I work in web dev and it kills me every time to set up this stupid UX.
Honestly, this biggest problem is these damn pop ups actually work for conversions. If people would stop filling the pop up forms on the sites they would fade to obscurity but for every annoyed dev who closes the pop up asking for an email, there is 10 normies who give up their email or create an account or complete a purchase.
Static email sign up forms in the header or footer of a site are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate in 2024 was 11%.. The highest preforming pop ups in this analysis had a 43% conversion rate, that is INSANE for web conversions. And those stupid gamification spin the wheel pop ups that I personally hate the most, have a 13% conversion.
Missing step of CAPTCHA asking you to click on motorcycle images, only for you to fail at least twice
Me just trying to fucking pay a utility bill:
“Honey, could you come in here and tell me if this looks like the edge of crosswalk just visible behind that car? I have one chance left and can’t mess this up!”
Oh my. This was my yesterday trying to sign up on Meetup.
First it was click crosswalks. Then stairs. Then motorcycles. Then the sign up failed. 5 minutes of my life so I can RSVP some stupid ass event.
What a shit experience.
Or writing the exact characters in the obfuscated image only to be told it’s not what you seen.
Imo it’s bearable with the ublock and ‘I still don’t care about cookies’ extensions (Firefox) now. I kinda get the anti-bot measures on pages… bots are a pain for every page owner.
This hurts a lot
What’s literally traumatizing are the scumbag sites that wait a little bit before showing you an email popup.
Like, I’ll be reading something and then BLAM! I’m immediately taken out of my focus and have to, for the 1 billionth time (and counting!), refuse to give them an email address.
Fuck everyone who encourages this bullshit. Fuck everyone who actually gives them emails. It’s likely an extremely low percentage of users, but that’s all that it takes to ruin things for the rest of us.
Scumbag sites like that are actively contributing to lowering everyone’s standards and making us get used to a ‘new normal.’
it’s likely an extremely low percentage of users
its not, its actually a pretty high percentage, the conversion rate of pop up email form to static forms in the footer or header are like night and day. Static email sign up forms are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate for emails pop up with incentive (like a discount code) in 2024 was 7%.
If people stopped filling out the pop up forms they would go away, but people still continue to bite so they live on.
I mean, these “scumbag sites” include everything from the NYT to X, The Everything App.
“tHiS wEbSiTe Is BeTtEr In ThE aPp!”
Bold of you to assume people know the difference between an app and a website.
I was astonished when I first learned that hardly anyone enters web addresses anymore, then it made sense when I realized that almost everyone browses on their phones and uses the app versions of whatever they scroll, which is really only going to be somewhere between three and a dozen sites anyway, people don’t just “surf the internet” anymore, they scroll content aggregators and social media feeds. People hate making choices or having control, they want to turn off their mind and just be fed sensations and experiences.
Because of this most people don’t really know HOW websites and networks work, when I explain things like how cookies work, how to refresh a page, how to navigate to specific parts of a website by changing the address, how to search the web for alternatives, etc. I get looked at like either an annoying nerd or some kind of wizard.
The App:
One WebBrowser component.
A straw to slurp all your location and contact data.
Annoying notifications.
There was a booth at my farmers market (I know) that bragged about how they can turn any website into a app.
And I wanted to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) their table
“STICK TO GROWING TURNIPS YOU FUCKING RAT BASTARDS”
My first error was existing
- cloudflare decides it doesnt like your user agent or IP or any of a myriad of other factors and denies you access completely, order has been cancelled
Sharing screencaps from mastodon is acceptable, but only because it combats screencaps from twitter.
That’s what this community is for
They forgot the last step: delete the promo emails from the company you never signed up for
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
If you give some information to any for profit company you can be sure they will use that information and if you decline the permits they are going to keep asking until you eventually miss click.
For example if you fill shopping basked, but abandon it after filling your information they can contact you once as “a friendly reminder” about the cart and they can keep that information legally for few weeks until they must anomize the data. And if you at some point clicked something where you accept the marketing permits they can keep that information “as long as the company thinks it is reasonable to keep and/or revelant information for their operation.”
Source: Im part of the problem. Atleast for now.
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
Note: there are a lot of services now that will sneakily get your signature/acceptance without you realizing it. The latest one I noticed was at the pharmacy, where you normally sign for your prescription, it now has one or more options that pop up before you sign for your actual medicine, and if you read what you’re signing you see it’s permission to text you special offers and promotions.
ALWAYS READ WHAT YOU ACCEPT, IF YOU DON’T KNOW, DON’T SIGN IT. If you’re worried or pressured, just ask someone. We can’t keep discarding our rights and privacy because we’re worried about people in line behind us or worried how much time you’re going to lose at least SKIMMING the user licence agreement. You can save yourself a lot of junk and hassle if you at least make sure the accept buttons and signature fields are actually for what you want.
I am glad I am using proton. I never give my real email to any website and create an alias for every website. That way, when I ever receive a spam email, I know exactly which company sold my data and I can turn that alias off permanently.
do you use “email+alias@proton” style aliases (afaik how gmail does it) or do you get an entirely new email address?
I use proton pass and it generates an alias with a prefix you give it, which helps to recognize what email it is, so this format: <prefix>.<random-generated-part>@passmail.net
So an example could be google.chasing645@passmail.net
Website wants to know your location
Yeah that shits annoying. If you have something you need my location for, I will give you my zip code and pick from “nearby” on a map myself.
my methods for downloading content for offline perusal that interests me evolve constantly. some of us have been doing for this song and dance for decades, and \
if you want to know how to distribute controversial antifascist content, ask a porn addict
deleted by creator
meta/x/redittttt?
delete
deleted by creator
thanks for the edit creepy mods
this whole thread just seems like a crime scene now.
Using webmail can be avoided, but agreed on the rest.
PS: It gets worse when you use a script blocker and have to figure out which scripts are needed per website.
That jumped out to me as well. Even using something like Thunderbird with GMail (even though you really should try moving somewhere that respects your privacy) has such a better feel to it.
Yes, exactly. I’m still in that intermediate position myself. I’m using Thunderbird and K9-Mail as clients for my Hotmail Account (Microsoft).
It’s seems like so much work to move away from the email account I signed up for some 20 years ago, so I’ve still shied away from doing it so far. At least I started using a password manager a few years ago, so by now I have a list of services, that would require updating.
Congrats on taking the first step!
Don’t forget to reject notifications.
And sometimes deny location access.
Realize that you havn’t ordered there in a while and you’ve moved since the last time you ordered, you updated your billing address but it didn’t update the shipping address and the product is now headed toward your old house.
