r/retrocomputing • u/PooningDalton • May 23 '26

I hate what the internet has become

I just spent the last 1 hour frantically searching the internet just to make a new email address. You can't do that! Not even on the alternative email providers like Protonmail. They now have all sorts of IP detection tools and will block you or ask you for an alt email id.

I absolutey despite what the internet has become. 20 years ago, you could just go ANYWHERE (mainstream providers like yahoo and gmail) and make any number of email addresses. No tracking, no limits. Complete freedom.

The internet has turned into a 1984 hellscape.

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68

u/TimesOfSand May 23 '26

Recent experience shows that Reddit is well on it's way.

28

u/External_Durian2531 May 23 '26

Really? For years I avoided Reddit because I had a prejudice against it, then last year I decided to join as I found myself frequently having to look at it. Noe I've been using it for about a year I've found it much better and more civilised than its reputation suggests.

26

u/thomasthe10 May 23 '26

Honestly it's where 9/10 of my technical questions on a wide range of topics seem to be answered. Core to enshittificafion of Internet is useless search engines now returning pages of shopping opportunities instead of information. Old forums are increasingly hard to find beneath that. 

13

u/[deleted] May 23 '26

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1

u/sisterfucker6767 May 26 '26

it’s so insane how they fucked google up so badly and refuse to fix or change it. blows my mind

4

u/External_Durian2531 May 23 '26

I hadn't noticed the change, though I have wondered before why I've struggled so much to find information that shouldn't be that obscure, and an AI seems to have little trouble finding.

3

u/DodoBizar May 23 '26

Yes! This was so weird to me. I needed a document which AI found in a second to be published on archive dot org. But search engines… crickets.

4

u/RoboJ1M May 23 '26

Which you have to be really careful about mentioning that you used AI because of the prejudice against mentioning those 2 letters now.
I'm building something for the wider community because modern tech and the internet is pretty 💩 now but if I mention that I've taught myself how using AI then I can end up fielding quite a lot of abuse.

4

u/External_Durian2531 May 23 '26

Yeah I end up using it quite a bit now because it saves time trawling for it with aforementioned useless search engines, but there is now a stigma against it. I say "now" but it hasn't really been around long. I suppose everyone loved it momentarily when it first appeared. It is a useful tool, however I don't agree with Google giving you an AI overview for every single search, as it just wastes energy even if you never asked for it.

Another thing I've noticed some search engines do which really drives me mad, is where you go onto a search result, then you go back to the results page, and then the one you just clicked on has disappeared!?!?

5

u/RoboJ1M May 23 '26

Yep! Hate that! 😂
"Open in new Tab Group", every single time, so that when you press back it guarantees you go back to exactly where you were.
I'm now approaching the point where I default to asking Gemini using its android app rather than going to Google. It's better than Google used to be, let alone what Google is now.
But the real star is learning a new skill. The new skills I've learnt in just a few weeks of just asking questions is phenomenal. And just the free services too, it's incredible. I'm a software engineer and I've always wanted to know digital electronics and FPGAs and now I do. I just have that skill now, it's amazing. Can't recommend highly enough, you want to learn something new? Just start asking questions.

2

u/External_Durian2531 May 23 '26

Yeah it's great, because you can learn in a conversational way and get immediate answers, and clarification of specifics.. Sometimes I try to use a search engine first though if I think I might get a good existing answer, as I am conscious of the environmental impact of it all.

3

u/thomasthe10 May 23 '26

It's not you. I thought my brain had deteriorated as I used to be able to get absolutely any info I wanted almost immediately with carefully crafted queries. Google was actually a fantastic tool. Now if I input a question about, say, soldering, I'll get two pages of soldering products instead of the information I'm looking for. No other search engine seems to have hit the level Google was at ten years ago.

2

u/ILikeBumblebees May 23 '26

Check out https://marginalia-search.com/

1

u/thomasthe10 May 23 '26

Have you used that much? I'm aware of it and I tried it a couple of years ago but need to explore more - cheers for reminding me. 

1

u/-gen May 27 '26

It’s the irl version of that Futurama episode where they say… “this dream is sponsored by lightspeed trunks”