this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Crappy Design
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Noticed that theres no equivalent to r/crappydesign here yet so i made one
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I'll be that guy and say this isn't crappy design and shouldn't be in this community. We've already got posts filling top of all we don't need more where they don't belong.
yeah, this is a policy OP doesn't like, not bad design
Ads are crappy by design. I think the spirit of the community is upheld with this post.
Well yes, nobody likes ads. But think of it this way - ads are "democratic" in a way, because it means everybody can "afford" or access that which is financed by the ads. Most websites are expensive to run and have to make money somehow to pay for itself - as much as I dislike ads, I'm not sure what the alternative would be? Should we have to pay to access each and every website? I don't know what the best solution would be, to be hones.
Ads have nothing to do with democracy; they are forced upon us and serve no other purpose than to manipulate you into buying a product. That's text-book capitalism for you.
Personally, as an open-source developer, I use crowd-funding to cover the expenses for the websites and software I provide. You will find no ads or tracking on my pages, and the same can be said for the majority of open-source projects.
The problem is rarely tied to cost; usually, it's about greed and the never-ending chase for higher profit margins.
Mind you, I'm just a single individual with a single experience, but if I can find a way to get paid for my work without forcing people to watch the visual diarrhea, so can the giants like Google.
YouTube only barely breaks even as it is. What profit margins are you talking about?
In Q3 of 2022 alone, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, recorded a profit (not revenue!) of 13.9 billion USD. Their financial position is more than secure.
https://abc.xyz/assets/investor/static/pdf/2022Q3_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=4156e7f
Even excusing the policy, the design is actually pretty shit though. We're all just used to it so it feels default and normal.
That's fair. I agree, it's mediocre at best.
While this is a policy I don't like, it's also something that is purposely destroying the usability of the Internet. Which I think constitutes a bad design.
I would argue that pop-ups like this are an intentionally crappy design meant to be frustrating and get in the way. But, I understand what your saying, this is perhaps not the best suited community for this post.
I think the difference here is I view "crappy design" as something badly made or poorly executed. What you describe I would consider to be "asshole design": perfectly well-made, but with bad intentions. I can see why you would have the different definition though, and considering the Reddit subs had a lot of these same definition issues it's not surprising they continue here.
Unsolicited ads are implicitly anti-user, especially when they impede or interrupt access to content.
I'd say it's an ok design to enforce a crappy business model