Using the modern web doesn't feel empowering. It feels immensely frustrating.
The web is barely usable without ad-blocking. Pages take an age to load and the content jumps around as more ads download and display. Also the ads are spying on you.
The entire JS ecosystem is dependency hell and sometimes you have to download massive JS files just to view a web page. The JS is probably also spying on you.
Worse still, JS is also probably why the Back button doesn't work properly on so many sites.
It feels like frontend engineers and web designers do their hardest work to make the whole experience of browsing the web completely miserable.
Why can't I open some embedded YouTube videos in full-screen? Why can't I just click Back when I want to go back without breaking the entire page? Why is this video playing by itself when I didn't ask it to?
Who are the people designing these completely terrible experiences? What happened to them? Who hurt them?!
@neilalexander
Simple. Web companies don't exist to give you content; they exist to send you ads. Any other idea is merely a delusion.
Sometime we were fooled with the idea of FREE CONTENT, and flew to it like flies to honey. Instead, they caught us in a trap of adverts and cookies and trackers. Before we knew it, power shifted from service providers to advertisers.
WE put them in power. WE sold our souls to them, WE clicked on "agree". It was us who ruined the web.
@rick_777 @neilalexander @grainloom It’s not the user’s fault, and it’s not the developer’s fault. The blame lies with the capitalists.
@ashfurrow @neilalexander @grainloom
Then again, why pay for a service when we can barely pay the rent. As the other person said, capitalists made the rules we're forced to play.
@ashfurrow @rick_777 @neilalexander "capitalists" and "developers" are not disjoint sets
@grainloom @rick_777 @neilalexander suuuuuuure I guess, but the overlap is a lot smaller than suggested by the "this is developer's fault" argument.
@grainloom @rick_777 @neilalexander I just have a really hard time getting angry at some developer for running `yarn install google-analytics` or whatever, compared to my anger at venture capitalism/private equity/the war industry
@grainloom
Perhaps we should start labeling devs who work for evil companies as "henchmen". I'd use "minions", but those damn yellow cartoon people are adorable 
@ashfurrow @neilalexander
@rick_777 @grainloom @neilalexander how about "collaborators"?
@ashfurrow
Maybe... but can you tell me with a straight face that you DON'T have Whatsapp installed in your phone?
@neilalexander @grainloom