Websites/apps that have driven you insane

[Zetetic]

The phishing/identity one is an interesting point.

Also tech support - you've suddenly opened yourself up to a massive long tail of browser, cert store etc. combinations that you'd mostly side-stepped by only having to target two (setting aside Android versions...).

[Blue Jam]

Any site that forces you to install an app when you've got a perfectly good browser. Facebook Messenger especially- it worked in mobile browsers before, all this stuff about how Facebook couldn't optimise it and had to put the messenger facility in a separate app is bollocks. They make the Oculus Quest 2, which is an incredibly impressive bit of technology, and they can't sort out a little private message function on a website?

I also hate the way people treat the Messenger Lite app like a fucking chatroom and how it pings and nags you for a reply- fuck off, no-one uses chatrooms anymore, I'll reply at leisure.

Even worse than that is websites that make you install an app on a laptop/desktop. The whole point of having one of those is for the added functionality over mobile devices, they're not for putting apps on. Now TV is another example of a company known for innovative tech (Sky VR) putting out a half-arsed website which needs an app for some of the functionality. And it doesn't support VR, which is mental. I know part of this is due to DRM issues but Netflix have managed to sort all this- all their tech just seems to work on all platforms.

The BBC are pretty bad for this too. I need to make some space on my Android tablet and they're not helping by having three separate apps being essential to use one service.

Having to install loads of apps is also just clunky, bad design. A bit "fuckit this'll do".

[Blue Jam]

Also half the Google apps on said Android tablet, because I will never use them but can't install them.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Banking sites are targeted pretty heavily for phishing, that's where the work would be. If you're getting an app straight off the play store or app store and you've already worked around the bulk of that.
I'd imagine they're working around some legal regulations by not having a website too, all these businesses usually have some legal loophole angle to them

"It's an app! It's secure!" is terrible messaging. Especially on Android.

The best way to avoid phishing is partly through education and partly through measures like mfa, not obfuscating things behind an app.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The phishing/identity one is an interesting point.

Also tech support - you've suddenly opened yourself up to a massive long tail of browser, cert store etc. combinations that you'd mostly side-stepped by only having to target two (setting aside Android versions...).

Android basically has all of the problems you describe, and worse, users can't do much about them because they rely on vendors updating old handsets, which they won't do.

[greencalx]

Proboards forums try and guilt trip you into turning off your adblocker by telling you the ads help pay for the website.  After seeing that message one time I turned off my adblocker and the site became so unpleasant I turned it right back on again.

Oh, and I hate sites where just as I click something, some piece of content loads and the page lurches up or down and makes me click on something else.

And with many sites that load slowly, the thing I'm wanting to see is always the last to load.  Some sites are so slow I sometimes suspect they've got bitcoin miners hidden in the code or something.

I get that content costs money to create, and hosting needs paid for too, so am happy to tolerate a certain level of advertising so people can feed their kids. However when it gets to these levels - and I am quite sure that loading the content is delayed until all the ads have had the chance to do their stuff - I would have thought it would become self defeating, in that most people would either just leave or install an ad blocker. (I've also had reasonable success in using reader mode to get around annoying pop ups). The fact that there is so much of this shit makes me think a surprisingly large number of people just aren't bothered by it and live with it.


I also get frustrated with websites that purport to offer solutions to technical problems you're experiencing and you know for a fact that most of the things being suggested are almost completely irrelevant and, in fact, could make things worse. Even better when all the other links you click on turn out to be a clone of this same shit advice.

[Kankurette]

Fucking bastard News on iPhone. My phone pings while I'm having down time. Is it my mum texting me? Is it important? No, it's a newsflash with a link to some articles that I CAN'T READ BECAUSE THEY ARE PAYWALLED. And it's always some celebrity bullshit. The only time I was glad to have it was when it woke me up to tell me that Biden had won.

[peanutbutter]

"It's an app! It's secure!" is terrible messaging. Especially on Android.

The best way to avoid phishing is partly through education and partly through measures like mfa, not obfuscating things behind an app.

It's not the messaging though, is it? It just reduces to number of defenses they've to develop against. Why add a website if it just means it's going to attract a more difficult to deal with userbase and more avenues of attack.

I've Monzo but it was mostly just for gathering work expenses in one place, now I'm remote I basically use another bank account for absolutely everything, to be clear. Def not a Monzo evangelist and don't think their business plan holds up, they attract a kind of weirdo who seems to refuse to acknowledge their weaknesses (the kind of person who is probably also a self described fanboy of some console line) but like I'm not gonna get frustrated about them not providing a bunch of services I can get from having a normal bank account instead.

Fucking bastard News on iPhone. My phone pings while I'm having down time. Is it my mum texting me? Is it important? No, it's a newsflash with a link to some articles that I CAN'T READ BECAUSE THEY ARE PAYWALLED. And it's always some celebrity bullshit. The only time I was glad to have it was when it woke me up to tell me that Biden had won.

Yeah I wonder if this is one that just doesn't translate beyond America or something? Maybe the news stuff comes as part of various extortionate carrier contracts or something over ther.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Fucking bastard News on iPhone.

Why do you want news about fucking bastards?

[JesusAndYourBush]

I get that content costs money to create, and hosting needs paid for too, so am happy to tolerate a certain level of advertising so people can feed their kids. However when it gets to these levels - and I am quite sure that loading the content is delayed until all the ads have had the chance to do their stuff - I would have thought it would become self defeating, in that most people would either just leave or install an ad blocker.

I don't get why it has to be that way.  They could make the ad a simple jpg... and host the jpg on the site you're on and not some other domain so you can't block it... and clicking the ad can take you to whatever page they want.  They'd get their ads seen and it wouldn't suck the life out of your cpu or delay the rest of the site loading.  I'm sure this is how it used to be.  No idea why it still isn't.

[wasp_f15ting]

Dashlane Password manager..

It was so good when it was desktop based, it went to fully browser and I just hate it - moved over to keeper now - top notch.

[wasp_f15ting]

Fucking bastard News on iPhone. My phone pings while I'm having down time. Is it my mum texting me? Is it important? No, it's a newsflash with a link to some articles that I CAN'T READ BECAUSE THEY ARE PAYWALLED. And it's always some celebrity bullshit. The only time I was glad to have it was when it woke me up to tell me that Biden had won.

Mate even when you PAY FOR IT there are fucking adverts interspersed between every fucking paragraph. It is an atrocious pointless piece of shit.

[Blue Jam]

Why do you want news about fucking bastards?

Most newsworthy people are bastards to be fair.

[flotemysost]

Now TV is another example of a company known for innovative tech (Sky VR) putting out a half-arsed website which needs an app for some of the functionality.

Oh yes, the Now TV desktop app feels like it adds an unnecessary amount of effort. After I've clicked on the desktop shortcut, it asks me to sign in and then when I select what I want to watch, it asks me if I've got the app or want to download it... even though I JUST CLICKED ON THE SHORTCUT ARGHH

And the subtitles are painfully laggy, at least they are on my laptop. During my 2020 Sopranos binge I'd sometimes end up watching someone's head getting stoved in subtitled by dialogue about cannoli or something.

The Deezer mobile app is decent but I can't figure out how to turn off Shuffle on playlists - they work fine on a laptop, and albums aren't affected, but for some reason playlists on my mobile default to shuffle. I get a bit obsessive about perfecting the order of my own playlists, so it's a pain but is most likely just me being an idiot. Also radio and podcasts often error on the mobile app (again, fine on a laptop).

My work have started using Microsoft Teams as our company-wide remote working thing - previously it was down to individual departments to choose what they used, my team had Slack for text messaging/chats and Zoom for video - anyway, it's pretty efficient (and I don't hate the video call preview, unlike the rude awakening of being greeted with a worm's-eye-view of your own ashen visage on a Zoom meeting first thing on a Monday) - but fucking hell, the fact that anyone in the company can now direct message me is a pain in the arse. And the way it pings audibly with every message when I'm in another video call. I'm already ignoring your phone calls and emails, get the hint mate!

Also Slack gave the option of a computerised voice saying HUMMUS as new message notification audio, which leavened lockdown tedium last year for about five minutes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Personally I think Teams is dreadful. It seems to try and be several things and do them all very badly.

As a basic chat application it sucks. The teams bit is a bit isn't really proper chat, not like slack, it's more like a notice board that it insists on collapsing and reminiscent of the failed Google Wave. And because of that people create ad-hoc chats. You also can't leave individual team channels unless they're private, so you're forced to mute things that are irrelevant.

Then there's a load of nonsensical integration to other office products with half the features missing - calendar, sharepoint etc.

And you can't manually control the inactivity timeout like you could with microsoft commuicator/skype for business, so you have to install a mouse presence tool if you want to leave your desk for > 10 minutes and still appear available.

[touchingcloth]

We had to use Teams for some project work with a client, and compared with Slack (which we use company-wide) it's a load of old arse. I remember search being terrible, and I think it defaulted to (that's assuming there's any configurability to the behaviour) showing threads in date order based on when they were last posted in rather than when they were created. Slack keeps threads in the same place where they were created, and it's quite easy to go back and find a conversation you know started some time last week, but the Teams behaviour made that way more difficult.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I got added to a departmental team the other day with 300+ members. Instant mute. What's the point? I assume it's mostly for announcements rather than chat. Email lists seem more appropriate in that case.

My boss has invited some vendors to a couple of private channels, which seems like a shit idea compared to email, where record keeping seems easier and better, plus they're somewhere in the Pacific timezone so there's only about an hour when we're all online. Furthermore I don't like the idea of aiding Microsoft replacing an open comms protocol like email with their own proprietary product, that would stand even if it was any cop, which it isn't.

[Yussef Dent]

Duolingo can be really shit. Impressive how I can complete a 7 month course and know absolutely nothing. The Chinese is especially bad because it asks you to learn characters with their Chinese pronunciation without telling you what they mean till later, so it's learning random squiggles with strange noises; the opposite order to how everybody else teaches Chinese. Gamification indeed: it's to language learning what Sims is to adult social work.

It's exactly the same with Japanese on it. It totally muddles your way of thinking as the characters become a complete distraction. Loads of Japanese learning apps, books or courses will focus on using romaji first as we're better suited to learn that, then the characters can come later.

Oh yes, the Now TV desktop app feels like it adds an unnecessary amount of effort. After I've clicked on the desktop shortcut, it asks me to sign in and then when I select what I want to watch, it asks me if I've got the app or want to download it... even though I JUST CLICKED ON THE SHORTCUT ARGHH

Another thing with NOW TV is there's not really a guide, just a now and next (which sometimes just doesn't update and you have to fanny about looking for other things for it to show what's actually on). I find myself having to go on Sky Sports' website to see what's on later.

[flotemysost]

Another thing with NOW TV is there's not really a guide, just a now and next (which sometimes just doesn't update and you have to fanny about looking for other things for it to show what's actually on). I find myself having to go on Sky Sports' website to see what's on later.

Yep, it's just not intuitive at all. Also, more just an annoyance than a technical glitch, but is it in the minority of TV streaming services in that it doesn't allow for different user profiles within one account? I've shared my Now TV login details with a couple of friends since signing up, but everything's just there on the same profile.

Gave my new flatmate my login as there was something we wanted to watch together, up pops the landing page with HITLER'S FINAL DAYS and LIVES OF THE THIRD REICH (or something) on Last Watched, thanks to my history enthusiast mate who I also shared my login with, which might have looked a bit odd.

And yeah, re: Duolingo it should give more of a heads up that you really want to get familiar with the alphabet before tackling the language, at least that's what I found when I started learning Russian a few years ago. Though tbh I find the app's point-chasing format isn't really for me and the knowledge doesn't stick at all.

[touchingcloth]

I like the gamified nature of Duolingo in some ways, but that method of learning seems like it should only really be used to reinforce stuff you've already learned rather than it being the sole way of learning the language from start to finish, so I dip back into it now and then because it's a good way of refreshing vocabulary and word orders and whatnot.

I don't like the way it's so heavily based on learning by rote rather than learning first principles, and there aren't any introductions before lessons that will give you some cultural context behind the stuff you're learning. For instance, it will teach you the difference between formal and informal verb inflections, but it never touches on when you would use one form rather than the other.

[Blue Jam]

ANOTHER thing with Now TV is that the trailers are getting longer and more frequent. And they're unskippable. I do resent being shown adverts on a service I'm paying for.

Also the way they've added a boost to my service a couple of times without me asking for it, and having to cancel it when I notice the payment on my bank statement.

[purlieu]

I do resent being shown adverts on a service I'm paying for.

Bit like getting them on videos and DVDs I suppose. That seemed perfectly normal at the time, but when I watched Alpha Papa recently I was really taken aback by the trailers at the start of it. Struck me as really invasive.

[greencalx]

Oh yes, the unskippable "don't watch pirate dvds or your knob will fall off" messages came close to making me want to pirate the dvd so I wouldn't have to sit through that shit.

We stumped up the 4 quid a month to get rid of the adverts on All 4 which I think is worth it, but the "small number of programmes that contain commercial messaging for contractual reasons" seems to be about 90% of them. Luckily it's mostly just a single trailer for one of their other shows, so not too intrusive, but one still feels this is a bit disingenuous.

[Blue Jam]

The worst thing about adverts on streaming apps and websites is the way they often seem to use more bandwidth than the actual content you came for. Had that with All4 especially when the app used to freeze up when an ad in glorious 4K HD would pop up in the middle of Seinfeld.

Also when did pop-up blockers stop working? I can't believe how many pop-ups I see now, did the coders of pop-up blockers just lose that particular arms race?

[touchingcloth]

I hardly ever get pop-ups these days, using AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin on Chrome.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

We stumped up the 4 quid a month to get rid of the adverts on All 4 which I think is worth it, but the "small number of programmes that contain commercial messaging for contractual reasons" seems to be about 90% of them. Luckily it's mostly just a single trailer for one of their other shows, so not too intrusive, but one still feels this is a bit disingenuous.

We're now paying a subscription fee to allay extremely mild inconvenience?

[greencalx]

That's what it is after you pay the subscription for the "ad-free" service. It's usual terrestrial levels of adverts if you don't want to stump up the cost of a beer.

Maybe you're one of those weirdos who likes adverts.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Also re: Duolingo, I have found the Czech lessons stuck but can imagine Chinese/Japanese and any others involving learning character sets and fundamentally different stuff would be rubbish on Duolingo.

If anything, Duolingo is finished too soon. The course is done and it feels like you're barely starting, but I guess you learn the structure and some of it gets drummed into you through pattern based memory, which can come in handy with synthetic languages like Czech with declensions and so on. I am trying to find ways of spreading out while still spending £0.00 and having it all thrown at me in didactic fashion as otherwise I don't have the discipline.

Also, by the time they brought in that fuck awful Hearts system, I realised if you learn on your computer browser and not the app you can carry on without worrying about running out of Hearts. I was so far into the course that it avoided having to pay for the nonsense Duolingo Plus which must be one of the worst value offerings out there. They say it funds keeping it free, but ultimately the resource has been built now and the people who have built it have been paid. It should be fucking open source, get in a grave.

[idunnosomename]

i quite like teams. although im sure I pressed record once and it ended up it didnt record which got me in hot water. zoom sucks though

[paruses]

Re Duolingo hearts - I didn't mind that as earning them without paying meant a quick refresher over mistakes I had made.

I also discovered that if you click the flag you can get some useful discussion on that particular question usually with input from native speakers.

It's still largely rote learning but has got me going a bit on a couple of languages. I could use the app a lot more effectively I think but the gamification means I take short cuts to stay on top of the league and streak stuff with my usual "I'll deffo do a proper lesson tomorrow" approach to life.