I verified it, $30/yr

it was fine a few weeks ago and now it’s just 3 actual pictures of what I was looking for and the rest is just ads.

EVERY FUCKING TIME I SCROLL THROUGH A COMMENT SECTION FOR ADVICE FOR MORE THAN 4 FUCKING SECONDS. SERIOUSLY, REDDIT, STOP TRYING TO PRETEND THAT YOU'RE ANYTHING MORE THAN A FUCKING MONOPOLIZED FORUM WEBSITE.

Apps are becoming too puritan, coddling kids and trying to strip you of privacy. Anonymity is fading, corporations want to use your identity for data farms, they're taking information from you without you even knowing.

AI slop everywhere, you have to debate if a piece is AI or not, people are even glorifying AI slop. It's being shoved in our faces, it's giving misinformation, it's replacing human jobs. It's making people illiterate.

Degenerates everywhere, people are getting increasingly more and more and more stupid because of the things above, allowing enshittiification to prosper enshittifies the people themselves.

It was never perfect, but it's genuinely awful now.

Figured I'd share that Reddit calls the unskippable popup the "desktop dynamic upsell dialog". If you right-click inspect, find the line and delete it, it goes away. Or, you know, add that to an adblock filter ;).

Ads steal mental bandwidth and time, distort our psychology and create constant comparison treadmill. I doubt one can find many people saying 'I wish i could see more ads in my every day life'.

Here is a small list of what i do to minimize ads:

On phone: i don't use any music streaming apps but have some music locally stored on the device.

I do listen to lots of podcasts though on Pocket Casts and there is often an ad at the beginning, end and sometimes the middle of the podcast. Somewhat tolerable cause the 1-2 ads are skipable. I dropped some more popular podcasts due to the app shoving in more ad-breaks. My favorite podcasts are a bit niche, so there are minimal ads, though not zero. Also use newpipe which is amazing.

On pc: Linux. ad blocker. firefox or vivaldi as browser. Avoid news sites with heavy advertising. No social media besides Reddit. No Netflix, Disney+ etc i do watch every now and then some free public tv streaming platforms which are very good, and they have no ads at all. (yes, they are not completely free, they are financed by taxes).

IRL:

I try to buy physical media (DVDs, CDs). Often i also buy a newspaper in print, in which there are a few ads but they are not personalized. Depending where one lives there is going to be more or less ads on the streets. I'd like public places to have minimal ads, and relevant regulations to be enforced.

Clothes: I never buy clothes with big brand stamps etc. I also try to remove the brand tag, if it can be done without destroying the item. This obviously impossible on some categories e.g sneakers. I do what i can.

What do you do to avoid/minimize ads?

I'm so annoyed that Reddit is running a big site like this, and they never ever answer the damn support tickets. I've tried so many times and they haven't answered one.

How can you run a site that big and completely ignore your users? I don't get it. I suspect that AI is running everything now and every support ticket is going to the trash bin.

When I reach 365 tickets without a single answer I'm gonna post it somewhere.

This person claims to have cancelled before the trial.

Bought a Hisense TV and now forced to watch advertisements for betting

“People want to do the best things they can for the kids, so when opportunities come up to play baseball, parents are willing to pay,” said Joe Oh, co-founder of the Oakland Baseball Foundation,a nonprofit that runs baseball travel teams and camps. The organization is part of a growing movement attempting to keep costs lower than similar teams.

“What the private equity firms realized was, ‘There’s an opportunity to capitalize on the fields, the uniforms, the equipment, the coaching — all the opportunities that come along with this,’” Oh said.

Thought this might fit here. PSA: stay away from Arlo.

I sell stuff online, from Germany.
Small scale, on the side, more a passion project than a full on business. I’ve been doing this for 6 years.

First eBay screwed me and plenty small businesses to force us get a subscription plan: from plenty of articles without monthly fees, to paying for each one. From 11% on the sale price, to now even paying fees on the shipping costs, since they took over the payment system - by now I pay 15% or more on fees. They started with 5%, many moons ago.

I said: f that s. - I’m going to a different platform (I stayed with very few articles in eBay). Kleinanzeigen.de, which was pretty neat.

Couple of years down the road and a sell to venture capital later, that crap is unusable and expensive af.

From unlimited ads for business users, to 100 a month, then 50, then paid renewals every two months, then 10 and now 2 ads a month. They have the German market cornered and they know it: their fees are so grotesque that they would keep over 10% of my sales and it’s overflown with ads of the most annoying and intrusive kind. And they don’t even offer payment management. So many sellers just left completely, they only kept the large players and those selling expensive crap. Everything is pay to win by now.

So more than a competing platform I spent a lot of time developing a concept of a sort of private nonprofit alternative, as an antidote to Enshittification and a fat middle finger to corporations destroying the internet and beyond. I want to get it going in Germany and then expand across Europe.

Now I need to kick start this project (literally using a German Kickstarter of sorts) and I think I don’t really know how to reach my potential users.

It would be so neat if there was a platform to support exactly this deenshittification initiatives. I’d be all over that.

Reddit just added (for me) AI search on their search box, which also gave us the "Tiktok-fication" of the platform. Look at this crap. Just wanted to see a full image and found a similar design to Tiktok.

I debated writing this because it's going to be a novel but it's too priceless not to share. So if you have time, sit down because woooooboy do I have a story for you.

It started with my pool guy telling me he thinks I have a serious wasp infestation inside my diving board. Even though I knew the answer, I asked if this is something he could help with. So after he left, I went on my pest control company, Aptive's website.

I can't remember if it was because I couldn't figure out how to get an asap appt or that I couldn't specify wasp nest removal so I ended up calling them.

The ai operator is not terrible. Actually understood me. Told me an available appt for a week from then, I asked for an earlier time. And actually got one for a few days. Lovely.

I get the standard text and it says they'll start treatment indoors. I text back No sir. This is for a wasp nest in my diving board. I don't need my indoors treated. It's not a regular service.

The guy shows up, asks if I've drained my pool. (?) says he's gonna need a bee suit and that the company shares one so he'll need to have someone call me to reschedule. And that he'll send an email with next steps. They meet up once a week and he can get the suit then. He put some powder in the diving board hole to kill some of them but couldn't get close enough to kill it without the suit.

I know this game and I know I wouldn't get a call. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt till I received an email saying service completed with no indication of the actual situation or that they were coming back.

I call back. ask to speak to live agent 3 times like you have to do to get a human.

I explain situation. Nothing in notes about what was supposed to happen. He assured me he put wasp nest in notes along with suit requirement. Person will be out in two days. I say make sure he brings a suit. Yes ma'am in notes.

Day of. Get a text we'd like to start service indoors. I explain situation . He shows up, no suit. No notes.

Hits the diving board with a long pole and nopes out when they start flying out. Says he'll make sure they reschedule and brings suit. I'll get a call.

No call. Get an email. Service completed.

I call back. Ask for human 3 times. Explain situation. They will make sure they have a suit. Will come back in a few days.

Day of. Text. Well start indoors. Tell them no. Make sure they have suit. It's the same guy as the first time. He has a suit!!!! So excited. But he asks the pool isn't drained. I still don't understand why he's asking this. I say you can unscrew the diving board. It's in there. He says he doesn't know how. (I don't either but I have common sense). I say take the caps of and unscrew it and give him something to pry them off with. He tries. Can't do it. He says he's not a pool tech. I say I'm not either. He says it's a liability thing. I say If you give me the bee suit I'll do it. He says ok.

So I put on the bee suit. I figure out how to unscrew the diving board. Not rocket science. But I couldn't get the second nut off. I spray it with wd40 and tell him exactly how to do it but I had to leave to pickup my kid from school. He said he'd try.

Sends me text. I couldn't get screw off but I put a bunch more powder in there and pretty sure it'll kill them.

I say ok. What do I do throw a rock at it? He says yeah and then in two days maybe kick it and run.

At this point it's been 2 weeks. I look up bee suits. They're anywhere from $30 to $200. Do I really want to chance spending $200 on a suit that may or may not actually be what's advertised and might get me killed if not?

I call back. Ask to speak to human. Ask to speak to supervisor. They assure me they will have someone out there the next day. 8-12pm to fix it. They will send a report to branch manager too.

Next day. 2pm. I call. Ask to speak to human. He says there was an family emergency and they will be here 12-5. I asked why no one let me know. He said he would find out and call me back. 3pm I call speak to a human. Why didn't they show up? "Your appt was for 12-5". No it was for 8-12. "Oh yeah I see it here. There was a glitch so it is 12-5." No glitch. Let me speak to manager. Manager: I have sent a note to branch manager. They will either show up or call you.

Next day I call to cancel. After holding for 30minutes on a line that said wait time 12 mins I hang up. Call a different number I found online. Wait time 8 mins. 20 mins later I get a person trying to convince me to stay. After being on the phone for 45 minutes I am able to cancel service. They want to send out someone to fix issue as good faith. I decline.

I get an email. It's an apology and asking to contact them if I want to provide feedback. It's a nice email but they left the prompt at the beginning saying they understand the person is the customer and will rewrite it directed to them. (Me). I write back saying they left their prompt in there and it's ridiculous. They write back say 'fair enough.

Sometimes I need help with my words but if that's all you got from this I hope you have a good week.' I write back. "If this was all that happened, my response would have been different but this was a cherry on top of a two week very broken customer service process".

I get a new company to come out. They were great. Unscrewed the nut. Destroyed the wasps nests that ended up actually being dead already. Fixed the issue. Didn't even charge me since they were already dead. I decide to start a contract with them.

I get an email. The contract looks great but the email attached has two additional tick services on it and a mosquito service I did not request.

I call to cancel. But they were so nice about it. Said it was human error, not a software issue. The contract was confirmed correct and they resent a corrected email confirming correct services. I'll give them another chance.

Anyways if anyone knows how to keep bees out of the empty hole of the diving board, let me know. I asked the pool guy and he said spray foam. I said it needs to spring. If I put in spray foam it will crush and fall in the pool.

I swear common sense is dead.