17 ms·

The web I want is free of junk loaders, javascript tracking ad garbage making my page requests crazy slow, unpleasant and hard to use. FB Pages now have a gian

The web I want is free of junk loaders, javascript tracking ad garbage making my page requests crazy slow, unpleasant and hard to use. FB Pages now have a giant login thing that takes over the entire page if you aren't logged in. If you close it, it comes back for every other page you visit. The amount of stuff that uBlock origin blocks now is amazing. I couldn't even use WSJ until I turned on ad blocking. I'm starting to think text based browsing is the future. Using chat like interface along with voice commands, mainly work directly with APIs and just never use a browser again. HTML and JavaScript are being taken over by crap on sites. The web is starting to feel like a garbage dump. API's are the only logical path forward I can see.

api 10y ago
It's a tragedy of the commons combined with the lack of any economic model other than tracking and ads.
- intrasight 10y ago
  That does about sum it up. Just be glad we have the option to browse with ublock origin. Of course not browsing crappy sites is another option.
  - tajen 10y ago
    > that we have the option to browse with uBlock Origin Isn't it ...copyright infringement? Sigh... DRM are incoming...
- Frondo 10y ago
  You know, I think there's another part of this--income inequality (stop groaning, it's relevant!) that means that everyone has to try and shill and monetize their stuff as much as possible. I dream of a world in which the typical worker's wages hadn't been suppressed and decoupled from productivity for the last four decades, and people had the disposable income to work less and write and make art more, and give it away instead of tryin' to get us all to punch the monkey and win. I dream of a world in which we can ALL punch the monkey and win! Well, ok, maybe not, but still...
  - komali2 10y ago
    I'm about to take us from off the rails to into the forest, but since we're on the subject - poor people are poor, yes, but I think the biggest problem is lack of financial education. I know people that are making enough money to live comfortably, but are crippled by debt caused by poor decisions when they are younger, or poor decisions now. I say better financial education, and then the next step.
    - gjm11 10y ago
      Does better financial education actually help? I mean, I know it sounds like it should, but does it? I ask because I have a super-hazy memory of seeing some report that it turns out not to make much difference to later wealth, happiness, etc.
      - stephengillie 10y ago
        Compound interest isn't much help to those spending their whole paycheck meeting their basic needs. Knowing how to properly invest doesn't help those who can't generate enough income to effectively invest, and didn't receive any help from family or angels. https://xkcd.com/947/ https://xkcd.com/947/
        imtringued 10y ago
        That raises an interesting question. If you were poor, would you want to sacrifice your happyness a bit to ensure that your children will be better off than you? Sure this is quite a slow solution but it would actually work if done consistently.
        digi_owl 10y ago
        Happens all the time. I keep running into stories from people that grew up in a poor household, or is a parent in the same situation. And always the parent will sacrifice a meal or similar to make sure that the kids get to eat. In nature, getting between a mother and her baby is perhaps one of the most dangerous situations you can be in. very few predators, unless they are out of options, consider humans a viable meal. But even ruminants will potentially attack you to defend their young. Trying to treat humans as cold calculators of utility is perhaps the worst idea economists have clung to over the years.
- cgh 10y ago
  Yes, the junk will hopefully diminish when we get a micro-payment framework that actually works and people will use. Websites are bottlenecked into ads for revenue, to everyone's detriment and sorrow. Unfortunately, it won't do much to decrease Javascript abuse, unless NoScript becomes some kind of a default.
  - JupiterMoon 10y ago
    > unless NoScript becomes some kind of a default. It is on my systems. The OOOOP's web - that's the one that I experience every single day.
skylan_q 10y ago
The web I want is free of junk loaders, javascript tracking ad garbage making my page requests crazy slow, unpleasant and hard to use. You should try Brave if you haven't already.
porFavor 10y ago
Have a walk down Times Square. It's gross. Sure, if you're a tourist, it's one of the first things you'll do upon arriving in NYC. If, on the other hand, you live in NYC, you'll avoid Times Square at all costs. Times Square is what you get when you try to clean something up and it becomes commercialized. A lot of it has to do with the incentives put in place to clean it up. Tax brakes are generally provided for companies to utilize the space, and "clean it up". Even Lincoln Center is an example of this sort. The money provided to develop Lincoln Center was supposed to be utilized to improve that area, but instead it pushed out all the residents. It did not improve their lives. They can't afford events at Lincoln Center. They were relocated. In both cases, Times Square and Lincoln Center, the communities that were utilizing the space prior to redevelopment / improvement were simply displaced. The redevelopment did not benefit these constituents. These constituents did not have the influence needed to either send help their way or steer changes that would affect them. So really, the incentives are directed by the political mechanism, which is directed by the interest groups with the requisite influence. Companies and affluent individuals. This should look very familiar. Many of the most visible parts of the Internet today (I guess the press recently decided that the "Internet" should no longer be capitalized, but they are wrong) might fairly be viewed as our shared digital Times Square. It looks like a public space, but in actuality it is a heavily regulated private space. If, on the other hand, you are a New Yorker, you don't go there. You go to the many other amazing pockets of humanity and creativity that the city has to offer. And they're constantly changing. One week a space smells like urine and you wouldn't go down their after dark even if it was 4:30 am and had the only street meat in sight; the next week your buddy gives you the heads up that it's now an awesome bar, just make sure and use the door in the connected building because there are no signs or working doors at the front yet. And then, in a year, that bar turns into a Gristedes. My point, long winded though it might be, is that sure parts of the Internet are being co-opted and grossly commercialized, but a true local explores beyond these parts and makes a home amongst these parts. Going native means knowing where the alleyways and speakeasies are. It means having your ear to the ground and finding out about the newest restaurants by word of mouth instead of paid advertisements. In a word, taste. Acquiring and exercising good taste in the places your frequent, you patronize, you invest in, you wander in, will both benefit you and the community you are a part of. One last point. One advantage that the Internet has over our share physical spaces is that distance is, practically speaking, a non-issue. In our shared physical space it takes a good while to walk from Times Square to Lincoln Center. But, to go from the web presence of Times Square to Lincoln Center takes no time at all. Heck, you can have both tabs up on your screen at the same time. So, sure, parts of the Internet can be co-opted and ruined. But there is space enough for us to recreate. And if others want to come along, we'll always be a click away.
kodablah 10y ago
I think I have a better solution. How about keeping HTML/JS and lose the bidirectional protocols used to track you. As a side project I am starting to work on a non-HTTP browser (and non-websocket, non-webrtc, etc). The first "protocol" will be IPFS. Download all of the HTML/JS/images and store all the cookies/localStorage you want, you can't send the information back to any server. Heck, you can't even know you have a page view. Now to make it more powerful, I will offer a JS API to pages that let's them use the mutation features of IPFS, but it is strictly opt-in and the permissions are very narrow and clear to the user (think specific oauth scopes).
- glassx 10y ago
  > I think I have a better solution. How about keeping HTML/JS and lose the bidirectional protocols used to track you. Is it that common for trackers to have Websocket/WebRTC as a requirement? Pretty much any trackers I see in the wild is using regular Ajax calls. And if you're a tracking service, it's not exactly hard to fallback to Ajax if Websockets aren't available... EDIT: My mistake, I misread the first mention of HTTP as HTML.
  - kodablah 10y ago
    I also consider HTTP a bidirectional protocol used to track you.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      You can be tracked without bidirectional calls, without JS, even without images or cookies. See the Panopticlick.
      - kodablah 10y ago
        > You can be tracked without bidirectional calls No, you can be fingerprinted and what not, but being tracked requires you send the data somewhere.
        10y ago

api 10y ago

It's a tragedy of the commons combined with the lack of any economic model other than tracking and ads.

intrasight 10y ago
That does about sum it up. Just be glad we have the option to browse with ublock origin. Of course not browsing crappy sites is another option.
- tajen 10y ago
  > that we have the option to browse with uBlock Origin Isn't it ...copyright infringement? Sigh... DRM are incoming...
Frondo 10y ago
You know, I think there's another part of this--income inequality (stop groaning, it's relevant!) that means that everyone has to try and shill and monetize their stuff as much as possible. I dream of a world in which the typical worker's wages hadn't been suppressed and decoupled from productivity for the last four decades, and people had the disposable income to work less and write and make art more, and give it away instead of tryin' to get us all to punch the monkey and win. I dream of a world in which we can ALL punch the monkey and win! Well, ok, maybe not, but still...
- komali2 10y ago
  I'm about to take us from off the rails to into the forest, but since we're on the subject - poor people are poor, yes, but I think the biggest problem is lack of financial education. I know people that are making enough money to live comfortably, but are crippled by debt caused by poor decisions when they are younger, or poor decisions now. I say better financial education, and then the next step.
  - gjm11 10y ago
    Does better financial education actually help? I mean, I know it sounds like it should, but does it? I ask because I have a super-hazy memory of seeing some report that it turns out not to make much difference to later wealth, happiness, etc.
    - stephengillie 10y ago
      Compound interest isn't much help to those spending their whole paycheck meeting their basic needs. Knowing how to properly invest doesn't help those who can't generate enough income to effectively invest, and didn't receive any help from family or angels. https://xkcd.com/947/ https://xkcd.com/947/
      - imtringued 10y ago
        That raises an interesting question. If you were poor, would you want to sacrifice your happyness a bit to ensure that your children will be better off than you? Sure this is quite a slow solution but it would actually work if done consistently.
        digi_owl 10y ago
        Happens all the time. I keep running into stories from people that grew up in a poor household, or is a parent in the same situation. And always the parent will sacrifice a meal or similar to make sure that the kids get to eat. In nature, getting between a mother and her baby is perhaps one of the most dangerous situations you can be in. very few predators, unless they are out of options, consider humans a viable meal. But even ruminants will potentially attack you to defend their young. Trying to treat humans as cold calculators of utility is perhaps the worst idea economists have clung to over the years.
cgh 10y ago
Yes, the junk will hopefully diminish when we get a micro-payment framework that actually works and people will use. Websites are bottlenecked into ads for revenue, to everyone's detriment and sorrow. Unfortunately, it won't do much to decrease Javascript abuse, unless NoScript becomes some kind of a default.
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  > unless NoScript becomes some kind of a default. It is on my systems. The OOOOP's web - that's the one that I experience every single day.

skylan_q 10y ago

The web I want is free of junk loaders, javascript tracking ad garbage making my page requests crazy slow, unpleasant and hard to use. You should try Brave if you haven't already.

porFavor 10y ago

Have a walk down Times Square. It's gross. Sure, if you're a tourist, it's one of the first things you'll do upon arriving in NYC. If, on the other hand, you live in NYC, you'll avoid Times Square at all costs. Times Square is what you get when you try to clean something up and it becomes commercialized. A lot of it has to do with the incentives put in place to clean it up. Tax brakes are generally provided for companies to utilize the space, and "clean it up". Even Lincoln Center is an example of this sort. The money provided to develop Lincoln Center was supposed to be utilized to improve that area, but instead it pushed out all the residents. It did not improve their lives. They can't afford events at Lincoln Center. They were relocated. In both cases, Times Square and Lincoln Center, the communities that were utilizing the space prior to redevelopment / improvement were simply displaced. The redevelopment did not benefit these constituents. These constituents did not have the influence needed to either send help their way or steer changes that would affect them. So really, the incentives are directed by the political mechanism, which is directed by the interest groups with the requisite influence. Companies and affluent individuals. This should look very familiar. Many of the most visible parts of the Internet today (I guess the press recently decided that the "Internet" should no longer be capitalized, but they are wrong) might fairly be viewed as our shared digital Times Square. It looks like a public space, but in actuality it is a heavily regulated private space. If, on the other hand, you are a New Yorker, you don't go there. You go to the many other amazing pockets of humanity and creativity that the city has to offer. And they're constantly changing. One week a space smells like urine and you wouldn't go down their after dark even if it was 4:30 am and had the only street meat in sight; the next week your buddy gives you the heads up that it's now an awesome bar, just make sure and use the door in the connected building because there are no signs or working doors at the front yet. And then, in a year, that bar turns into a Gristedes. My point, long winded though it might be, is that sure parts of the Internet are being co-opted and grossly commercialized, but a true local explores beyond these parts and makes a home amongst these parts. Going native means knowing where the alleyways and speakeasies are. It means having your ear to the ground and finding out about the newest restaurants by word of mouth instead of paid advertisements. In a word, taste. Acquiring and exercising good taste in the places your frequent, you patronize, you invest in, you wander in, will both benefit you and the community you are a part of. One last point. One advantage that the Internet has over our share physical spaces is that distance is, practically speaking, a non-issue. In our shared physical space it takes a good while to walk from Times Square to Lincoln Center. But, to go from the web presence of Times Square to Lincoln Center takes no time at all. Heck, you can have both tabs up on your screen at the same time. So, sure, parts of the Internet can be co-opted and ruined. But there is space enough for us to recreate. And if others want to come along, we'll always be a click away.

kodablah 10y ago

I think I have a better solution. How about keeping HTML/JS and lose the bidirectional protocols used to track you. As a side project I am starting to work on a non-HTTP browser (and non-websocket, non-webrtc, etc). The first "protocol" will be IPFS. Download all of the HTML/JS/images and store all the cookies/localStorage you want, you can't send the information back to any server. Heck, you can't even know you have a page view. Now to make it more powerful, I will offer a JS API to pages that let's them use the mutation features of IPFS, but it is strictly opt-in and the permissions are very narrow and clear to the user (think specific oauth scopes).

glassx 10y ago
> I think I have a better solution. How about keeping HTML/JS and lose the bidirectional protocols used to track you. Is it that common for trackers to have Websocket/WebRTC as a requirement? Pretty much any trackers I see in the wild is using regular Ajax calls. And if you're a tracking service, it's not exactly hard to fallback to Ajax if Websockets aren't available... EDIT: My mistake, I misread the first mention of HTTP as HTML.
- kodablah 10y ago
  I also consider HTTP a bidirectional protocol used to track you.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    You can be tracked without bidirectional calls, without JS, even without images or cookies. See the Panopticlick.
    - kodablah 10y ago
      > You can be tracked without bidirectional calls No, you can be fingerprinted and what not, but being tracked requires you send the data somewhere.
      - 10y ago