I’d like to see just how horrible someone can make a site. Facebook is a good contender.
Pintrest is the worst website ever built and has caused immense damage to the free sharing of information.
I legitimately don’t know why Google hasn’t filtered it out of image search results. It’s harmful to Google’s platform.
It’s the top rated blocked website on Kagi.
I don’t know why Google doesn’t take a hint.
This is a baseless but very reasonable theory - because Pinterest pays them a fuck ton of money.
me: oh hey I was looking for–
Pinterest: Sign in or I will come to your house and break your thumbs
me: well fuck you too then
It was actually pretty cool when I started and real people used it.
Honestly don’t get why they’re still around and what they do.
Used to be an easy way to collect and share photos or something from a website with friends. It was especially useful with things like making a collection of fashion that you liked and then discussing similar fashions with friends. It actually at one point would recognize some pieces of clothing and then create links to buy it. Actually a useful advertising kind of thing IMHO. But it became bloated and full of tracking nonsense rather than helping people share things and so it lost its usefulness. It seems it’s mostly populated by bots now to drive SEO.
Try using Instagram without an account and no app, basically impossible.
The only way I’ve worked out how to even save Instagram images locally is using the page information (ctrl+i) Media tab in Firefox and sort through it to find it there. Terrible for an image hosting website.
It’s not an image hosting site, it’s a social media site whose goal is to keep you coming back for more. The easier it is for you to save their content locally, the less likely you are to spend as much time on their site.
And the fact that people flock there despite that is a way I feel more and more distant from humanity…
If you’re running Windows, though, you can use the Snipping Tool to grab the part of the screen you want to save, which may or may not have an image in it.
I prefer the PrintScr key on my keyboard, personally.
Doesn’t that call the same snipping tool? Anyway, saving from source may preserve quality a bit better
I don’t think so. I’ve been using PrintScr longer than the snipping tool has existed.
I’m not sure what “saving from source” would be for a screenshot. What do you mean there?
I thought Twitter was a stupid idea when it first started. 140 character limit? What the fuck is the point? The fact they increased that limit shows it was dumb. Everything else about the site just gives further reason to hate it.
That limit came from the days of SMS. The idea was that you can’t go to the internet, because data is expensive, the network doesn’t exist, your dumb phone can’t even open websites etc. However, you can send SMS messages, and those things have a 160 character limit.
Do does that mean they took an existing limitation from the SMS protocol, that didn’t apply because it used data instead and then shoehorned it into a godawful web 2.0 monstrosity all the same (and bear in mind, this is significantly reducing the unnecessary character limit!)
In 2006 the restriction did apply. The idea was that you would type the message on a computer, and let Twitter send a few SMS messages to a small group people.
You weren’t supposed to have millions of followers or write a full length blog post using a hundred short messages. The idea was that you cold reach people quickly even though they didn’t have access to a proper computer or the internet. So much has changed in the past 18 years…
So wait, it would convert them into an SMS for you?
Why bother with the middle man…
Back in the bad old days, messages cost you real world money. If you wanted to reach lots of people by SMS, it would be pretty expensive. Might as well let Twitter pay for the messages, especially when you’re just writing a public announcement.
Still does where I’m from! As to why they front up for the 18 cents (or similar), seems mental
I’ve heard some strange stories about a mysterious land on the other side of a vast ocean. In this far-away land of countless wonders, companies are only symbolically restricted by laws. This means that they can legally exploit their employees and customers in all sorts of creative ways, and charge pretty much whatever they want. Maybe you’ve heard similar wonderful tales as well?
It’s still very stupid, character limit increase or not.
How are we measuring?
- Global harmful impact: it’s hard to beat Facebook
- Disgusting: long ago, I got a spam advertising a dedicated CSAM site. I looked to see it it was really what it said, and sent it to NCMEC when I saw that is was
- Actively malign: 8chan is up there, as are old fashioned hate groups.
I kinda meant horrible design, but I guess these categories are good measurements too
4chan. When I saw a German shepherd get hit in the face with a shovel full force, I decided the site wasn’t for me.
Ya no. That’s when I quit too. That place’s
hollowgot no humanity left.It was like 20 years ago when I saw it. It never really had any humanity.
Unfortunately people always go on the “shock site” boards like /b/ and /pol/ instead of checking out the more niche ones like /po/ (papercraft and origami) and /tg/ (traditional games) which are much more like regular hobbyist forums/image boards. I can see why one awful experience would sour the whole thing though and some of the people who post there are sad excuses for human beings.
Edit: Just as an example this is the oldest thread on 4chan at the moment. It was created in 2016 and is still active. It catalogues OP’s struggle to make an origami clock.
the idea of someone unironically using 4chan to chat about origami is so funny to me
Yeah but, counterpoint, can you name any other active online origami communities?
Reddit.
Fragile Mods. Shitty trolls. Dishonest engagements. Little to no good discussion. Opinions are seen as attacks. Power-tripping users and mods alike. Karma whores.
Can’t stand the staleness. Apart from the frigging bots and automods, it feels like a bunch of boring, shallow, sated establishment guys that like “pretending that one could be hip with a mortgage payment,” as Bela Koe-Krompecher once put it.
Ogrish.
Doesn’t exist any more, but definitely traumatized me as a child.
If you haven’t heard of it, it was basically a video hosting site focusing on extreme violence and gore.
Tons of clips of people being killed or horrifically maimed in war, car accidents, industrial accidents, ‘extreme’ magic shows gone wrong, brutal gang attacks, straight up snuff videos…
Some videos off the top of my head I won’t ever be able to erase from my memory:
The beheading of Daniel Pearl.
Low resolution video of 9/11, but you could make out people jumping from the towers… and splattering all over the ground. The camera man tracked people the entire distance they fell.
Some insane magic show gone wrong where a man chain sawed his wife in half … she hadn’t managed to fold herself into the right position inside the magic box… her screams and twitching legs were not an act.
A video taken in Fallujah (I think?) of an Iraqi hopped up on an absurd amount of drugs, taken from a US soldier who had just dismounted with most of his squad from a humvee.
Him and others advance down the middle of a street towards the soldiers, all holding AKs. A volley of fire from the dismounted soildiers either took out all the group, leaving them with chunks blown off, writhing in agony, or scattering…
Except this one guy. He’s clearly seriously wounded, but is still advancing basically blind firing his AK.
The US soldiers are in shock that he’s still walking.
Now for a burst from a 50 cal.
Huge parts of this guy’s body are visibly blown off of him, but he still advances.
A second, more sustained 50 cal burst basically liquifies him where he stood.
That and rotten.com have been responsible for a lot of my insomnia, and probably a good chunk of my misanthropy.
You can’t unsee things, folks. Don’t give in to the temptation. It’s not worth it.
rotten.com actually was a protest website that was supposed to be the last bastion of online freedom of speech.
it was a fucking eyesore for Gore and mistress Tipper.
Remember–when they go low and refuse to let you go high, fucking bury them.
2 guys 1 hammer is no joke
Thankfully that’s one I’ve only heard about and was wise enough not to watch.
literally any restaurant website. I disabled Facebook from my entire network (pihole).
I can no longer order food on a website because Facebook is deadzoned.
Also, about half of big box brick and mortar online stores stopped working as well.
8chan
Literally 4chan, but worse.
How do you even land there?
I only know 4chan through comments, I wouldn’t even bother looking for another site like that lol.
4chan wasn’t even the first, it was an English version of a japanese site (futaba channel) which was an image board version of a forum (2channel).
Back in the late aughts, there were a ton of *chan sites. Some even more unsavory than 4chan.
With Facebook and x.com you pretty much understand the risks going in.
But with stack overflow there’s so much naivete required to create an account and begin asking questions. The good stuff is laid out right in front of you: people asking similar questions and getting thoughtful responses to deeply technical questions. It feels rewarding to get your first answer approved.
But then after months of “trying” you hit the wall. A sudden deluge of hostility and toxicity. Bipolar moderation staff suddenly deciding your content has no value and dumping you on a curb at night with a shitty smug comment, to the applause of bloodthirsty hoards of bootlicking trolls.
Nothing could have prepared you for this. It’s hell. All of your work for nothing, any chance of justice or restitution gone. Every promise broken.
It’s insidiously evil and I hope every member of their staff (unpaid moderators included) goes bankrupt and loses their home to foreclosure.
Yeah, I’m really happy for GPT for this alone. It minimised my exposure to SO.
Nextdoor has gotta be in the top 10.
In terms of social, political, and geopolitical harm, no platform beats Facebook. At least in X there are community notes. In Facebook, none of that.
Eons ago I made a shocksite-“game” where you basically could trick people into visiting, and you got a point for each unique visit. The site was basically a collage of the usual, such as goatse, tubgirl, et.al. I guess that was the worst, and putting no effort into the design didn’t help either. Once the /b/-tards on 4chan found out about it, traffic really skyrocketed.
Anyways, years went by, and I didn’t have time or interest in maintaining it anymore, so I let the domain name Expire. I chuckled a bit a while back when I realized that the domain had been bought by a jewelry brand, and they used it as a webshop. If only they knew the history… they obviously haven’t checked out the internet archive for that domain.
