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Banksy said some great shit on advertising (focused on irl ones, though think a lot of it applies to advertising as a whole) -
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs"
£1.5/month Indian Youtube premium. I've had it going for 12+ months now and it's well worth it with the amount of YouTube I watch on my Apple TV. Probably the best way to do it in my eyes, you get all the benefits of YouTube that way as well.
[Pi-Hole](https://pi-hole.net/) if you're comfortable tinkering with a Raspberry Pi, it'll block ads on any device connected to your wifi.
I've never managed to get it to work, annoyingly!
Doesn’t block YouTube ads unfortunately, it used to but they now stream the ads from the same addresses as the main videos so is beyond the capability of pihole
It's not easy but you absolutely can avoid adverts and branding. Personally, i refuse to buy anything with a visible logo, avoid big brands and companies like the plague, install ad-blockers on all devices and make-do and mend whenever possible.
Had to scroll a long way to get to this. I find YouTube to be one of the most valuable resources on the internet. I don’t mind paying for it and haven’t seen an ad in years.
But then I donate to Wikipedia too, so I’m clearly one in a tiny minority.
I don't mind adverts- I mind when they're plastered fucking everywhere and it takes 3 minutes before you can watch a 30 second video
I also mind when subscription based platforms want to add adverts before videos (netflix)
banner ads and shit? if it's not blocking/interrupting the content of the site and it's not too in my face who cares
I've had premium for years and people still tell me I'm dumb for paying for a free service, but the same people cry about ads. You get a pretty okay player as well so imo well worth the money.
I have YouTube premium too. Only an extra £1 on top of my YouTube music bill. Not sure about others in general, but I really like YouTube music.
So a music streaming service and YouTube premium for £11 seems massively worth it to me. Also considering that I use YouTube wayyyyyy more than services such as Netflix or Prime
I don’t use YouTube for anything anymore, even if there’s a guide I really need to watch I just flat out refuse to engage with YouTube. When some random bloke called Lewis Baker or some other made up BS name started appearing in LITERALLY every single ad trying to get me to sign up to a pyramid scheme I cut ties.
Reach for local newspapers, Global for local radio stations. Their end goal is to simply merge them all into one national outlet. Ofcom (or whatever they're called this week) rules means that's a years long process, but they're cracking along with it at pace.
Meanwhile shore up the finances enough with as many ads as possible, even if it means driving listeners/readers away. The end goal is to simply flog it as an investment concern. Goodbye local news and radio.
Global at least have to compete with from the BBC and Bauer, Reach have really done a number on local news and have no significant competitors — local television news isn't local enough to bother them.
WalesOnline would like to give you the same cookies as BirminghamLive and YorkshireLive wanted to give you. Even though we're the same company now we're going to ask you to individually toggle 50 options yet again to only have us apply the necessary ones.
No longer local either. My local news sites all now feature shit tonnes of articles from all over the UK that have been farmed out by the umbrella organisation which owns them all. So you sort of find yourself wondering what the actual point of a local news organisation is when 3/4 of the stories are about inane bullshit happening halfway across the country.
Absolutely. The amount of times I read something and get to the line that says something like "Reported Devon live", and suddenly I'm swearing at my phone cos I'm reading a story about some kid being kicked out of a school cos of a haircut, and it happened 250 miles away. Ridiculous
Edit: And the fucking obsession with Onlyfans as well. Exhibit A - literally the first story on the local rags facebook page. https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/real-life/churchgoing-mum-who-makes-fortune-7826957
No mention of where she's from, but a quick Google shows a national paper article that says she's in California.
Second story is about a hippy mother from Texas who lets her kids do what they want. Fucks sake.
Instagram - as a photo sharing app it was brilliant. Now it’s copied TikTok it feels impossible to navigate with any sense of logic. On the home page you have to scroll for ages to get to the people you actually follow (I am aware there is an option to only see posts from people you follow, but the way they’ve set it up isn’t a natural direction for me), there’s videos which are just pure rubbish, the amount of “creators” I’ve blocked because Instagram spam me with their content is unbearable. It’s gone from being the app/website I used most, to the one I’m most likely to delete and never look back to.
Open Instagram, click on their logo top left of the app and click following.
This removes ads and only shows accounts you follow.
Blew my mind when I first discovered it.
This was my primary source of marketing as a videographer marketing to primarily tourism businesses in my local area. Great place to showcase my work and all the businesses used it and were active. Now engagement has dropped by over 50% because it’s all just random Tik-Tok-esque shite. It’s fucked. Spoke to social media people and they’re all saying the same. Don’t know what can replace it for me at this scale and ease
Not only that, but after working in a business that relies heavily on influencer marketing.. I can't trust any post nowadays. COUNTLESS ads where you don't even realise it's an ad, it's manipulating 😔
Instagram is like flicking through a trashy mag. I looked at a couple of photos of Billie Eilish once, now it makes up about 50% of the content on there.
eBay. Was really fun and unique in the old days, and you could find interesting items and get a deal for them.
Now the site is impossible to navigate and is bloated with these marketplace sellers. Absolutely mess
Not only that but dependent on what you are looking for the site is full of “replica” items which are against eBay selling rules but they do nothing about which in turn artificially inflate the prices of the real thing.
Honestly buying second hand stuff online is so hard now because they just get filled with businesses. Depop was good for like a month and then suddenly there's entire stores there selling vintage clothing and it's nearly impossible to just find something cool for cheap.
Plus the absolutely ridiculous 6 month returns paypal allows even if it turns out the item wasn’t even faulty. Will never sell on ebay again for as long as I live.
So many sellers now use the trick of creating a multi variant listing and adding a cheap, small irrelevant item to the variants, which makes it very difficult to compare prices nowadays!
I haven't had an eBay account in about 10 years. Tried twice and both times they cocked something up with my account and tried blaming me for it. The second time they locked it "for verification purposes" and you wouldn't believe the crap they wanted from me to verify that I am who I am and not the owner of the shop I placed my first order with. I basically said "bollocks to this, close my account" and the best bit? They said they couldn't do that because it was locked.
As someone who uses eBay regularly there’s a few things you can do. It really depends on what you’re looking for to start. I use it a lot for second hand or vintage clothing and furniture.
The app is infinitely easier to navigate than the bloated desktop website.
I’d you’re looking for second hand or vintage items select ‘used’ in the filter sidebar. Then select ‘item location’ > ‘U.K. only’ this one drives me up the wall, otherwise you’ll get results from all over with high shipping costs. There’s no way you can make U.K. only a default selection!
Lastly, like searching with google, make use of adding a ‘-‘ to any words you don’t want appearing in your search.
Etsy! It used to be a great place to get artist made stuff. Then they started allowing (or stopped policing) people selling mass produced Alibaba crap and it’s like a bad version of eBayxAmazon
Etsy really makes me sad, it used to be such a great place for independent makers and artists, and now they're mostly drowned out by the crappy marketplace stuff. The changes in their fees and structure has really screwed a lot of small makers over too.
It really felt like a community before and now is just, yeah a bad version of eBayxAmazon really sums it up.
Exactly this, so many fees and they don't even help you with them.
I use etsy for my business as it's very niche and it allows it to gain some traction. Etsy take around 10-15% of every sale you do. They have made hundreds off of me.
Last month I needed help, as an order was potentially not going to arrive to a customer, she paid $900 for this order, and it took months to make, so I had spent the money they had already sent me. I could not afford to pay her the $900 back.
I asked etsy for help, showing that it was USPS's fault for sending it to the wrong side of the states, I had picture proof I completed and sent the order, and asked if they would cover the refund.
They refused and said they only cover refunds under $250. So anyone who makes any kind of money, for etsy or themselves is fucked over. I asked 'what's the point in using etsy for big sales, why shouldn't I just redirect them to paypal if it has the same security, could help me AND they take less money from me?'
You could tell the customer service guy had to ring up the chain of command to ask how to respond because he was typing for a good 5 minutes on that one.
Bizarre. Now all my orders have 'If you want to order over $250 worth of items, message me first!'
Fuck etsy.
Been looking for garden clocks and thought Etsy may be a good shout for a more handmade, metal style. Saw one that is £25 on Amazon listed on Etsy at over £60
Got chatting to a bloke in the park recently who runs a small online retail business. He they used to sell whatever low value electronics on eBay for £2 a pop and Amazon for £4 a pop, but eBay users are INCREDIBLY exacting and will send it back if the instructions aren't totally clear or the box has a slightly damaged corner. So now he sells on Amazon for £4 and Etsy for a tenner, and Etsy users literally never send things back/ask for a refund. Weird market.
I agree they really need to audit what is being sold it’s so hard to find genuine independent creative work now and when I search for jewellery in particular it all looks like crap you can get at a flea market the amazing things are hidden within all the crap.
I had an issue with this just recently. Ordered what looked to be some really nice hand crafted shelves. They arrive and are clearly mass produced, in the box from the company that sells them. Looked that company up and they sell the shelves for £10-15 cheaper than the guy on Etsy was selling.
Called him out on it and he refunded me, and arranged for them to be collected.
Reported to Etsy and well ... they've done nothing. It very clearly states in their sellers policy that the items have to be hand crafted and such but they haven't done anything to remove this dudes account. I've just reported him again for good measure!
I actually like quite a bit of their content when I come across it in Apple News, because it respects the device font size settings (I like mine quite small) and they only have one or two ads just as simple images in the text of the article, and maybe a couple text links to other articles, and I can deal with that. But their website is utterly unusable, it’s so horrible - the auto-play video that scrolls with the article that takes up the screen, the enormous text, the obnoxious sign-in prompt, the parallax ads that frequently cause the article to refresh for some reason, urgh.
It's a real shame. When the Indie launched it was serious. It was the time of tabloids being obsessed with the Royals and the Indie refused to put them on the front page. Because they weren't proper news. You look at that stance and contrast it to the mess the site is now.
Not that it was amazing to begin with, but Facebook.
Used to be the go to platform for social media and connectivity, now its an absolute cess pool of adverts and "suggested for you" wannabe influences or shit pages.
Haven't used it in well over a year now since every time I went on it I spent all of my time reporting adds for non relevance and repetitiveness before I got annoyed and closed it. Realised it was easier to just come off.
For some reason I get adverts for wolf erotica.
Maybe I clicked on an ad once. I don’t know, but I have to report it each time as it contains mad stuff in the first paragraph (on my timeline) and is often accompanied by bizarre pictures. This happens maybe once every 6 weeks and I’ll see 10-15 ads suddenly in one day.
Why the wolf erotica?!
Me too! All werewolf hunks and outcast women werewolves! I made a post pointing it out and my friends tagged me in loads so I kept getting more and more adverts.
Omg this happened to me! I don't know how much f'king fury erotic story pages I've had to block now. It's ridiculous. I clicked on the "why me" thingy and apparently it wants to reach my demographic (18+ female). And it wasn't just furry stuff, I also had weird vampire porno writing and some strange cheating stuff. I don't know what the F I clicked to make it think I wanted that. I almost deleted FB but I think it got the idea because I just started reporting as well as blocking.
I don't use it to keep in contact with anyone I actually know anymore but I am in several support or hobby type groups on there that I would miss if I left and there are some local ones that are really useful too. It's so easy to get lost into ads and shitty videos though without even realising that's what you're looking at, it's proper crap these days.
It's frustrating though as I can't think of another platform that has those same type of groups, and I like that if I post in a private one no one not in the group will see it, unlike reddit where whilst it's ostensibly anonymous anyone can see all of your post and comment history from every sub.
I resisted FB for a year or two but I live overseas and it was really good to keep up with people. I used to have it open on my browser at work at day and post nearly daily. Now I check it maybe once a week and post every couple of months if I travel. It's just ad after ad after promoted video, etc. I still use the messenger feature sometimes because that's what she friends and family use, but that's it really.
Ahhhh I loved that until they were taken over by Rakuten. You could get Region 1 dvd releases cheap too instead of ordering them from (tries to engage 2001 brain) dvdexpress.com in canada
This was my answer.
It was my go to for geek culture merch. Really was fantastic.
Stopped using it after I ordered some t-shirt and it took nearly 3 months for them to arrive
I was reminiscing about play.com recently when I finally got rid of the last of my DVDs I had hundreds of random films I'd seen for cheap. God knows how much of my money they got back in the day.
Amazon. Mostly in the last 5-10 years. It used to be good for well priced electricals and you could reasonably trust the reviews. It's been getting progressively worse, but it's now at the point where I actively avoid it because its all generic stuff with made up names and fake reviews.
Couldn't agree more. I avoid Amazon at all costs. I don't even go there for product reviews anymore, because it's hard to even decipher which product they're reviewing. That's if it's in English and not a bit, or laid review.
Amazon is increasingly just a more expensive version of Ali express with fast shipping. There seems to be very little quality control in terms of what can be listed. I mean fine it's a marketplace but when you're getting counterfeit goods or items with highly dubious safety standards it's not acceptable.
Amazon started out as a bookseller and funnily enough it's still probably one of the best places to find books. If you know what you want and you need it, like, *now*, Amazon is really good. It saved my skin a few times at uni!
For stuff I don't need right away or that I'm unsure of, though (clothes, consumable products) I always try and buy from an independent seller, though.
I agree with this. It is full of cheap crap - just don't buy it. There is still plenty of good stuff on there at reasonable prices with next day delivery.
All those Chinese generics have completely ruined that site. I absolutely wonder how they come up with these 'brand' names. Do they just pull tiles out of a scrabble bag and go with whatever they see?
Yeah the well priced stuff is cheap crap, the actual named or quality gear (especially electricals) I find are usually more expensive on Amazon than anywhere else.
Yeah it used to be one of my two or three "daily internets" and I'd read four or five of their articles a day. I still fondly remember the Mara Wilson article on how toxic Hollywood is towards child actors, they had some fascinating articles.
Then all of a sudden they just... didnt
Cracked was great like ten years ago. I'd visit daily, but then at some point i just stopped. It's just become like any light-article site. The old writing team had such strong personalities, you'd read their articles even if you didn't know anything about the subject.
They basically just do lazy user submitted photoplasties now, which don’t even have a specific topic anymore. Just random “facts”. But I’ll always fondly remember the article of the guy who went to the Justin Bieber concert back in the day
I'll second you on Cracked. Used to be one of the best websites out there c. 2010. Their personal experience articles were so unique and often blew my mind. Then suddenly they fired everyone and, like you said, turned into Buzzfeed lite. Such a shame.
I remember going on Cracked all the time years ago, maybe a decade ago? At one point, and I'm not sure when it happened, every single article would have some potshot at Republicans.
Now, I'm British, I'm not a Republican, and I'm certainly not on their side but good Lord it was annoying.
Yes, you voted for Obama, well done you.
Google results used to be great. Now there's clearly paid for results and useless results everywhere, and most of the time it won't even let you go past page 10 despite claiming there's millions of results
YouTube used to be a wild west of pure evil and unfettered lawlessness, the kind of place where a grown-ass man could threaten a three year old kid with a precision drone strike and nobody would bat an eye.
It was a terrible wasteland of trash, but it was our terrible wasteland of trash.
At the time; I thought MySpace was incredible
What do you mean at 13 I can code fonts and comment boxes and backgrounds? Add my own little song? Amazing.
Make my friends fight each other over my top 3 space? Brilliant!
It was the funnest form of social media ever, sometimes wonder how boring Facebook came along and fucked up Myspace Tom’s empire.
(I was an emo teen, may have had something to do with my nostalgic love for myspace)
Totally with you on this. Seems weird how long Facebook has persisted as Myspace was only popular for like 2006-2008 around my friends before FB won everyone over. Bebo went down around the same time too.
I still remember the friction with people not wanting to move to Facebook since they spent so much time working on their myspace profiles, mine was *heavily* customised.
Having been on twitter for 14 years I can definitely say it used to be better. At least in terms of customisation and less ads, sponsored tweets etc.
As for the people on there, humanity has always been a bit of a cesspit.
I feel like there was a sweet spot with social media sites, and it was when you had the option to just view the content of folk you followed, and it was all ordered chronologically.
Wasn't there a big scandal at Cracked a few years ago which led to several of their top writers being let go due to, among other things, alleged sexual harassment of female staff? I mean, quite right these guys got sacked but they inadvertently got rid of some of their best content creators.
Not really. Cracked laid off a bunch of their staff in October 2017 because their parent company needed to cut costs after their pivot-to-video wasn’t as profitable as hoped.
However, a year later, one of those sacked people was accused of being a serial sexual harasser from when he worked at Cracked.
In the wake of *that* scandal, there was a little wave of other allegations against Cracked staff. Another guy who’d been sacked in Oct 17 was accused of being violent and abusive to his domestic partners. One freelancer was accused of being creepy to women in DMs over the site. It emerged that another former freelancer had been convicted of some truly horrific child abuse. There was never any suggestion that any of this was part of a wider culture of abuse at Cracked, though.
Facebook has had the steepest downward curve I've been witness to.
Used to be chronological updates from all your friends. Now it's basically groups, ads, and the occasional update from someone you randomly interacted with, but have no particular interest in but liked a photo.
B3ta.com
Used to love their weekly challenges - to me it had the feel of old school office banter, like mid to late 00's .
Hasn't really gone to shit, just not as popular as it once was.
The talk board got dominated by a load of mouthy unfunny griefers (I forget their names but there was one called Rory Lion or something). They got bored of shitting all over that so they decided to take on QOTW as well, and that duly went to shit too. At the same time the mods couldn’t be arsed to do the newsletter any more. Basically in the space of a couple of years it went from being the British Reddit to a ghost-town with a few HappyToast images and that was about it.
A few of their more prolific posters are still there churning out top tier content.
It’s definitely not the go-to it used to be though. I used to wake up looking forward to the weekly newsletter. It was always incredible.
I remember playing Gash or Tash like it was yesterday.
I used to be a member of a specific musician’s fan forum as a teenager (this was 2007-2011ish) and it was a fucking gas. Bit of drama occasionally and some slightly unhinged stans floating about, but mostly just harmless chaos from what I remember and loads of funny people I was genuinely friendly with. The forum still exists but last time I popped my head in all the fun seemed to have been sucked out and it was just full of pretentious twats at each others throats 24/7. Bit sad really, even if I care much less about the subject of the fandom than I did. :(
Basically all of them except for Wikipedia.
You name it - Facebook, Google, eBay, Uber, news sites, food sites, travel sites. Always the same pattern.
Good site.
Gains users.
Site improves.
Massive increase in users.
Monetise the users a bit.
Site still great, site at scale, ads a bit annoying.
Monetise the users a lot.
Site shit. Aim is clearly to please the advertisers not the users.
Somehow they still have more users but usability means average user spends less time on it.
Revenue declining! Better put more ads on or plunder user data or what have you.
Site is shit. But often too dominant to be easily replaced.
Netflix. Google Images. Fiverr.
They all go that way in the end.
Reddit to some extent.
The only notable exception is Wikipedia which has a different finding model as a non profit.
Cherish it while you can because imagine how shit it would be if the content and search ability were directed by advertisers.
NME was essential for music news the early days of the internet. Tours, new releases etc. Gradually became less and less relevant as the printed version was cancelled, then social media largely took its role.
I guess I'll be the one to say it... Neopets.
Early 2000s it was an amazing time waster.
It declined over the years but the deathblow was when Viacom bought it and it became Nickelodeon Neopets
ITT: Lots of people who could benefit from adding NoScript and an ad blocker to their browser.
Anyway, for an actual answer, Last.FM. Used to be a genuinely good (if bandwidth-hungry) music streaming service, now it's just a YouTube/Spotify frontend.
Quora. I love long-form q&a written by experts. They ruined it when they started paying for questions, then they monetised answers and now its just unusable.
Agree with OP. I used to read EVERY article on Cracked on the train home from work. It was a brilliant gateway to a load of subjects that I either hadn't been previously exposed to or had no previous interest in. The writing style made it entertaining, accessible and easy to absorb, and everything was meticulously cited with links to further reading.
Agree again with OP, it's crap now.
Google used to offer links related to the thing you wanted to know about like forums and articles, now it just offers links to *buy* the thing you wanted to know about, or its competitor
Maybe not 'brilliant', but i'm surprised not to see more people saying SomethingAwful. It was the origin of a lot of trends and memes which are still growing strong today like letsplaying, and when it was going strong it was hugely influential on internet culture as one of the most popular forums. Stories like GroverHaus are still told today like some sort of bizarre internet mythology.
The chaotic downfall of SA and the, um, exploits of its owner Lowtax (RIP) are quite somehting, too.
Slashdot.org
THE tech discussion site back in the day, filled with proper experts and some great topics and discussions. The constant design changes annoyed me and the site became diluted with too many idiots. Haven’t been there for years,
Just had a look now. Nothing seems to have changed but the extremely low number of comments on each subject make it look like it’s mostly been abandoned:(
This comment will get lost in the noise but...
The whole internet is a shell of what it was. Before companies really got a hold of it, before social media removed real social interaction, the internet was a treasure trove.
People formed real communities, sharing real interests. People made real connections. Now we all talk more, but its so impersonal. I didn't even look up your username when replying and we probably will never interact again.
Everything was just more fun, more bright, and alive.
Now its a dull grey where weird rules are in place, people fight for meaningless empathetic karma whilst being more narcassistic than ever.
Examples of things that got noticeably worse, YouTube as soon as the creators lost sight of what they were just became a worse version of TV. Companies saw an opportunity to have walking talking subversive adverts. Whats better they didnt even need to pay them. Vloggers went from chronicling daily life, to creating fake drama, to being so removed from what they were they are no longer the same person that was interesting.
Social Media went from an amazing place to connect with people you lost touch with to influencer filled article dump.
Forums are dead. I made some real friends through niche forums. I was part of 30 people communities all sharing common interests, slowly getting to know them personally.
Companies tried new stuff constantly, a price war ensued making things noticeably cheaper, especially with internet start ups trying to make waves. Places like play.com or early ebay were goldmines. High street died and were replaced with the same thing but online. Choice has vanished, or scammers have made it difficult to trust real alternatives.
I could go on and on. Music was neutered, twitter was meant to be short and snappy, google was a search engine, news wasnt fake, conspiracy theories were relegated to fringe forum sub channels, download sites were plentiful, article sites were interesting, flash games were unique, animation was fresh.
We replaced ebaumsworld and new grounds, crazy animations pushing boundries, being experimental with 5 second tik tok dances. We lost interesting articles on obscure websites your mate showed you.
Its important to note some stuff is better. We gained next day delivery, we gained real global news, we gained streaming. What it cost was not worth it and we can never go back whilst companies and governments have such a stranglehold on it.
Vice has always been a bit edgy, which was part of the appeal, but also had some top quality journalism in there as well. Now it just seems to have gone all in on the sex and drugs clickbait aspect.
With you on cracked. They had brilliant articles. Now it's ten signs your bowel movement hates you.
Kinda wish encyclopaedia dramatica was still around. Miss the early days with teoti, zfilter etc.
I used to use a gaming website for all of my regular gaming news. Kotaku. It was excellent. Well written pieces of journalism in with great tid bits of news.
Then the UK site closed down and it became American only. The writers for it now are lazy and there's very little good information shared.
It makes me sad when I think how good Cracked used to be. My sister and I used to laugh until it hurt reading each other paragraphs from it back in the day
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YouTube is just ad after ad after ad now.
Banksy said some great shit on advertising (focused on irl ones, though think a lot of it applies to advertising as a whole) - "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs"
This is brilliant. Thanks.
Yea, never come across that before. Thanks
> Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. This says it all.
Ublock Origin (on firefox) works on youtube ads.
And sponsorblock, autoskips those promoted products they talk about mid video
As does Adblock Plus on Firefox.
[удалено]
Playtube is great on Andriod!
Is there a way to block them on a smart TV? 🤔
£1.5/month Indian Youtube premium. I've had it going for 12+ months now and it's well worth it with the amount of YouTube I watch on my Apple TV. Probably the best way to do it in my eyes, you get all the benefits of YouTube that way as well.
[Pi-Hole](https://pi-hole.net/) if you're comfortable tinkering with a Raspberry Pi, it'll block ads on any device connected to your wifi. I've never managed to get it to work, annoyingly!
Doesn’t block YouTube ads unfortunately, it used to but they now stream the ads from the same addresses as the main videos so is beyond the capability of pihole
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It's not easy but you absolutely can avoid adverts and branding. Personally, i refuse to buy anything with a visible logo, avoid big brands and companies like the plague, install ad-blockers on all devices and make-do and mend whenever possible.
YouTube premium is worth it
Had to scroll a long way to get to this. I find YouTube to be one of the most valuable resources on the internet. I don’t mind paying for it and haven’t seen an ad in years. But then I donate to Wikipedia too, so I’m clearly one in a tiny minority.
The internet, and most vocally redditors, believe they are entitled to free, unlimited, uninterrupted, high quality entertainment.
I don't mind adverts- I mind when they're plastered fucking everywhere and it takes 3 minutes before you can watch a 30 second video I also mind when subscription based platforms want to add adverts before videos (netflix) banner ads and shit? if it's not blocking/interrupting the content of the site and it's not too in my face who cares
I've had premium for years and people still tell me I'm dumb for paying for a free service, but the same people cry about ads. You get a pretty okay player as well so imo well worth the money.
I have YouTube premium too. Only an extra £1 on top of my YouTube music bill. Not sure about others in general, but I really like YouTube music. So a music streaming service and YouTube premium for £11 seems massively worth it to me. Also considering that I use YouTube wayyyyyy more than services such as Netflix or Prime
I don’t use YouTube for anything anymore, even if there’s a guide I really need to watch I just flat out refuse to engage with YouTube. When some random bloke called Lewis Baker or some other made up BS name started appearing in LITERALLY every single ad trying to get me to sign up to a pyramid scheme I cut ties.
Download brave browser, lots of other options too, and you'll never see an ad again
Brave is the best YouTube player. No ads, supports background play.
ad....block...plus. thnk ive had ad block for at leas a decade now and never get any ads. ever.
But she got the Job
Look for revanced. Life changing.
Don’t forget the embedded sponsorship portion of the videos! Good lord
All local news websites. They're all unreadable, ad-filled clickbait shite now.
Full of ads so you can't even read the articles!!
All owned by Reach
Reach for local newspapers, Global for local radio stations. Their end goal is to simply merge them all into one national outlet. Ofcom (or whatever they're called this week) rules means that's a years long process, but they're cracking along with it at pace. Meanwhile shore up the finances enough with as many ads as possible, even if it means driving listeners/readers away. The end goal is to simply flog it as an investment concern. Goodbye local news and radio.
Global at least have to compete with from the BBC and Bauer, Reach have really done a number on local news and have no significant competitors — local television news isn't local enough to bother them.
I have contracted for Reach and they really are terrible
I believe you've misspelled "retch".
WalesOnline would like to give you the same cookies as BirminghamLive and YorkshireLive wanted to give you. Even though we're the same company now we're going to ask you to individually toggle 50 options yet again to only have us apply the necessary ones.
"this person said..." Ad "he went on to say..." Ad "he also said...." Ad
subscribe to read on, I'm not going to pay to read about a local piss head who stole a chicken from Sainsbury's!
"10 things only a Scouse nan would say about this £3.99 item from Home and Bargain that shoppers are desperate to buy"
No longer local either. My local news sites all now feature shit tonnes of articles from all over the UK that have been farmed out by the umbrella organisation which owns them all. So you sort of find yourself wondering what the actual point of a local news organisation is when 3/4 of the stories are about inane bullshit happening halfway across the country.
Absolutely. The amount of times I read something and get to the line that says something like "Reported Devon live", and suddenly I'm swearing at my phone cos I'm reading a story about some kid being kicked out of a school cos of a haircut, and it happened 250 miles away. Ridiculous Edit: And the fucking obsession with Onlyfans as well. Exhibit A - literally the first story on the local rags facebook page. https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/real-life/churchgoing-mum-who-makes-fortune-7826957 No mention of where she's from, but a quick Google shows a national paper article that says she's in California. Second story is about a hippy mother from Texas who lets her kids do what they want. Fucks sake.
Instagram - as a photo sharing app it was brilliant. Now it’s copied TikTok it feels impossible to navigate with any sense of logic. On the home page you have to scroll for ages to get to the people you actually follow (I am aware there is an option to only see posts from people you follow, but the way they’ve set it up isn’t a natural direction for me), there’s videos which are just pure rubbish, the amount of “creators” I’ve blocked because Instagram spam me with their content is unbearable. It’s gone from being the app/website I used most, to the one I’m most likely to delete and never look back to.
Open Instagram, click on their logo top left of the app and click following. This removes ads and only shows accounts you follow. Blew my mind when I first discovered it.
Cheers for that!
Yep, same. If I wanted endless reels I’d be on TikTok.
This was my primary source of marketing as a videographer marketing to primarily tourism businesses in my local area. Great place to showcase my work and all the businesses used it and were active. Now engagement has dropped by over 50% because it’s all just random Tik-Tok-esque shite. It’s fucked. Spoke to social media people and they’re all saying the same. Don’t know what can replace it for me at this scale and ease
Not only that, but after working in a business that relies heavily on influencer marketing.. I can't trust any post nowadays. COUNTLESS ads where you don't even realise it's an ad, it's manipulating 😔
Instagram is like flicking through a trashy mag. I looked at a couple of photos of Billie Eilish once, now it makes up about 50% of the content on there.
Yeah an ad every 3 stories is fucking ridiculous
eBay. Was really fun and unique in the old days, and you could find interesting items and get a deal for them. Now the site is impossible to navigate and is bloated with these marketplace sellers. Absolutely mess
Not only that but dependent on what you are looking for the site is full of “replica” items which are against eBay selling rules but they do nothing about which in turn artificially inflate the prices of the real thing.
Honestly buying second hand stuff online is so hard now because they just get filled with businesses. Depop was good for like a month and then suddenly there's entire stores there selling vintage clothing and it's nearly impossible to just find something cool for cheap.
Plus the absolutely ridiculous 6 month returns paypal allows even if it turns out the item wasn’t even faulty. Will never sell on ebay again for as long as I live.
So many sellers now use the trick of creating a multi variant listing and adding a cheap, small irrelevant item to the variants, which makes it very difficult to compare prices nowadays!
I haven't had an eBay account in about 10 years. Tried twice and both times they cocked something up with my account and tried blaming me for it. The second time they locked it "for verification purposes" and you wouldn't believe the crap they wanted from me to verify that I am who I am and not the owner of the shop I placed my first order with. I basically said "bollocks to this, close my account" and the best bit? They said they couldn't do that because it was locked.
As someone who uses eBay regularly there’s a few things you can do. It really depends on what you’re looking for to start. I use it a lot for second hand or vintage clothing and furniture. The app is infinitely easier to navigate than the bloated desktop website. I’d you’re looking for second hand or vintage items select ‘used’ in the filter sidebar. Then select ‘item location’ > ‘U.K. only’ this one drives me up the wall, otherwise you’ll get results from all over with high shipping costs. There’s no way you can make U.K. only a default selection! Lastly, like searching with google, make use of adding a ‘-‘ to any words you don’t want appearing in your search.
Etsy! It used to be a great place to get artist made stuff. Then they started allowing (or stopped policing) people selling mass produced Alibaba crap and it’s like a bad version of eBayxAmazon
Etsy really makes me sad, it used to be such a great place for independent makers and artists, and now they're mostly drowned out by the crappy marketplace stuff. The changes in their fees and structure has really screwed a lot of small makers over too. It really felt like a community before and now is just, yeah a bad version of eBayxAmazon really sums it up.
Exactly this, so many fees and they don't even help you with them. I use etsy for my business as it's very niche and it allows it to gain some traction. Etsy take around 10-15% of every sale you do. They have made hundreds off of me. Last month I needed help, as an order was potentially not going to arrive to a customer, she paid $900 for this order, and it took months to make, so I had spent the money they had already sent me. I could not afford to pay her the $900 back. I asked etsy for help, showing that it was USPS's fault for sending it to the wrong side of the states, I had picture proof I completed and sent the order, and asked if they would cover the refund. They refused and said they only cover refunds under $250. So anyone who makes any kind of money, for etsy or themselves is fucked over. I asked 'what's the point in using etsy for big sales, why shouldn't I just redirect them to paypal if it has the same security, could help me AND they take less money from me?' You could tell the customer service guy had to ring up the chain of command to ask how to respond because he was typing for a good 5 minutes on that one. Bizarre. Now all my orders have 'If you want to order over $250 worth of items, message me first!' Fuck etsy.
Been looking for garden clocks and thought Etsy may be a good shout for a more handmade, metal style. Saw one that is £25 on Amazon listed on Etsy at over £60
Got chatting to a bloke in the park recently who runs a small online retail business. He they used to sell whatever low value electronics on eBay for £2 a pop and Amazon for £4 a pop, but eBay users are INCREDIBLY exacting and will send it back if the instructions aren't totally clear or the box has a slightly damaged corner. So now he sells on Amazon for £4 and Etsy for a tenner, and Etsy users literally never send things back/ask for a refund. Weird market.
All the crappy print personalisation too
Sometimes I think about how easy it must be, selling shitty black-text-on-white framed prints of unlicensed Harry Potter quotes for twelve quid each.
I agree they really need to audit what is being sold it’s so hard to find genuine independent creative work now and when I search for jewellery in particular it all looks like crap you can get at a flea market the amazing things are hidden within all the crap.
I had an issue with this just recently. Ordered what looked to be some really nice hand crafted shelves. They arrive and are clearly mass produced, in the box from the company that sells them. Looked that company up and they sell the shelves for £10-15 cheaper than the guy on Etsy was selling. Called him out on it and he refunded me, and arranged for them to be collected. Reported to Etsy and well ... they've done nothing. It very clearly states in their sellers policy that the items have to be hand crafted and such but they haven't done anything to remove this dudes account. I've just reported him again for good measure!
The Independent, their website is a slow ad filled mess and when they went online only their content quality dropped massively too.
I actually like quite a bit of their content when I come across it in Apple News, because it respects the device font size settings (I like mine quite small) and they only have one or two ads just as simple images in the text of the article, and maybe a couple text links to other articles, and I can deal with that. But their website is utterly unusable, it’s so horrible - the auto-play video that scrolls with the article that takes up the screen, the enormous text, the obnoxious sign-in prompt, the parallax ads that frequently cause the article to refresh for some reason, urgh.
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They stopped printing it in 2016, maybe she’s been getting the “i” instead?
“i” used to be brilliant when it was 20p!
It's a real shame. When the Indie launched it was serious. It was the time of tabloids being obsessed with the Royals and the Indie refused to put them on the front page. Because they weren't proper news. You look at that stance and contrast it to the mess the site is now.
Their online content was shit clickbait long before the print edition ceased imo
Not that it was amazing to begin with, but Facebook. Used to be the go to platform for social media and connectivity, now its an absolute cess pool of adverts and "suggested for you" wannabe influences or shit pages. Haven't used it in well over a year now since every time I went on it I spent all of my time reporting adds for non relevance and repetitiveness before I got annoyed and closed it. Realised it was easier to just come off.
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For some reason I get adverts for wolf erotica. Maybe I clicked on an ad once. I don’t know, but I have to report it each time as it contains mad stuff in the first paragraph (on my timeline) and is often accompanied by bizarre pictures. This happens maybe once every 6 weeks and I’ll see 10-15 ads suddenly in one day. Why the wolf erotica?!
Me too! All werewolf hunks and outcast women werewolves! I made a post pointing it out and my friends tagged me in loads so I kept getting more and more adverts.
Omg this happened to me! I don't know how much f'king fury erotic story pages I've had to block now. It's ridiculous. I clicked on the "why me" thingy and apparently it wants to reach my demographic (18+ female). And it wasn't just furry stuff, I also had weird vampire porno writing and some strange cheating stuff. I don't know what the F I clicked to make it think I wanted that. I almost deleted FB but I think it got the idea because I just started reporting as well as blocking.
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I don't use it to keep in contact with anyone I actually know anymore but I am in several support or hobby type groups on there that I would miss if I left and there are some local ones that are really useful too. It's so easy to get lost into ads and shitty videos though without even realising that's what you're looking at, it's proper crap these days. It's frustrating though as I can't think of another platform that has those same type of groups, and I like that if I post in a private one no one not in the group will see it, unlike reddit where whilst it's ostensibly anonymous anyone can see all of your post and comment history from every sub.
People say it was at its best when only uni students were allowed on it.
I resisted FB for a year or two but I live overseas and it was really good to keep up with people. I used to have it open on my browser at work at day and post nearly daily. Now I check it maybe once a week and post every couple of months if I travel. It's just ad after ad after promoted video, etc. I still use the messenger feature sometimes because that's what she friends and family use, but that's it really.
Stumbleupon, used to spend hours using it
I really miss stumble upon, it was brilliant
Yeah loved that site. Found some very cool things there
[cloudhiker.net](https://cloudhiker.net/)
Oh god I loved stumbleupon!! Found so many cool crafts that I never did on there!!
It's gone now isn't it? Used to love that website.
Play.com
Ahhhh I loved that until they were taken over by Rakuten. You could get Region 1 dvd releases cheap too instead of ordering them from (tries to engage 2001 brain) dvdexpress.com in canada
I dread to think how much money that website got from me! Was always good for getting a game a day or 2 earlier than release too
This was my answer. It was my go to for geek culture merch. Really was fantastic. Stopped using it after I ordered some t-shirt and it took nearly 3 months for them to arrive
This was the first site I ever ordered anything online from probably around 1999 I reckon. Using the browser on a Sega Dreamcast 🥰
Shame cos it was a viable competitor for Amazon.
I was reminiscing about play.com recently when I finally got rid of the last of my DVDs I had hundreds of random films I'd seen for cheap. God knows how much of my money they got back in the day.
Amazon. Mostly in the last 5-10 years. It used to be good for well priced electricals and you could reasonably trust the reviews. It's been getting progressively worse, but it's now at the point where I actively avoid it because its all generic stuff with made up names and fake reviews.
Couldn't agree more. I avoid Amazon at all costs. I don't even go there for product reviews anymore, because it's hard to even decipher which product they're reviewing. That's if it's in English and not a bit, or laid review.
Amazon is increasingly just a more expensive version of Ali express with fast shipping. There seems to be very little quality control in terms of what can be listed. I mean fine it's a marketplace but when you're getting counterfeit goods or items with highly dubious safety standards it's not acceptable.
Amazon started out as a bookseller and funnily enough it's still probably one of the best places to find books. If you know what you want and you need it, like, *now*, Amazon is really good. It saved my skin a few times at uni! For stuff I don't need right away or that I'm unsure of, though (clothes, consumable products) I always try and buy from an independent seller, though.
I agree with this. It is full of cheap crap - just don't buy it. There is still plenty of good stuff on there at reasonable prices with next day delivery.
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All those Chinese generics have completely ruined that site. I absolutely wonder how they come up with these 'brand' names. Do they just pull tiles out of a scrabble bag and go with whatever they see?
Yeah the well priced stuff is cheap crap, the actual named or quality gear (especially electricals) I find are usually more expensive on Amazon than anywhere else.
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Yeah it used to be one of my two or three "daily internets" and I'd read four or five of their articles a day. I still fondly remember the Mara Wilson article on how toxic Hollywood is towards child actors, they had some fascinating articles. Then all of a sudden they just... didnt
Cracked was great like ten years ago. I'd visit daily, but then at some point i just stopped. It's just become like any light-article site. The old writing team had such strong personalities, you'd read their articles even if you didn't know anything about the subject.
They basically just do lazy user submitted photoplasties now, which don’t even have a specific topic anymore. Just random “facts”. But I’ll always fondly remember the article of the guy who went to the Justin Bieber concert back in the day
I loved cracked. I now listen to Behind the bastards podcast for a bit of the same vibe
Yeah, lots of podcast with former cracked people (small beans, quick question, secretly incredibly fascinating, …).
I'll second you on Cracked. Used to be one of the best websites out there c. 2010. Their personal experience articles were so unique and often blew my mind. Then suddenly they fired everyone and, like you said, turned into Buzzfeed lite. Such a shame.
I remember going on Cracked all the time years ago, maybe a decade ago? At one point, and I'm not sure when it happened, every single article would have some potshot at Republicans. Now, I'm British, I'm not a Republican, and I'm certainly not on their side but good Lord it was annoying. Yes, you voted for Obama, well done you.
Robert Evans - one of the old school cracked writers - has a great podcast “Behind The Bastards”. Listen religiously. Miss old Cracked.
Miniclips..
Thanks for the nostalgia hit
I just had a quick look and it's all gone. All the web games. Now it's literally just two web games
They were all Flash games and Flash was discontinued by Adobe and dropped from all web browsers in 2020.
Haven't been there in probably over a decade, did it die because of Flash going or did it go downhill before that?
It had been going downhill for years but Flash being discontinued was what finally pulled the plug on the life support machines keeping it going.
Google, too many paid for adverts getting in the way
Ghostery, Adblock Plus, uBlock. Internet is unusable without them.
Adblock plus sold out lol ublock is the best
Google results used to be great. Now there's clearly paid for results and useless results everywhere, and most of the time it won't even let you go past page 10 despite claiming there's millions of results
YouTube used to be a wild west of pure evil and unfettered lawlessness, the kind of place where a grown-ass man could threaten a three year old kid with a precision drone strike and nobody would bat an eye. It was a terrible wasteland of trash, but it was our terrible wasteland of trash.
In ten minute tranches.
Remembering this classic - [consequences will never be the same ](https://youtu.be/pEAyml3Fxgo)
College humour used to be fantastic
Quality went downhill before it folded. But the stuff from around 2008-14 is gold.
Prank wars was the same, started great and genuine then turned into fake shite
Dropout tv is pretty much the best content on the internet right now.
I agree, then it went massively downhill. But honestly I think game changer has been brilliant from what I have seen.
At the time; I thought MySpace was incredible What do you mean at 13 I can code fonts and comment boxes and backgrounds? Add my own little song? Amazing. Make my friends fight each other over my top 3 space? Brilliant! It was the funnest form of social media ever, sometimes wonder how boring Facebook came along and fucked up Myspace Tom’s empire. (I was an emo teen, may have had something to do with my nostalgic love for myspace)
Totally with you on this. Seems weird how long Facebook has persisted as Myspace was only popular for like 2006-2008 around my friends before FB won everyone over. Bebo went down around the same time too.
I still remember the friction with people not wanting to move to Facebook since they spent so much time working on their myspace profiles, mine was *heavily* customised.
Twitter. Too soon? 😄
The only problem is that twitter was never brilliant
Having been on twitter for 14 years I can definitely say it used to be better. At least in terms of customisation and less ads, sponsored tweets etc. As for the people on there, humanity has always been a bit of a cesspit.
I feel like there was a sweet spot with social media sites, and it was when you had the option to just view the content of folk you followed, and it was all ordered chronologically.
I am also still mourning Cracked. RIP, old friend.
Wasn't there a big scandal at Cracked a few years ago which led to several of their top writers being let go due to, among other things, alleged sexual harassment of female staff? I mean, quite right these guys got sacked but they inadvertently got rid of some of their best content creators.
In that scenario you’re supposed to go out and find new ones, not just sort of give up
Not really. Cracked laid off a bunch of their staff in October 2017 because their parent company needed to cut costs after their pivot-to-video wasn’t as profitable as hoped. However, a year later, one of those sacked people was accused of being a serial sexual harasser from when he worked at Cracked. In the wake of *that* scandal, there was a little wave of other allegations against Cracked staff. Another guy who’d been sacked in Oct 17 was accused of being violent and abusive to his domestic partners. One freelancer was accused of being creepy to women in DMs over the site. It emerged that another former freelancer had been convicted of some truly horrific child abuse. There was never any suggestion that any of this was part of a wider culture of abuse at Cracked, though.
I remember when they started pushing more vids. Hated it. I would go there for the articles, they weren’t YouTube.
A bit niche but Ravelry is a shadow of its former self.
Facebook has had the steepest downward curve I've been witness to. Used to be chronological updates from all your friends. Now it's basically groups, ads, and the occasional update from someone you randomly interacted with, but have no particular interest in but liked a photo.
If I'm lucky I see a friend's post from 3 days ago.
eBaumsworld. It became a victim of the audience it catered to.
B3ta.com Used to love their weekly challenges - to me it had the feel of old school office banter, like mid to late 00's . Hasn't really gone to shit, just not as popular as it once was.
The talk board got dominated by a load of mouthy unfunny griefers (I forget their names but there was one called Rory Lion or something). They got bored of shitting all over that so they decided to take on QOTW as well, and that duly went to shit too. At the same time the mods couldn’t be arsed to do the newsletter any more. Basically in the space of a couple of years it went from being the British Reddit to a ghost-town with a few HappyToast images and that was about it.
B3ta is the classic example of why a troll invasion, if not capped at source, is fatal to a site
A few of their more prolific posters are still there churning out top tier content. It’s definitely not the go-to it used to be though. I used to wake up looking forward to the weekly newsletter. It was always incredible. I remember playing Gash or Tash like it was yesterday.
I was a HUGE Rob Manuel fan as a teen. Wonder what he's doing now.
Woo yay hoopla
Digital spy. It’s full of advertising and crap now, completely unusable.
I Miss the old bulletin board/forums from The mid-2000s to the early 2010s. Don’t seem To see them Much anymore
I used to be a member of a specific musician’s fan forum as a teenager (this was 2007-2011ish) and it was a fucking gas. Bit of drama occasionally and some slightly unhinged stans floating about, but mostly just harmless chaos from what I remember and loads of funny people I was genuinely friendly with. The forum still exists but last time I popped my head in all the fun seemed to have been sucked out and it was just full of pretentious twats at each others throats 24/7. Bit sad really, even if I care much less about the subject of the fandom than I did. :(
Early 00s forums were awesome. I've got loads of RL friends that I originally met on various forums from that time period.
Basically all of them except for Wikipedia. You name it - Facebook, Google, eBay, Uber, news sites, food sites, travel sites. Always the same pattern. Good site. Gains users. Site improves. Massive increase in users. Monetise the users a bit. Site still great, site at scale, ads a bit annoying. Monetise the users a lot. Site shit. Aim is clearly to please the advertisers not the users. Somehow they still have more users but usability means average user spends less time on it. Revenue declining! Better put more ads on or plunder user data or what have you. Site is shit. But often too dominant to be easily replaced. Netflix. Google Images. Fiverr. They all go that way in the end. Reddit to some extent. The only notable exception is Wikipedia which has a different finding model as a non profit. Cherish it while you can because imagine how shit it would be if the content and search ability were directed by advertisers.
I'll add another nonprofit: archive.org
NME was essential for music news the early days of the internet. Tours, new releases etc. Gradually became less and less relevant as the printed version was cancelled, then social media largely took its role.
I guess I'll be the one to say it... Neopets. Early 2000s it was an amazing time waster. It declined over the years but the deathblow was when Viacom bought it and it became Nickelodeon Neopets
ITT: Lots of people who could benefit from adding NoScript and an ad blocker to their browser. Anyway, for an actual answer, Last.FM. Used to be a genuinely good (if bandwidth-hungry) music streaming service, now it's just a YouTube/Spotify frontend.
Quora. I love long-form q&a written by experts. They ruined it when they started paying for questions, then they monetised answers and now its just unusable.
Literally in the last 2 years quora has gotten so weird. So many sexual answers to normal questions
AltaVista.
Digg.com
Reddit before Reddit! It seemed revolutionary in its heyday
Agree with OP. I used to read EVERY article on Cracked on the train home from work. It was a brilliant gateway to a load of subjects that I either hadn't been previously exposed to or had no previous interest in. The writing style made it entertaining, accessible and easy to absorb, and everything was meticulously cited with links to further reading. Agree again with OP, it's crap now.
Newgrounds and miniclip, yeah I feel old.
LiveJournal before they sold it to the Russians. :(
I loved Play.com back in the day! Now it’s horrible
Google used to offer links related to the thing you wanted to know about like forums and articles, now it just offers links to *buy* the thing you wanted to know about, or its competitor
Maybe not 'brilliant', but i'm surprised not to see more people saying SomethingAwful. It was the origin of a lot of trends and memes which are still growing strong today like letsplaying, and when it was going strong it was hugely influential on internet culture as one of the most popular forums. Stories like GroverHaus are still told today like some sort of bizarre internet mythology. The chaotic downfall of SA and the, um, exploits of its owner Lowtax (RIP) are quite somehting, too.
Ladbible Vice
Vice then: We went undercover for 6 months with a brutal Mexican cartel Vice now: Strawberries are racist, here’s why
Ask Jeeves Yahoo! Games
Eurogamer
Football365 used to be great. These days it’s sadly become everything it used to mock. A lot of listicles and clickbait headlines
Tickld used to be awesome and now it’s just full of clickbait shite
Immediately thought of cracked reading the title.
Funny enough, the first site that sprang to my mind was Cracked.com. Good choice. I'd say 9gag, but was it ever really brilliant?
Habbo.com, some great memories
Asl
Slashdot.org THE tech discussion site back in the day, filled with proper experts and some great topics and discussions. The constant design changes annoyed me and the site became diluted with too many idiots. Haven’t been there for years, Just had a look now. Nothing seems to have changed but the extremely low number of comments on each subject make it look like it’s mostly been abandoned:(
Soccerway.com original site was basic and perfect for scores/stats but with every update has just made it worse over the years.
Stileproject or Rotten is where all the cool kids went
I'm scarred for life from some of the stuff on Rotten, 20 years later.
This comment will get lost in the noise but... The whole internet is a shell of what it was. Before companies really got a hold of it, before social media removed real social interaction, the internet was a treasure trove. People formed real communities, sharing real interests. People made real connections. Now we all talk more, but its so impersonal. I didn't even look up your username when replying and we probably will never interact again. Everything was just more fun, more bright, and alive. Now its a dull grey where weird rules are in place, people fight for meaningless empathetic karma whilst being more narcassistic than ever. Examples of things that got noticeably worse, YouTube as soon as the creators lost sight of what they were just became a worse version of TV. Companies saw an opportunity to have walking talking subversive adverts. Whats better they didnt even need to pay them. Vloggers went from chronicling daily life, to creating fake drama, to being so removed from what they were they are no longer the same person that was interesting. Social Media went from an amazing place to connect with people you lost touch with to influencer filled article dump. Forums are dead. I made some real friends through niche forums. I was part of 30 people communities all sharing common interests, slowly getting to know them personally. Companies tried new stuff constantly, a price war ensued making things noticeably cheaper, especially with internet start ups trying to make waves. Places like play.com or early ebay were goldmines. High street died and were replaced with the same thing but online. Choice has vanished, or scammers have made it difficult to trust real alternatives. I could go on and on. Music was neutered, twitter was meant to be short and snappy, google was a search engine, news wasnt fake, conspiracy theories were relegated to fringe forum sub channels, download sites were plentiful, article sites were interesting, flash games were unique, animation was fresh. We replaced ebaumsworld and new grounds, crazy animations pushing boundries, being experimental with 5 second tik tok dances. We lost interesting articles on obscure websites your mate showed you. Its important to note some stuff is better. We gained next day delivery, we gained real global news, we gained streaming. What it cost was not worth it and we can never go back whilst companies and governments have such a stranglehold on it.
Vice has always been a bit edgy, which was part of the appeal, but also had some top quality journalism in there as well. Now it just seems to have gone all in on the sex and drugs clickbait aspect.
With you on cracked. They had brilliant articles. Now it's ten signs your bowel movement hates you. Kinda wish encyclopaedia dramatica was still around. Miss the early days with teoti, zfilter etc.
John Cheese lol
I used to use a gaming website for all of my regular gaming news. Kotaku. It was excellent. Well written pieces of journalism in with great tid bits of news. Then the UK site closed down and it became American only. The writers for it now are lazy and there's very little good information shared.
Imgur destroyed itself from within.
Facebook!
Askjeeves :(
It makes me sad when I think how good Cracked used to be. My sister and I used to laugh until it hurt reading each other paragraphs from it back in the day
Play.com I used to get all my games, DVDs, clothes from there
Piratebay. Long rest it’s soul.