> Abusing users with bloat is supposedly some great freedom worth fighting for
The thing people were offended by wasn't the lack of bloat, it was the fact that it was ceding even more control to Google.
The thing people were offended by wasn't the lack of bloat, it was the fact that it was ceding even more control to Google.
Billing on line is the same thing. Unless you are on a trusted site (Amazon / Apple) you can just get hosed trying to cancel subscriptions with jack up pricing etc.
Same thing with spam - at some point users stopped trusting the hackers and developers and migrated to more controlled worlds (ie, gmail etc) which blocks HUGE quantities of the junk.
I just wish hackers spent some time trying to make users experience and lives better rather than the constant push to spam them (EFF wanted to pass laws banning anti-spam measures), now AMP (which was amazing) is being attacked endlessly and the list goes on.
Google has a commercial reason for pushing this stuff - the web was turning into a trash bit (flyover ads with audio etc etc).
Besides, does blocking ads and trackers not at least partially alleviate the issue? Works well for me and, in combination with a reader view, is a significantly better experience than AMP. I'd argue that those "hackers" you very much hate are the exact ones fighting against corporate bloat on the web.
I'm blocking a good percentage of ads in Safari on my iPhone via third-party apps Hush[0] and Magic Lasso[1]. I typically read articles in Reader mode. Because of this, I can't give a great accounting of how many ads actually get through. Certainly, the number is small enough that I don't think about it.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900 [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ad-blocker-by-magic-lasso/id12...