Tag: tech

“The Bullshit Web”

Wow – such a great and thoughtful read.

An actual solution recognizes that this bullshit is inexcusable. It is making the web a cumulatively awful place to be. Behind closed doors, those in the advertising and marketing industry can be pretty lucid about how much they also hate surveillance scripts and how awful they find these methods, while simultaneously encouraging their use. Meanwhile, users are increasingly taking matters into their own hands — the use of ad blockers is rising across the board, many of which also block tracking scripts and other disrespectful behaviours. Users are making that choice.

They shouldn’t have to. Better choices should be made by web developers to not ship this bullshit in the first place. We wouldn’t tolerate such intrusive behaviour more generally; why are we expected to find it acceptable on the web?

An honest web is one in which the overwhelming majority of the code and assets downloaded to a user’s computer are used in a page’s visual presentation, with nearly all the remainder used to define the semantic structure and associated metadata on the page. Bullshit — in the form of CPU-sucking surveillance, unnecessarily-interruptive elements, and behaviours that nobody responsible for a website would themselves find appealing as a visitor — is unwelcome and intolerable.

Death to the bullshit web.

Microsoft testing forced Edge browser behaviors

From The Verge:

The software giant revealed today that “we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” The change means if you have Chrome or Firefox set as your default browser in Windows 10, Microsoft will simply ignore that and force you into Edge when you click a link within the Mail app.

I can’t see any way that this will end well for Microsoft. User trust, and subsequently active use – the more important of the two for the bottom line, is built around providing a superior product or service and therefore a better alternative to the status quo. History has never been kind to removing user choice.

Disclaimer: I use Edge as my default browser. At first, it was an acquired taste, but it has really matured and grown on me.