Midnight Pub

Please, websites, I only want to read the news

~drmollytov

About a month ago, I deleted all my Big Tech accounts and switched to using Firefox and Brave with plenty of blocking offered. But at work, I don't have browser options; it's Chrome, Edge, or nothing. I also can't install extensions on them without IT approval.

I'm working on a project this morning that requires me to read a lot of local news websites - with nothing between me and the ads, the pop-up random videos, and everything else. It's uncomfortable!

No, it's worse than uncomfortable. It's *offensive*. It feels like an onslaught to my senses.

I know the saying is "if you're not the customer, you're the product," but these days it seems like even customers are products to a lot of websites. Even news services *we pay for* have offensively ad-cluttered, distracting, invasive interfaces.

I'm going to ask IT if adblock extensions wouldn't be the best thing for everyone around here.


tea

Good luck. You probably can't use apps on a stick either because your IT won't allow that, right?

In general it seems to me that it's getting harder to find RSS feeds, that Reuters has scaled that back. Or is it just me?

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starbreaker

WTF? Your workplace's IT department makes you raw-dog commercial websites instead of letting you install uBlock Origin? Damn.

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theoddballphilosopher

At this point you're better off buying a newspaper.

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softwarepagan

I wish my local news had a good RSS feed. It doesn't, unfortunately :/

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violetsoup

I remember reading something a little while ago that said something along the lines of,

"If you were to take a fellow from 2005 and show him the sort of websites we have to-day, he'd think that the computer had a virus."

And I agree! The sort of things that we consider normal on the internet these days is just obscene. I don't have an office job, but if I ever do, and it requires the use of a computer, you bet I'll be begging for ad-blocking extensions.

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detritus

I used to ask IT to install plan9 on all the computers, I hope you have better luck :^)

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tea

You're reminding me of when I used Cygwin.

a large collection of GNU and Open Source tools which provide functionality similar to a Linux distribution on Windows.
https://cygwin.com/
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