26: unsubscribe from the email promos that the site automatically signed you up to even though you didn’t check the Subscribe to newsletter box, which requires you to log into the site and find and uncheck all the boxes in the “contact settings”.
26a: Note that they will simply add more categories over time and helpfully subscribe you to each of the new ones whether you ever visit the site again or not.
Unsubscribe? You mean report spam
Unsubscribe is for real suckers only. When someone clicks that I always imagine some goon elbowing the guy next to him and saying something like, “look Keith we got another” unsubscriber" over here! With a big goofy grin on his face.
If the email is from a legitimate business, they must have an unsubscribe button and it has to work. They get a little time before they are required to process the request, 10 days in the US, but I’ve usually seen it take effect immediately.
Don’t click the unsubscribe button in an actual spam email.
Not sure what you mean about legitimate businesses. I don’t really trust any of them anymore. Those unsubscribe pages are still full of traps and they often don’t keep you off new mailings that they can say you didn’t explicitly unsubscribe from because this is a new newsletter that they thought you might be interested in. If I didn’t opt-in, it’s spam, and I’d like to think that maybe me labeling it as such might contribute to filters picking it up for someone else too.
If you didn’t ASK to receive emails from them, it’s spam and it should be reported as such.
Fuck unsubscribing from things I didn’t subscribe to.
I also feel like the goon then adds you to more mailing lists
Report spam? You mean deactivate single-use email.
Missed the step towards the end were you have to switch browser and restart the whole process because “Firefox not supported” or you’ve an extension that’s a bit overzealous on blocking the checkout popup window.
Blocked an ad that fucked up the css so dramatically that the checkout button is now permanently stuck at -10% of viewport.
I tried to order chicken teriyaki so it would be ready for my wife to pick up en route home. Website requires a login. Make it. It doesn’t log in after creating the login, so log in again. Password wrong. Reset password. Finally get in. Get to last step and there’s no button to send the order. Fortunately, I’d wasted so much time that my wife was already there standing in line.
I assume it’s just formatted for mobile, but when I’m sitting at my computer, I’m going to use it, it’s always faster. Except when it doesn’t work.
Call next time?
Blasphemy and heresy.
The times I go in there they’re like “Use the website!” I feel betrayed.
And I wasn’t looking for solutions, just griping.
Ah yes I had to learn this from my wife don’t give a solution just nod along. I gotchya
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I wasn’t that hungry anyway.
“tHiS wEbSiTe Is BeTtEr In ThE aPp!”
Bold of you to assume people know the difference between an app and a website.
The App:
One WebBrowser component.
A straw to slurp all your location and contact data.
Annoying notifications.
There was a booth at my farmers market (I know) that bragged about how they can turn any website into a app.
And I wanted to (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻) their table
“STICK TO GROWING TURNIPS YOU FUCKING RAT BASTARDS”
I was astonished when I first learned that hardly anyone enters web addresses anymore, then it made sense when I realized that almost everyone browses on their phones and uses the app versions of whatever they scroll, which is really only going to be somewhere between three and a dozen sites anyway, people don’t just “surf the internet” anymore, they scroll content aggregators.
Because of this most people don’t really know HOW websites and networks work, when I explain things like how cookies work, how to refresh a page, how to navigate to specific parts of a website by changing the address, how to search the web for alternatives, etc. I get looked at like either an annoying nerd or some kind of wizard.
Don’t worry. Soon you’ll be able to subscribe to a service where an AI will just order products you don’t actually want for you.
well, a large language model.
Don’t forget that it saved all of your credit card info except for the secret code. then you search for the card and find the stupid code and enter it and then it tells you that there was an unknown error and to try a new card.
Missing step of CAPTCHA asking you to click on motorcycle images, only for you to fail at least twice
Me just trying to fucking pay a utility bill:
“Honey, could you come in here and tell me if this looks like the edge of crosswalk just visible behind that car? I have one chance left and can’t mess this up!”
Lifehack: Use the audio prompt CAPTCHAS and just put in ANY similar number of random words you hear. It fuzzes AI training data at same time. Works every time.
Cookie dismisser extension, bitwarden for passwords and 2FA codes, uBlock origin for annoying popups that can’t be removed with DNS blocker directly.
There are ways to reduce the pain somewhat, but they shouldn’t be necessary in first place.
(Well, hoomans and passwords are an issue that can’t be solved easily, but the push for passkeys has been a nice nudge in a more secure and more usable alternative.)
I like to tell people that using uBlock origin means the computer doesn’t have to render images and text in adds, so it is actually more environmentally friendly to have it installed than running the browser raw.
It’s a thin argument, but I’m happy to see that some people have jumped on because of it.
Consent-o-matic is a life-saver
You don’t need an extra extension for the cookie notices. Just use uBlock Original for that:
Under Filter lists enable “Cookie notices”what the fuck do you mean hoomans
Caught my eye too and it feels eerily reminiscent of the alt-right “coomer” and “consoom” kind of vocabulary, although I stress the word “feel”
We have driver’s licence as an app in norway. I was on my way into a pub where I was asked by a bouncer to show ID. I forgot my physical wallet with physical ID, so the dance started:
- Unlock phone.
- Find app.
- App requires national login. Enter personal number (Norwegian SSN)
- National login has 2FA via another app. Open that to confirm.
- National login requires password. My password is in a password manager, so I open that.
- Password manager requires password.
- and 2FA.
- Acquire password and scramble back to the app that required password for national log on.
- Complete login so I can show that I am 33 years old, which is over the required age of 18.
In reality, the bouncer just gave up on me at around step 5 and let me in.
Either he was being a dick (fairly likely all bounces are) or you have a really good moisturizing regimen because there’s no way that a 33-year-old would look like they’re under 18.
There are just things that should be physical things.
IDs and fucking buttons in cars please. Holy fuck please can we not do the IPAD thing in cars. Please God.
And on cooking stuff!
Long click to select stove element
Phew now it’s on full power…
That sounds like a 60 second thing at most. None of it is worse than having to drive back home for your wallet.
In Norway, it has been a long tradition to do as many drinks as possible at home before heading to the bars, due to steep prices in bars. So I was pretty “beautiful” at that point, which does not help with running passwords and 2FAs
So driving back home would have been even more difficult as well (or illegal).
Alternative to 7 they have this stupid magic email login where you cannot set a password but have to go to your mails everyone you need to login
I had one the other day, choose to login with password or the magic email link. I know my password, let me in fucker. Oh no, you still have to go to your email and click on some link to verify it’s really you.
How people can deal with internet without adblockers like uBlock is just baffling. Not only ads, but also all the cookie banners and phone app popups and other crap. uBlock will filter all this shit out so you just use the website without junk and annoyances.
I’ve used the original Windscribe back when it was still a regular x86 app that acted like a local proxy and would filter out ads and banners. That was early 2000s iirc. Even back then I couldn’t stand all this crap. Today I can’t imagine browsing without uBlock or at minimum with DNS filtering which can’t apply cosmetic filters or more advanced rules.
DNS level ad blocks have been a huge game changer for me. When I play games at home, no ads. Then when I go out and play those games, I forget that they have ads.
Just want to post this here for anyone not aware… uBlock “medium” mode. Kind of an unadvertised feature that has to be enabled in a strangely obscure way (I think they want to make sure you’re not a complete idiot).
Still, pretty easy to set up, and much more protection than the default (but also not nearly as frustrating as “hard” mode or whatever they call it). Basically, most sites you visit are going to be broken the first time you go, but you enable elements you need for the site to load, then save those settings for that domain. Takes about 30 seconds or so once you know what you’re doing and you only need to do it once per domain. Basically, I keep 1st and 3rd-party scripts off completely most of the time. It’s relatively rare that I absolutely need to enable 1st party scripts on a page for it to load.
It’s kind of like uBlock + noscript learning mode. The element zapper is clutch as well, but that’s not unique to medium mode or anything.
AdNauseam. It clicks all the adverts. Yes, this is actively malicious behaviour. No, I don’t care.
Malicious against advertisers, beneficial to the site you’re visiting.
That’s a win-win in the desolate place we call the internet today.
Using webmail can be avoided, but agreed on the rest.
PS: It gets worse when you use a script blocker and have to figure out which scripts are needed per website.
That jumped out to me as well. Even using something like Thunderbird with GMail (even though you really should try moving somewhere that respects your privacy) has such a better feel to it.
Yes, exactly. I’m still in that intermediate position myself. I’m using Thunderbird and K9-Mail as clients for my Hotmail Account (Microsoft).
It’s seems like so much work to move away from the email account I signed up for some 20 years ago, so I’ve still shied away from doing it so far. At least I started using a password manager a few years ago, so by now I have a list of services, that would require updating.
Congrats on taking the first step!
What’s literally traumatizing are the scumbag sites that wait a little bit before showing you an email popup.
Like, I’ll be reading something and then BLAM! I’m immediately taken out of my focus and have to, for the 1 billionth time (and counting!), refuse to give them an email address.
Fuck everyone who encourages this bullshit. Fuck everyone who actually gives them emails. It’s likely an extremely low percentage of users, but that’s all that it takes to ruin things for the rest of us.
Scumbag sites like that are actively contributing to lowering everyone’s standards and making us get used to a ‘new normal.’
it’s likely an extremely low percentage of users
its not, its actually a pretty high percentage, the conversion rate of pop up email form to static forms in the footer or header are like night and day. Static email sign up forms are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate for emails pop up with incentive (like a discount code) in 2024 was 7%.
If people stopped filling out the pop up forms they would go away, but people still continue to bite so they live on.
Who knew Yahoo! in its prime would be peak Internet.
Web rings were peak Internet. And files being found via FTP search.
Realize that you havn’t ordered there in a while and you’ve moved since the last time you ordered, you updated your billing address but it didn’t update the shipping address and the product is now headed toward your old house.
Sure, at step 17 you are certain it’s showing ngwt14 but it fails then takes you to an almost twenty year old “identify the motorcycles” with 8 pictures of a partial wheel… or is it a bicycle? And do they mean plural as in for the whole thing or in each image?
The latest one is where they show you a picture of it deformed owl and ask you to find all other deformed owls. It’s great because humans are really good identifying pictures of distorted animals, it’s definitely something we evolve to do.