Internet Pet Peeves

[AntiBeeSpray]

20 hours ago, GaT said:

This annoys the hell out of me. Going to a web site & immediately getting hit with a pop up asking to sign up for updates from that site. A lot of the times it's the first time I've ever been to that site. I don't even know what it's like yet, I'm not signing up for anything.  I am also NOT going to like you on facebook or anywhere else.

I can go one further on that... paywalls. I understand the need, but geez. Some of them can be a bit too obnoxious. Same goes with the 'please turn off the ad-blocker' notifications. I'd do that if some of the ads didn't contain mal ware, spy ware, viruses or weren't so obnoxious. Auto play ads and huge image ads... I'm looking at you. >_>

 

15 hours ago, Joe said:

Her's something new. Sites that require you to disable adblock to get their content. So you do, and they hit you with two popups and an autoplaying video, just the things you're trying to avoid! I hope whoever is responsible for this abomination dies of a particularly embarassing disease. Hanging is too good for them.

Word. You read my mind. Minus the latter part though.

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 12/25/2016 at 4:57 PM, theredhead77 said:

Is this what you're looking for? http://www.nancysnotions.com/product/rainbow+braid.do

OMG!  Yes!!!  And good old Nancy has it.  I'm going to buy another one and quit being so nervous about the one I have.  I am so happy.

Actually, I'm going to buy several and give them to everyone I know who has had an occasion to handle a needle and thread.

My eternal gratitude, theredhead77.

[Popples]

On 12/24/2016 at 10:53 PM, GaT said:

This annoys the hell out of me. Going to a web site & immediately getting hit with a pop up asking to sign up for updates from that site. A lot of the times it's the first time I've ever been to that site. I don't even know what it's like yet, I'm not signing up for anything.  I am also NOT going to like you on facebook or anywhere else.

I also feel this way about when people on YouTube ask you to subscribe to their channel at the beginning of the video. I might not like the person or content that much after I've watch it, so why would I subscribe before I've even seen it?

[theredhead77]

6 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

OMG!  Yes!!!  And good old Nancy has it.  I'm going to buy another one and quit being so nervous about the one I have.  I am so happy.

Actually, I'm going to buy several and give them to everyone I know who has had an occasion to handle a needle and thread.

My eternal gratitude, theredhead77.

Happy to help @StatisticalOutlier! There seem to be quite a few stores that sell it if (google thread braid for sewing) you want to price shop. There's a brand called Rainbow Braid too.

[StatisticalOutlier]

The tension regarding paywalls and advertising is that website owners want to make money, and the internet set up a bad model for itself in having so much of the content be free from the get-go.  Convincing people that they need to pay for what they used to get for free is very hard, and advertising has been the path of least resistance.

My problem with advertising in lieu of paywalls is that it's not transparent and you have no idea how intrusive it is unless you really look into it, and once you do, you (or I, anyway) really don't want to be part of that.  To avoid that, it's conceivable that I'd be willing to pay for the content in lieu of advertising, but it's gotten to where I don't trust anybody.  Google, for example, could initiate a subscription fee, which would probably be worth it, but I don't trust them not to continue to track me and compile data on me even if I'm paying, and I don't trust them not to do that even if they say they won't.  So I'm very disinclined to pay for anything, if the only thing I'm going to get in return is not seeing advertising, most of which I don't see anyway because of my ad-blocker. 

I have run across websites that won't let me see the content unless I disable my ad-blocker, and I have yet to go along with that.  Fuck 'em. 

And I generally refuse to go to websites again if I've encountered an autoplay video.  There's a place that shows art/independent films, and whenever I'd click on an individual film title, the new page would start an autoplay trailer.  It drove me insane, and I realized that it was leaving a bad taste in my mouth for the place in general.  I emailed the president of the board or somebody like that and said those autoplay trailers were losing them a customer because I didn't want to go to their website any more, and he replied that he didn't even know they did that, and sure enough, in a couple of weeks, the autoplay part was gone. 

I think that a lot of that is just the website designer, and I kind of hate to hold that against the company itself, just because they chose some punk who never met a video he didn't like or suffered limited bandwidth to do the web design.  There's a company that sells a new kind of tire chains for snow and I'm quite interested in them, but there's an autoplay video on the site, so I closed it immediately, and haven't been back.  If they've made a conscious choice to have the autoplay trailer because they believe it will gain them more customers than it will lose them, then that's good information and I can decide I don't want to line their pockets.  But if it's just the website designer's doing, then I don't want to punish them for that, especially if it punishes me because I don't buy a product that I might like.

But I'm getting kind of tired of being the internet policeman.

[GaT]

9 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

The tension regarding paywalls and advertising is that website owners want to make money, and the internet set up a bad model for itself in having so much of the content be free from the get-go.

But you know, when I watch TV & a commercial comes on, I can change the channel, I can leave the room, I can ignore it, I can record the program & FF through the commercials. When I listen to the radio, if a commercial comes on, I can change the station, or I can turn on another music device. I have the ability to complete ignore any kind of commercial or ad, & I really don't understand why the internet should be any different. If I don't want to see an ad, why would anybody think that forcing me to is going to get them more business?

Edited January 1, 2017 by GaT

[StatisticalOutlier]

It may not get your business, but it probably gets other people's.  Like spam emails--I sincerely can't believe the entire spam email industry hasn't died because who buys anything from an unsolicited email they got?  I know sending those emails is cheap and they don't need much of a response rate, but even a response rate of 1 person out of 1,000,000 boggles my mind.

Then again, I use an adblocker so I'm not that familiar with the types of advertising people have.  But one thing I did notice is that when I watched a streaming program on a non-pay website (BBC America, I think), there were commercials in the program that I couldn't skip.  I found that annoying, and vowed not to miss an episode on my TV again, where I can skip commercials.

[GaT]

Another thing that bugs me. When people post something that someone else has already posted in the same thread. For example, in a gossip thread someone posts "Susie Smith & Joe Brown got married!" & there are a few comments discussing it, then someone posts the same story. I can understand if it's something that was posted a few pages back & no one had been discussing it, but when the 2nd post is on the same page as the first & follows comments on it, it's obvious that the person doesn't read or care what anyone else posts, they just want the credit for spreading the news. It annoys the hell out of me.

[dusang]

Auto-play videos!!  It's been said before (very recently,. sorry @GaT) but it could and should be said a thousand times over -- who invented autoplay videos?!?  I've literally gone to websites that autoplay their own video and then an ad waaaaaaay down at the bottom of the page so you have overlapping audios from the same page!!  Even with my adblocker I'm hit with autoplay ads!  WHAT IS GOING ON?!?  I also just got onto Instagram and they actually won't let you turn off autoplay anymore unless you're on cellular data, in which case they slow down the whole app to penalize you for not autoplaying on data!  ARGH!!

[StatisticalOutlier]

Autoplay videos continue to be the bane of my existence. 

But I found another great example of answered questions on Amazon products:

If I remove the 5-in-1 adapter will it allow storage in a 4" square bumper?

Answer:

It does not fit in mine, sorry!
By Terri on January 14, 2017

Yes, that's where mine is right now.
By skidawg on January 14, 2017

I don't know
By Ted K. on January 14, 2017

[Joe]

My current annoyance, redirects. I'm trying to get to IO9, I get redirected to Gizmodo Australia. If I wanted to go to Giz Au, I would. I don't want to. It happened for a few days a couple of months back before I managed to fix it, but I can'tremember what I did last time.

[starri]

The "armchair detectives" who make up the bulk of online true crime fans (not any one particular person, and no one on PTV).  They like to put the emphasis on "detective," when the true operative word is "armchair."

Many come to online forums like Reddit and WebSleuths with the attitude "We can solve this case!"  You're not solving anything.  You're speculating with disparate pieces of publicly available information that may or may not have anything to do with one another.  Speculation is fun, and I enjoy doing it too, but I hope that I am honest enough with myself to realize that's all I'm doing.

I am sure you are a very intelligent person.  That does not, however, make you a police officer, a lawyer, an investigative journalist, a pathologist, or a forensic psychiatrist.  A&E (I think) recently aired a six- or eight-part series on the so-called Long Island Serial Killer and featured a WebSleuths poster who was a retired mechanical engineer from Germany who was billed as a profiler.  When you complete four years of medical school, a four-year psychiatry residency, and a two-year forensic psychiatry fellowship, you can get back to me on that one.

[Joe]

Twitter has changed. You can no longer view people's tweets and replies without joining. I never wanted to sign up before now, but I may have to do it anyway. Letting yet another company have my personal information, track my movements, and target ads to me. Fucking wonderful.

[2727]

14 hours ago, Joe said:

Twitter has changed. You can no longer view people's tweets and replies without joining. I never wanted to sign up before now, but I may have to do it anyway. Letting yet another company have my personal information, track my movements, and target ads to me. Fucking wonderful.

I think Twitter can be kept pretty low key/private if you're not active. I've had an account since 2008 and have sent 0 tweets. No followers, not following anyone.

Facebook does the same thing with hiding and obscuring content unless you log in, but I'd rather miss reading something than submit to their world domination.

[Zola]

Autoplay videos - a complete bane, and usually involve having to install an add-on or disable Flash or HTML5 via your browser. But the trouble with that is it's an "all or nothing" option. And even this doesn't always disable autoplay on tablets and smartphones, but just hogs bandwidth and slows everything down. And then you have website asking you to disable ad-blockers in order to dump even more crap down the pipe!

Logins/passwords - I dare say most people have at least 10 regular logins to various sites, some more important than others. But the double-edged sword is that when creating a new account the site will ask for a long alphanumeric password/passphrase; sometimes followed by secondary authentication. Which is fine, but then you have to either remember those details or log them somewhere. Online password managers are okay until something goes wrong (DDoS hack, crash, or maintenance), and if they do go down and there's no business continuity, you're well and truly screwed. So you resort to the old Excel spreadsheet and some clever encryption. But where do you store it? locally, or to SD, or to the Cloud?

The Cloud - A nice user-friendly term, but in essence you're just dumping your data on someone else's hardware. Very useful in terms of global access, but again if their site goes offline or is hacked, do you have a Plan B?

Browser add-ons/Extensions - yes, they can be very useful, but they can also be resource-hungry. And more importantly some of them are very intrusive. When you install an app you're usually asked that the app needs permission to do read/modify/delete a whole bunch of things on your phone/tablet/laptop! Why? Especially if it's just a game or a very basic utility - why should it need to know who your contacts are, or have access to your photos?

[omgsowicked]

6 hours ago, Only Zola said:

Autoplay videos - a complete bane, and usually involve having to install an add-on or disable Flash or HTML5 via your browser. But the trouble with that is it's an "all or nothing" option. And even this doesn't always disable autoplay on tablets and smartphones, but just hogs bandwidth and slows everything down. And then you have website asking you to disable ad-blockers in order to dump even more crap down the pipe!

Logins/passwords - I dare say most people have at least 10 regular logins to various sites, some more important than others. But the double-edged sword is that when creating a new account the site will ask for a long alphanumeric password/passphrase; sometimes followed by secondary authentication. Which is fine, but then you have to either remember those details or log them somewhere. Online password managers are okay until something goes wrong (DDoS hack, crash, or maintenance), and if they do go down and there's no business continuity, you're well and truly screwed. So you resort to the old Excel spreadsheet and some clever encryption. But where do you store it? locally, or to SD, or to the Cloud?

I've been reading a lot of food blogs lately and noticed that many have video players that don't acknowledge my "click to play" plugin settings. I'm usually watching something on Youtube or listening to music while I'm browsing, so I really dislike having some video start playing (and wasting bandwidth). I guess these people just want the views but that kind of thing makes me want to avoid the website altogether.

I used to use LastPass (cloud-based password manager) until I read about the hacking and stuff, so now I'm using an offline password manager (Enpass) to store my passwords. It backs up an encrypted copy of my passwords to my computer's HD as I make changes and then I back it up to my external HD weekly, and to a thumb drive monthly (I should do it more often).

[GaT]

I encountered something new the other day, & I hope it doesn't spread. The Hallmark Movie Channel's website has the most annoying autoplaying videos. The same one will just keep playing every time you go to a new page, so I decided to mute my computer while I was on the site. I used the sound icon that's on the bottom toolbar & put it on mute, but as soon as my cursor was off of the box, my computer unmuted. They must have some kind of programming that prevents you from muting them, I couldn't believe it. I eventually figured out how to do it, but it's ridiculous.

[Qoass]

Ooh, I get that a lot. Or I used to. Now I just don't go to sites that do that. I'm hopeful that others will follow suit and a dip in visits will convince these guys to knock it off.

[Zola]

Two more peeves:-

CAPTCHA bot. This usually appears at the end of online registration forms to prove that you're not a bot but a real actual human. Nice idea in principle, but the annoyance is that the letters and numbers it asks you to retype are often illegible due to the background noise and/or poor choice of colour or font size. Admittedly you can refresh for a new set, but sometimes after entering the letters 3 times over in failure it will often clear your entire session including all the data you filled in during registration!

 

Piggy-back software - Sometimes when you download an app or a piece of trusted freeware from the web, you have to be very careful how you install it! Even some well-known antivirus software contains piggy-back software from some unknown publisher, but you won't know this until after you've installed the intended app first by the default install method.

Instead, you have to choose "custom" installation, and only then will you see a pop-up box saying something like "if you DON'T want to install this additional 3rd party app tick the box below!", and even if you do so and click "next" to the next step of the proper installation, there maybe a similar pop-up for another piggy-back app along the way!

Very crafty, and only serves to hog more local resources, as well as scoop up your browser habits (especially those annoying toolbars that replace your default ones, and prove extremely difficult to uninstall)

Edited July 15, 2017 by Only Zola

[Zola]

A small but irritating peeve is when one goes to a website to read a news item or article, after about 30 second a pop-up appears dead-centre of your screen asking you to subscribe to the website!

If that wasn't irritating enough, some pop-ups don't have the little "x" at the corner of the pop-up in order to close it down. Instead there's no 'x' to be found, so you have to click the back button and then the forward button to get back to where you were - only to be assailed by the same pop-up again! And that's despite having an ad/pop-up blocker app in place. 

If I want to subscribe I will do so on my terms and not bludgeoned into submission by pop-ups

Edited July 31, 2017 by Only Zola

[StatisticalOutlier]

I have had it with the fucking internet.

I'm trying to find stretch-tite plastic wrap in a store.  [This stuff rocks, btw--it clings like crazy when you're using it, but doesn't wrap all around your hand and stick to  itself when you're trying to pull it out and cut it]

I hate Walmart but they have a website where you can search for stuff.  I put "stretch-tite plastic wrap" in the search box and it gives me a "suggestion" of "stretch-tite plastic food wrap" and oh, okay, so I click on that.

I get a grid of results and the first two are indeed stretch-tite.  Yay.  But they talk about 2-day shipping.  I'm looking for store availability.

[And an aside:  Results #3 and #4 are Kirkland stretch-tite.  Why the hell is Walmart selling Costco products?  Oh, wait, #3 is sold and shipped by "Big Deal GA" and #4 is shipped and sold by "Amazing Odyssey Inc."  Silly me...thinking if I went to Walmart's website I'd find things that, you know, Walmart sells.]

So my mistake must have been not specifying I want to buy from Walmart when I went to Walmart's site.  Not sure how to do that, but I'm actually interested in what I can lay my hands on in a Walmart store, and they have a "store availability" thing.  Great!  I enter a zip code and select a store, and I get a list instead of a grid; it has six items on it.  At the top is Great Value Heavy Duty Foil.  Uh, no, I searched for plastic wrap, and in particular stretch-tite plastic wrap, not aluminum foil, FFS.

The rest of the list is:

Tina's Burrito Beef & Bean

Tina's Burrito Red Hot Beef.

Tina's Bean & Cheese Burrito

Tina's Beef & Bean/Green Chili Burrito

Ring Pops Strawberry, .5 oz

So I tell it to find stretch-tite plastic wrap in a particular store and this is what I get:  foil, burritos, and weird candy.

But it's worse than that.  The burritos are all in-store only, no shipping.  Okay, so at least I'm looking at what's actually in the store, right?  But no, wait, those Ring Pops Strawberry?  "Sold & shipped by AmericaRx Smart Shop.  Free pickup not available from this seller."

WTF??  It's bad enough that I'm not looking at stretch-tite plastic wrap when I specified which store I wanted to check, but I'm not necessarily even getting a non-plastic-wrap item that Walmart even sells, much less is in the store I selected?  And of all the items in the world that Walmart doesn't have in the store I selected, or that Walmart doesn't sell, how does this one get put into that list?

I just can't believe how bad it's gotten.  This should be the easiest piece of information in the world to provide--does this particular store sell this particular product?  But apparently it's  impossible.

[Zola]

Sounds like some pretty poor coding, especially in terms of logic and error-trapping. 

You could try complaining to Walmart online, but whether they'll pick on that is anyone's guess.

[StatisticalOutlier]

I was just retracing my steps to show Mr. Outlier my outrage, and noticed a thing at the bottom of page with the list of burritos at my local store that said, "Did you find the product you were looking for?"  I said NO and up came a form and I gave them a zero.  The best part is that Walmart.com does sell this stuff online--I got to the list of burritos because I naively used their "store availability" option on the page where I could buy stretch-tite online from Walmart,  and over on the left, there's a sponsored ad for stretch-tite from another online retailer. 

Mr. Outlier pointed out that Walmart probably makes more money from selling that ad than from actually selling the product.

[Popples]

It seems to be too difficult to just be able to read an article online. I was just on a website that had the top bar extended down a third of the page and didn't retract back up when I scrolled down. Plus there were vertical advertisements on both sides and the bottom of the page, so I could only see about 5 lines of text at a time.

[Qoass]

Well, they've got to pay the writer somehow.... That's why I prefer old school paper: the ads stay still!

[Zola]

Keyboards and ball-mice!

It is quite fascinating going to client sites and working on a person's computer (laptop or PC) trying to resolve an issue, and to discover that even though their desk is spotlessly clean other than from the usual clutter (phones, cables, fans, bottled water etc.) the state of their keyboard and/or the old-style ball-mouse is rather telling!

Just tipping the keyboard on its side or at a 120° tilt, and lightly tapping it against the desk, and its quite common to see a snowfall of crud emanating from between the keys!

Small bits of crisps, bread crumbs, chocolate, human hairs, the odd piece of noodle, baked bean, tea-leaves, coffee granules, bits of potato, sugar/salt, gum, pins, paper clips etc. are common place. However, I have also come across rather more questionable findings: -

• nail clippings,
• what looks like dandruff or dead skin,
• the odd false eye-lash,
• something suspiciously like earwax,
• torn piece of sticking plaster (Band-Aid) 

I often find similar detritus when removing the rubber ball from a mouse too. 

The user is often quite shocked when they see this layer of crud, and will often say "OMG, Is that my crap?" 

 It is amazing how much crud does get collected in our keyboards, but a weekly or monthly "shake & wipe" will not only keep things nice and hygienic for the user; but also keep your keyboard (and ball-mouse) in good working order.

[dusang]

Do you remember the movie Gattaca? Where Ethan Hawke is pretending to be Jude Law so he vacuums his keyboard every day to avoid leaving any DNA? I think of that keyboard vacuum all the time.

[GaT]

I don't know why this just popped into my brain, but I hate web sites that put spoiler information about things in a headline, especially web sites that have nothing to do with the thing. For example: When the Olympics were on, Gossip Cop put the gymnastics gold medal winner in the headline of one of their stories. I had been avoiding news sites so I wouldn't find out the winner before I saw it, I did not expect to see the information on a celebrity gossip site. Really pissed me off.

[topanga]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't have time to watch anyone's selfie video. Especially if you give me no caption or title to let me know what you're talking about. If it's important, let me know. Otherwise, I really don't want to hear your random thoughts. I have enough of my own. 

[Popples]

On 8/15/2017 at 10:19 AM, Zola said:

 It is amazing how much crud does get collected in our keyboards, but a weekly or monthly "shake & wipe" will not only keep things nice and hygienic for the user; but also keep your keyboard (and ball-mouse) in good working order.

Oh, I'm so bad at this, but I'm trying to get better. I didn't really notice it until some of my keys kept sticking and I had to hit them about 4 or 5 times in order to type the letter just once. I bought some compressed air to help loosen up the debris.

[Qoass]

Well, I guess I can kiss The AV Club goodbye. It was one of my favorite websites and then they "improved" the design. Now I can't find any of the features I frequented the site to read.

[starri]

Yeah, the integration with Gawker Gizmodo is terrible. 

Plus it will probably finally drown io9 in the bathtub, which is a shame, but not as big of one as it would have been a few years ago. 

[Zola]

For those irritated by Microsoft's decision to split the Outlook email inbox into two categories "Focused" and "Other", there is a solution:-

Click the Settings gear in the upper right corner of Outlook

Click Options on the drop down menu, and then Layout,

Select Focused Inbox, and choose Don't Sort!  

Click Save

Done

 

I do wish Microsoft would stop over-engineering things that work perfectly for the majority of people. Or if they do introduce something new, give us the option to use it by default rather than just dumping it on us wholesale and forcing us to find ways of turning it off.

[GaT]

4 hours ago, Zola said:

For those irritated by Microsoft's decision to split the Outlook email inbox into two categories "Focused" and "Other", there is a solution:-

Click the Settings gear in the upper right corner of Outlook

Click Options on the drop down menu, and then Layout,

Select Focused Inbox, and choose Don't Sort!  

Click Save

Done

 

I do wish Microsoft would stop over-engineering things that work perfectly for the majority of people. Or if they do introduce something new, give us the option to use it by default rather than just dumping it on us wholesale and forcing us to find ways of turning it off.

My Outlook hasn't changed, when did this happen?

[Zola]

6 hours ago, GaT said:

My Outlook hasn't changed, when did this happen?

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Focused-Inbox-for-Outlook-f445ad7f-02f4-4294-a82e-71d8964e3978

The above link will hopefully clarify.

[GaT]

3 minutes ago, Zola said:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Focused-Inbox-for-Outlook-f445ad7f-02f4-4294-a82e-71d8964e3978

The above link will hopefully clarify.

Thanks, I guess it will eventually turn up. And I will turn it off.

[topanga]

21 hours ago, Zola said:

For those irritated by Microsoft's decision to split the Outlook email inbox into two categories "Focused" and "Other", there is a solution:-

Click the Settings gear in the upper right corner of Outlook

Click Options on the drop down menu, and then Layout,

Select Focused Inbox, and choose Don't Sort!  

Click Save

Done

 

I do wish Microsoft would stop over-engineering things that work perfectly for the majority of people. Or if they do introduce something new, give us the option to use it by default rather than just dumping it on us wholesale and forcing us to find ways of turning it off.

Thank you! This annoyed me to no end. 

[Popples]

Pages with ads that play videos, but you're unable to scroll down. It keeps jumping up to the part where the ad is playing, and it plays on a loop so you can't stop it. WHO thought that was a good idea, and WHY?!

[GaT]

A new pet peeve for me. I keep running into stories that include a video, but the video is only sentences in the printed story set to music. It adds nothing, usually auto plays, & annoys me. Why bother making a video if it has no purpose?

[Joe]

Disappearing bits of interface in Firefox. It just happened today. I lost the search box for a while, until I discovered some option to restore it. Then there was the title bar. But thankfully a search restored that too. However, they shouldn't have gone missing to start with! It's rather frustrating. For that matter, my epub reader has stopped saving my place. Does anyone know a good one?

[starri]

The videos where someone with a moderate level of internet fame "reacts" to something.  I don't quite understand why I'm supposed to care what this person thinks.  I am secure enough in my own opinion that I don't need it validated by someone with a YouTube channel.

[Anela]

On 12/24/2016 at 10:53 PM, GaT said:

This annoys the hell out of me. Going to a web site & immediately getting hit with a pop up asking to sign up for updates from that site. A lot of the times it's the first time I've ever been to that site. I don't even know what it's like yet, I'm not signing up for anything.  I am also NOT going to like you on facebook or anywhere else.

 

On 12/25/2016 at 4:15 AM, Joe said:

Her's something new. Sites that require you to disable adblock to get their content. So you do, and they hit you with two popups and an autoplaying video, just the things you're trying to avoid! I hope whoever is responsible for this abomination dies of a particularly embarassing disease. Hanging is too good for them.

Yes, both of these! 

I think my number one pet peeve, is passive-aggressive posts from one person about another. It's happened to me a few times on social media, but it annoys me just as much when I see it directed at another person. The vague-booking bullying, knowing they're either hurting someone's feelings, or "poking the bear" to get a point across, when you've avoided talking about something for a reason. Occasionally, there are good intentions, but I've mostly seen the mean girl posts. It's as bad as high school. Some people never grow up. 

Repeated attempts to get me to download an app that I do not want, or need. 

MLM crap everywhere. It would be one thing if it was just one product - I liked the blue-green algae that was being marketed when I was a teenager, because it actually helped me - but then that company, and every other one out there, expanded to include a lot of other products that you absolutely MUST have, for whatever reason.  

That adblocking doesn't always work. I've ended up having to try to click out of an annoying popup, despite having more than one adblocker running. 

Edited October 18, 2017 by Anela

[Anela]

On 4/24/2017 at 11:32 AM, starri said:

 

On 7/31/2017 at 11:29 AM, Zola said:

 

Edited October 18, 2017 by Anela
I felt I was complaining too much.

[Zola]

The utter belligerence of some large corporations when it comes to the hacking of their supposedly "secure" data centres, and subsequent compromise of their customer database.

I won't name names, but Google will reveal quite a handful of companies that have been hacked this year, with millions of customer details stolen.

This is bad in itself, but then the company PR machine rolls into action with blatant lies, suggesting that:

1. only a small number of customers have been stolen,
2. the information stolen consists of names and addresses, but certainly not sensitive PI or password information.
3. it takes several weeks, or even months in some cases, before the company finally admits points 1 and 2, were way off the mark and generous at best!

What is even more infuriating is their abject dismissal to compensate said customers, other than to say "Oh well, just change your password then!"

So those customers, several million in some cases, now have to fret about what information has been stolen and what actions need to be taken. All the legwork is done by them, while the affected company just wants to sweep the "incident" under the carpet and hope it will go away for fear of scaring investors and/or shareholders!

It is a great pity said companies cannot be brought to account: if they get hacked, and the fault is theirs, they should be forced to financial compensate its customers, rather just walk away.

[bilgistic]

Thanks to whoever alerted me in another forum to this forum's existence. I need to complain about more things.

I'm always on my phone, and I use the Chrome for Android browser. There's no way I know of to use an ad-blocker on the mobile version of Chrome. The ads on news sites and some forums (not this site) are driving me bananas.

I was on some site earlier and my screen went black for a half-second before an ad with a black background covering the whole screen appeared. What fresh hell is this? Later, I was on a news site and an ad to subscribe covered 3/4 of the screen, dead in the center.

The absolute worst are the ads that are half the page, right in the middle of articles, and you have to keep scrolling the ad up through the article to keep reading. They make me nauseous.

I agree with the commenters saying that these practices make me never want to patronize the businesses that use these ad practices. I know businesses, especially publications, need to make money, but having obnoxiously obtrusive ads isn't the way.

[SVNBob]

5 hours ago, bilgistic said:

I'm always on my phone, and I use the Chrome for Android browser. There's no way I know of to use an ad-blocker on the mobile version of Chrome.

Look for Chrome Canary in the app store.  It's Google's experimental, and partially unstable, build of Chrome, where they test new features before rolling them out to Chrome proper.  One feature is a built-in ad blocker.

I have not tried this app myself, so I make no claims.  But it looks like it may help you.

[bilgistic]

Ooh, thanks!!

[Zola]

What the hell is Amazon doing to IMDb?

When they bought the company out they've been slowly chipping away at some of the popular functionality on that site, the biggest being the removal of the message boards a year or so ago. 

And now they have removed the ability to sort user reviews into any particular order other than by "helpfulness". Which means you have to trawl through pages and page of reviews to find the truly negative ones (if any!). It's as if studio are leaning on the likes of Amazon and/or IMDB to "big up" their latest films by only offering the most positive reviews at the top of the pile, and you're stuck with that!

Neither am I convinced some of the user reviews and/or scores are genuine: rumours abound that IMDb use bots to score certain films with high marks.

Add to that all the intrusive ads, especially on phones and tablets, that not even Adblocker can fully manage, and one gets the impression Amazon or IMDb will be introducing some form of paywall to access those features that were free before Amazon came along. (I realise there is IMDb Pro, which is a paid subscription, but that's for the hard-core fans and possibly those in the industry)

 The link below is the official reasoning for these existing and future changes (ie. migrating away from old software platforms to more contemporary ones), but I simply don't buy any of it, especially when they talk about "After in-depth discussion and examination, we have decided to simplify the features and functionality for reviews as follows:"  "Discussion" with whom, exactly? Certainly not the users.

 

https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0

[Qoass]

Totally agree. IMDB used to be my go-to reference site but I'm sick of digging around to find information that used to be right up front.

[ABay]

Podcasts that don't update their websites or post to Reddit or Facebook with vital info like when they're taking a break and when they'll be back.