser are you using on your phone? | rescripting wrote: | Safari, nothing fancy. | seanp2k2 wrote: | So much this. Now that I know it works this way, I just try | to ignore any promising-looking search results from any of | the sites that do this, because I don't feel like trying to | search for the same thing in their app because they broke | their mobile site and broke the "open in app" by assuming I | don't already have it. | judge2020 wrote: | Reddit's app registers itself as a uri handler for reddit | links but (thanks to google) AMP or iframe results don't | prompt the actual system uri handler that would take you to | the app. | rescripting wrote: | Oh wow, is this what happens when multiple Fuck You | Patterns collide? | nxpnsv wrote: | I think you just encountered the clusterfuck pattern | [deleted] | MikeDelta wrote: | "Don't cross the streams." | dmurray wrote: | Isn't that a failure of the reddit devs rather than of | Google? They could have the app register for amp.reddit.com | links. | tshaddox wrote: | Whoa, is that what this is? I've been wondering for quite | some time why in the world Reddit hasn't figured out how to | make the "open in the app" links actually work. It's | bonkers that they spend so much effort making the web site | push you to the app, but don't even provide a working way | to open a piece of content in the app. | sixothree wrote: | Reddit's usefulness has waned dramatically and continues to do | so. | jandrese wrote: | Reddit's new UI is still hilariously terrible. The day they | remove old.reddit.com is the day I stop using the site. | | Who the hell thinks what I want when I click on an article is | to bring it into a related article feed with 1.5 comments | showing? If I accidentally click outside of the article area | the whole thing vanishes with no way to get back where I was. I | had thought these issues would be obvious and they would clean | it up, but here we are months later and it is still broken from | a UX standpoint. | | I guess all of the devs moved over to work on their bespoke | media player? You know, the one that barely works half of the | time. | collinvandyck76 wrote: | Agreed about old.reddit.com. I feel pretty old saying this, | but I really miss the days of straightforward web design. | Everything now is so chaotic that I'm never really sure what | clicking anything will do. It feels like design for the sake | of design, not for the sake of the users. | scrooched_moose wrote: | I'm still shocked Craigslist has survived, virtually | unchanged, since 1996. | | It's may not be the cleanest interface, but it's a nice | reminder of the more utilitarian days. | jandrese wrote: | IMHO Craigslist is a good example of a design that nailed | it right from the start and avoided the temptation to | redesign year after year. Choose a region, choose the | category, enter your search and bam, there are your | listings. It's all bookmarkable too. What a great | website. | bserge wrote: | The back button is broken, too. Was it that hard to bring you | back to the comment you were reading when you clicked the | link? Guess so. | ljm wrote: | And their video player is utterly fucked. The video will | load and reload about 3 times before it becomes playable, | on the desktop. On the mobile site, usually the video | freezes and the audio track plays. Gifs will overflow and | play under the UI, and that's not been fixed for over a | couple of years. | | And now it renders Gifs inside replies and every single | fucking thread has the "omg gifs!" thread voted to the top. | | The modern Reddit UI is a complete and utter tragedy of | design and engineering. But it serves ads, so who cares. | | They only redesigned it so that they could make ads first- | class. | ryandrake wrote: | It's gotten to the point where if I saw "Software Engineer - | Reddit" on a candidate's resume, I would seriously question | this person's chops, even if it's just one small signal in an | otherwise great background. How did this site's quality to | get so poor? Why couldn't you do anything about it? It's so | bad that you have to believe it was deliberately made bad. | glennvtx wrote: | The web reddit is just awful. Leave a thread open for some | time, and navigation even breaks. | pahn wrote: | saved reddit for me: https://teddit.net/ | tyingq wrote: | The Reddit AMP implementation on top of Reddit Web is even | worse. For the first few times I encountered it, I assumed | there was a bug or something that would be fixed soon. | pram wrote: | The best part is clicking a link, loading a page, and it just | says "Something broke" | | Twitter does this too. How the fuck is it even possible? | NavinF wrote: | Glad it's not just me. Twitter seems to break more often | when a page is loaded from the browser cache, but I can't | pin down any other pattern for the "Something broke" errors | on both mobile and desktop. | | Will Twitter ever have more than two 9s of reliability as | measured from the user's POV? | handrous wrote: | Oh, I just posted a question about this elsewhere in the | thread. I've come to assume this is intentional and | probably doesn't happen if you're logged in or using the | app (though I don't know). It's been like this for years. | Like every time I follow a link to Twitter I seem to get | a random roll whether it works, and same random roll on | each refresh. After n refreshes, where n may be 0-10, it | works. _Browsing_ the site doesn 't do this. | u801e wrote: | I just use old.reddit.com on my mobile and laptop. | navanchauhan wrote: | It is better to use i.reddit.com on your mobile | devoutsalsa wrote: | Same. | Nition wrote: | Try i.reddit.com on mobile, it's easier on small screens. | Click the cog on the right for options like collapsing | comments. | jpe-210 wrote: | The only way to browse Reddit nowadays is either through | old.reddit.com or through a third-party application like | Apollo. It's amazing how much content is _not_ displayed on the | screen in their new clunky UI. Makes you wonder why they went | in that direction. | jpeter wrote: | I only use reddit.premii.com on mobile. That's what their | mobile site should look like | qwertox wrote: | old.reddit.com is acceptable, with uBlock Origin and the like, | and on mobile Relay for Reddit is a nice app. | sbayeta wrote: | I use Reddit is Fun app on android and haven't noticed any | changes in UX for more than 5 years. When a I rarely go to | reddit.com on my pc, I can't even recognize the original site. | Scoundreller wrote: | Gmail webmail too. I've hit << I'm not interested >> to their | app prompt around 500 times in a row. Will i change the 501st? | No. | | Then again, my ATM machine still asks me which language I want | service in. It's my hope if I choose something other than | English, it calls 9-1-1, slows down the prompts and does | nothing irreversible. | surround wrote: | Try | | https://libredd.it/ | | Or | | https://teddit.net/ | nxpnsv wrote: | I never use reddit on mobile, but also there the whole new | reddit design thing is so terrible I just don't bother going | there anymore. It's sad, there were a few really nice | communities there. | mulmen wrote: | What I don't understand is why Reddit wants us to use the app | so badly. Is it just for ads? Is it data collection? | notjustanymike wrote: | Likely both. It sure as hell ain't to make your experience | any better. | ornornor wrote: | I suspect it's all that and their metrics show that mobile | users are the most "engaged" so they want more mobile users | to have an even higher count of engaged users. Also, it's | harder to spam notifications without a mobile app. | throwaway894345 wrote: | They deliberately make their mobile web experience awful, | so I don't think that's why (how can you trust a metric | that you're deliberately sabotaging?). I suspect mobile | apps just allow for more data collection than web apps. | busterarm wrote: | I think it's time for lawmakers to start drafting up an | "engagement tax" and start penalizing companies for | demanding peoples' attention. | temporallobe wrote: | My guess is because it's harder to block ads through the app | than it is in the browser-based version (at least in iOS). | Whatever the actual reason is, the asshole design (which | ironically they have an entire subreddit for) actually | discourages me from using Reddit, so I've been using it a lot | less in the past couple of years. | Cicero22 wrote: | another possibility is to increase traffic, which I guess | also increases ad revenue. It's a lot easier to tap an icon | on your home screen than it is to open a browser and type in | reddit and whichever subreddit you want to browse. The less | friction there is, the more likely you are to be a daily | user, driving their revenue. | tkiolp4 wrote: | It's like the Nigerian Prince email scam but the other way | around : 99% of the people who receive such an email will | identify the scam and ignore it. This is totally fine for the | scammers. Working as expected. | | Now, in the Reddit scenario 99% of the Reddit users don't | mind downloading an app. It's just us, techies, that 1% who | cares. This is totally fine for Reddit. Working as expected. | manigandham wrote: | Ads, tracking, notifications, with higher overall engagement | due to faster and more content available. | Traster wrote: | I suspect it's for neither. It's to fulfil some metric. They | either want investor money or IPO money and either way, they | want people in their app because their app is _way_ over- | valued compared to monthly impressions. | mikestew wrote: | I don't have a Reddit account, and every time I use it I am | reminded why. Their patterns have taken me from "I should | create an account one of these days" to "there is nothing on | the Internet that I need to see so badly that I would let | Reddit see anymore about me than my IP address." It's almost as | if they are taunting users: "give up and create an account, or | go home. Oh, and use the fucking mobile app while you're at it, | or the suffering will continue." | | OTOH, once I get there, a lot of Reddit content makes me wonder | why I bothered. :-) | jalgos_eminator wrote: | Use the old interface available at old.reddit.com. Its mostly | fine. There are some really good corners of reddit, though | the popular subs have been infected with the well washed | masses. | visarga wrote: | Reddit is diverse, there still are some good corners here and | there. You need to know where to look. | teawrecks wrote: | Appending "reddit" to google searches still produce better | results than the alternative of 100% autogenerated | listicles. For now, at least. | bserge wrote: | Sadly, it's a humongous amalgamation of forums that has taken | all the users from niche forums I used to frequent. | yur3i__ wrote: | The cookie prompt on old.reddit.com is so obnoxious now. You | can't close it and the "continue" button takes you to the | new.reddit.com homepage | JoeyBananas wrote: | Microsoft Windows is even worse. Constant disruptive updates, | forcing you to make an account during install, ads in the start | menu, that creepy "Cortana" process that you can't kill... | judge2020 wrote: | One of the few good things from Windows 11 is that Cortana | has been evicted (the Bing stuff is still there though). | | https://www.microsoft.com/en- | us/windows/windows-11-specifica... | Aperocky wrote: | From this perspective it's amazing. I ditched Windows | completely for about 5 years (coinciding with my time in | Software). And had to deal with none of these problems any | more, I always remember that I hated windows for some reason | but can't seem to pinpoint/remember, but now you've reminded | me. | nousermane wrote: | What OS did you switch to? | Aperocky wrote: | macOS and Linux. | temporallobe wrote: | These are the primary reasons I moved off Windows and onto a | combination of macOS and *nix. Plus, macbooks have native | Thunderbolt 3 support, which is essential for near-zero | latency audio production. | LocalPCGuy wrote: | This may have been true when Win10 just came out, but it | isn't anymore. You can schedule your updates (and if you | don't, they try to schedule them for you in non-use hours), | there are ways to bypass the MS account creation and just use | a local account, I haven't seen an ad in my start menu in | ages, even after multiple large system updates and there is | not a single reference to Cortana in my Task Manager or | Services (I turned Cortana off in settings). | | Granted, I'm aggressive at turning off startup items, | managing what services run on boot, and so on, but my point | is, each of the things you mention may have been true at one | time, but they are not necessarily true today. | | edit to note: I'm not defending Microsoft's use of dark | patterns, they definitely do push them out and then sometimes | back off if there is enough pushback. And that is bad, and | should be called out. Just aiming for accurate information | here. | redml wrote: | they've lately been trying to get me to make a cloud | account to login. i remember when i installed it i made an | "offline account", but now after a few updates im | occationally getting a nag to "finish setting up your | computer" before i can start using it which leads to a | place wanting me to make an account which I now have to | cancel out of rather than have a permanent method of | removing it. | | it's just a matter of time at this point | ssully wrote: | I disagree. Reddit is worse because if you don't have an | account, you are constantly pushed to make one, or get pop- | ups to download the ad. They also seem to limit | functionality, like seeing all comments, unless you have an | account. | | The Windows installation process is annoying for sure, but | once you get through it, you are able to disable or rework | everything you mentioned. iOS honestly has everything you | mentioned as well; in fact, it's installation process pushes | even more services than Windows does, but I never see people | complain about it. I find both process annoying, but I forget | about them once I get everything setup because it goes away. | I don't want a reddit account because I basically only visit | the site when a friend sends me a link. I am guessing I can | also have their stuff go away if I download the app and sign | up, but it's not as essential to me as using Windows or iOS. | sixothree wrote: | Additionally, the experience of using reddit is very | different with an account versus without. The same argument | cannot be made for Windows 10. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I want plug-in which lets users highlight content on a page and | mark it as "not malicious". It would use a CTPH algorithm to call | out the non malicious bits from their context (same tech that | virus scanners use). I call these annotations "brushstrokes". | | Other users could "follow" my brushstrokes, so when they land on | the page, instead of implicitly running whatever code it finds | there it just fetches the known-non-malicious parts. I.e. the cat | pictures. | | I'd totally pay $5/month if $4 of it went to people who are | annotating the web in this way. You could get paid in accordance | with how popular and trustworthy your brushstrokes are, and | together we can fix the web. | | I guess the goal would be UURL's, where the both the reference | and the referent are uniform--rather than a uniform reference to | a who-knows-what-this-site-will-do referent. | brudgers wrote: | [I am not the market segmentation fairy] | | I can't buy anything from Amazon without an Amazon account. | | Can't use Facetime without two Apple accounts and two Apple | devices. | | If it really matters, make an account. If it doesn't really | matter, then it doesn't really matter. | el_benhameen wrote: | I have been fascinated by this pattern lately. I don't have an | instagram account, but there are a few that I'll browse | occasionally. I usually browse in mobile Safari's private mode. I | can usually view one or two accounts before I get locked out. | They're incredibly good at locking you out! It's not cookie- | based, because I'm still locked out if I exit private mode or use | a different browser on a different machine. I'm even locked out | if I switch off wifi and browse from a tmobile ip. I'm not sure | how they're this good at fingerprinting, but it's quite | something. | [deleted] | tiborsaas wrote: | The phenomenon he's seen is more likey the result of an overly | paranoid and aggressive ant-bot algorithm. I've seen this too, | but when using various devices and accidental (company machine) | VPN connections. | aendruk wrote: | I used to be able to see photos that friends and family publish | to Instagram, but then one day I was inexplicably cut off--no | more access via open standard protocols. | | I'm sad about that. | Flott wrote: | Fuck you patterns are everywhere on the web nowaday. | | Some of the most annoying to me: | | Twitch trying to discourage the use of the embedded player/non | official players (like VLC) by replacing the content by a | fullscreen purple picture asking you to watch on twitch.tv. | | Reddit trying to force mobile user to use the reddit app as soon | as the content is marked NSFW. | | Instagram forcing me to login to view pictures. | | Twitter asking me to see who someone is following. | dheera wrote: | Another one is the "can I help you" chat box that pops up. | Intercom and the likes. | | Thinking about making a Chrome plugin that intentionally asks | some nonsense questions programmatically in the background to | waste their time and disincentivize that behavior. | | (To be clear, I love having chat channels for sales and | support, just NOT unsolicited "Can I help you" popups.) | freewilly1040 wrote: | The article is a great example of blogspam: | | - Inflammatory title | | - Low effort content | | - An invitation to hate on a favorite HN target | c7DJTLrn wrote: | I pray for the day I won't have any reason to whine. | dheera wrote: | > From TFA: "Since I'm a technical person, I tried to simply | remove the modal in the browser Inspector. It sort of worked, but | I wasn't able to scroll any further on the page." You need to not | only remove the modal, but remove the "overflow:hidden;" in the | <body> tag. After that you should be able to scroll. | | I have CSS/JS injectors that do this for me already, I really | fucking hate popups and scrolling impediments of any sort. | bidirectional wrote: | The alternative is that life is made very easy for dystopian, | privacy-invading companies like Clearview AI. Really I find this | a lot less galling than on somewhere like Reddit, where most | content isn't so personal. | fishtoaster wrote: | I'm glad we now have a name for this. If I may take a stab at a | more formal, reusable definition of the Fuck You pattern: | | A UI pattern whereby content a user wants is provided, then | yanked away before it can be consumed, to be replaced by a demand | for something the site wants (log in, sign up, subscribe, pay, | etc). It's distinct from merely providing a limited amount of | content in the first place, as when a site offers 3 articles for | free before requiring payment. | SavantIdiot wrote: | Great, now my boss is going to ask me to implement this. | | Thanks. | xmprt wrote: | Hopefully if we call it what it is and keep the name "Fuck | You" pattern, any boss that wants to implement it will | realize how user hostile it is. More likely, the MBAs figure | out a more colorful name for it and every single app on the | planet starts to have it. | abraae wrote: | Maybe that should be the Yanker pattern, since there are | certainly many more scummy behaviours that merit the Fuck You | label. | caf wrote: | I suggest the Lucy pattern (as in the football running gag | from Peanuts). | rossdavidh wrote: | Brilliant name. We have a winner. | thedailymail wrote: | Tantalus pattern? | scythmic_waves wrote: | Oh, good reference! I like "Peanuts Pattern" myself. | RandyRanderson wrote: | unless you're logged in, pinterest is only this, has some | searches essentially 'SE-Owned' and has been doing this for ~7 | years. They're the OG of this. | | Pinttern? | EamonnMR wrote: | Appwall? Subscribewall? Mailwall? | e12e wrote: | Millwall? A wall that wears you down until you comply? | [deleted] | makecheck wrote: | What I don't understand about most sites that do this is how | _QUICKLY_ they reach the "fuck you" state. It's like a few | clicks, or a few seconds, or whatever -- nowhere _near_ long | enough to get _any_ idea what the site is about, what it offers, | whether it is valuable, etc. Therefore, what exactly is gained | here? I just get annoyed and immediately leave. | | Imagine if this happened elsewhere in life. You go into a grocery | store, you grab a cart, you get 5 feet inside, grab one item, and | then you are _immediately_ blocked by 8 security guards and | interrogated for your name before you can continue. Would you | stay in the store? | mercury_craze wrote: | Facebook was doing this for a while on business pages, but it | looks like they've backed out of it now. Around 2 years ago you | were only permitted to see content 'above the fold'. Scroll down | to the second page of content and you saw an undismissable modal | covering the entire page. Happily(!) you now have the option to | dismiss the modal and continue scrolling, but the modal is shown | for every new business page you visit. | commoner wrote: | Using a VPN, I'm completely locked out of any Facebook page, | business or not. It just shows a login form. | xqw wrote: | > but I wasn't able to scroll any further on the page | | Try this custom userstyle in a custom CSS plugin (like Stylus): | body, html, html body, .overflow-hidden { | overflow: auto !important; } | | ...I leave this on all the time, and use uBlock to snipe the SIGN | UP NOW popovers, works wonders. | DevKoala wrote: | Use ingramer.com or a similar tool/api, download all the images | of your desired profile, and problem solved. | | I call this solution "fuck you too". | Black101 wrote: | I like that name better. But something that means exactly the | same thing that isn't considered a curse word would be even | better. | jbpnoy6fifty wrote: | Do pay walls count as a "fuck you" pattern? | | How about free trials with credit card submissions and having | difficult "cancel subscription" work flows? | marklubi wrote: | Pinterest is another one that exhibits this pattern. Infuriating. | joelbondurant wrote: | California brand tax cattle state property objects must be | constantly tracked for terrorist activity. | dorianmariefr wrote: | Marked as "Can't reproduce" :) e.g. I can browse the cat pictures | just fine | abhinavsharma wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... | | Microsoft's old playbook, just done better, and against the web | at large. | annadane wrote: | Ban Mark Zuckerberg from the internet. He ruins everything he | touches | throw7 wrote: | Facebook does this too. I'll go to a link to a facebook page and | be greeted some seconds later with nonsense about having to | login. There's also that facebook login box that covers the | bottom of the page. | tgtweak wrote: | Yeah unless it's a business, even then, you're pushed to sign | up for an account to message the business. As a business, I | would be weighing my options here as your Facebook page is | often one of the first to show in the results. Not long until | Facebook starts advertising other businesses over your business | page. | yatz wrote: | Wish I could upvote it 10 times! | pjerem wrote: | Ah ah ! I had the exact same issue with an Instagram account I | wanted to see because it was mentioned in some newspaper. | | I have no problem with private content but here it's not even | that : the content is shown then hidden. | | Of course it's their site, their rules. But it says a lot about | the engineering of frustration and the respect they show to | potential users. | doc_gunthrop wrote: | Another user mentioned bibliogram.art as a front-end for | anonymous IG browsing. | | There's also an Android app available on F-droid for this | purpose: | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.austinhuang.instagrabber/ | dash2 wrote: | On Firefox, when I load instagram, it deletes my history so I | can't click back. I can't believe they'd deliberately be that | shitty... is this some weird bug? | Zak wrote: | Firefox is doing that to keep Facebook from being able to | access that tab's browsing history. You can disable this | feature if you don't like it. | | https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/ | commoner wrote: | Facebook Container is not pre-installed on Firefox. This | probably isn't the issue. | [deleted] | tbrock wrote: | Im not sure why this person would expect to see the content while | logged out. Shrug. | | Its part of a social network, if everyone was lurking it would | just be a bunch of creepers. The product shows who viewed a | post/story/reel etc and can't do that if you arent logged in. | dheera wrote: | If so they should not even show the page to begin with. I'd be | fine with that. | | (It's an intentionally public page about cat pictures, by the | way, so it wouldn't be creepy for anonymous internet users to | look at. It's only private Instagram pages that would be creepy | in that sense.) | | Letting you browse public content for 5 seconds before asking | you log in is a "fuck you" pattern. | stevespang wrote: | Who turned the ZUCK loose with arrows and spears ? | | Yeah, sure, his security detail made 100's of video clips of him | before he got one on target, they have jokes flowing between | their texting each other how lame Zuck is . . . . | ksangeelee wrote: | Just don't use these hostile sites. Your presence on them just | adds to their credibility, and the rewards they offer are scant | at best. | trey-jones wrote: | Exactly this about Instagram and Facebook bother me a little bit | too, and here is something that most people also don't | experience: | | I sometimes use a VPS from a popular cloud provider as a proxy | for my web browsing. I frequently get asked to "Prove I'm not a | robot". This happens on all kinds of sites, including Youtube, | Paypal, some government sites, etc. It is annoying enough, but | Facebook as well as Instagram won't let me see _anything_ without | logging in (which I don't). So can't even check the Lunch menu | for a local restaurant on Facebook over this proxy. | rdschouw wrote: | The same happens when you use Linux as your desktop OS together | with an ad-blocker. I guess it trips off some anti-bot rules. | | My favorite is Google's captcha where they let visitors solve | their machine learning classification problem by asking them to | classify images. | antibland wrote: | > ...but I wasn't able to scroll any further on the page | * { overflow: auto !important; } ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-28 23:00 UTC)