I once had to use the NY State government website for info. Finally found the page. Open page up and see a blue background with dark blue font. Un fucking readable.
Ask Lemmy
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DHL.
Website designed by hateful people who seem to make it as hard as possible to pay duty fees on parcels.
I think the time I was like 7 and was looking at hamster photos on Google to print and cut out. Scrolling along I couldn't find any that looked exactly like my hamster named Cinnamon after a black streak along his back.
Getting to the 3rd or 4th "load more" buttons on Google and it started showing me stuff that wasn't hamsters I got desperate. I saw there were a few images that had text along the top and bottom, "for more cute hamster photos go to xhamster.com".
So naturally, I went there.
Turns out xhamster.com was not a site where hamsters share selfies and is, instead, pornography.
Adobe.
Once, you sign in, good luck finding anything you need.
fcc.gov. Those goddamn "Sign into the Federal Fucked Up Document System with your FFUDS PIN now" things that just don't actually work. The layers of garbage between you and renewing an amateur radio certificate is truly Idiocratic.
This sounds very similar to the Kentucky online portal for teacher certification. It looks like it was made in 1996, and it functions slightly less well than it looks like it should.
I just did my GMRS a few months ago. That site is a dumpster fire.
Time Cube (now archived). I feel bit bad saying it, but omg the layout. It was bad even by 90s standards.
Edit: the creator died in 2015.
Edit2: CW, anti-queer rhetoric, but I find it very hard to take it seriously in the midst of waves hands vaguely at the rest of the website
Thanks for the flashback
Comcast. I dare you to try to cancel or change your cable and internet package.
I finally got my appleTV subscription cancelled, and that took three fucking tries. No, I don't have an iPhone or an appleTV unit, so I'm now free.
literally any restaurant website. I disabled Facebook from my entire network (pihole).
I can no longer order food on a website because Facebook is deadzoned.
Also, about half of big box brick and mortar online stores stopped working as well.
Publisher's Clearing House.
So this company has ads on local free tv stations in the US about how you could win $5000 a week for life, but when you go to the website it's like 97% ads and maybe 2% contests, and some contests are straight up unenterable if you have an adblocker. Then before you can officially enter, you have to go through 3 pages of 'as seen on tv' crap that it tries to sell you before you can finish entering. Also it lags like a motherfucker with or without an adblocker, cause there's so many ads taking up that much bandwith, cause heaven forbid a webpage ad be a static image. And of course you have to have an account, so your spam folder and paper mailbox fill up with the worst things possible.
Seemingly every recipe website. They tell a long, unrelated story, cover the page with ads, popups, slideouts, timer triggered ads, videos, etc.
It's almost impossible to see the recipe under all the crap.
These were some of the first sites to be enshittified. The more you scroll that more ad revenue they got. So they hid the actual recipes and steps under a back story longer than the dune books that forced you to scroll and hit ad after ad.
A lot of these have a link near the top to go straight to the recipe, which helps me avoid much of the dreck.
Spotify. Only website/service that makes their service intentionally worst and people still pay for it
Pintrest is the worst website ever built and has caused immense damage to the free sharing of information.
me: oh hey I was looking for--
Pinterest: Sign in or I will come to your house and break your thumbs
me: well fuck you too then
Together with Quora. Search engine pollution.
There was about ten minutes there when Quora was Yahoo! Answers for people who passed the Apgar test.
I legitimately don't know why Google hasn't filtered it out of image search results. It's harmful to Google's platform.
Try using Instagram without an account and no app, basically impossible.
x.com
It's hard to pick out one as THE worst, but generally, if I have to use the site for some external reason, the experience is awful.
Health insurance, doctor's offices, etc are generally pretty bad. Oddly, tax sites aren't as rough.
Also oddly, vacation related websites are awful.
4chan. When I saw a German shepherd get hit in the face with a shovel full force, I decided the site wasn't for me.
Unfortunately people always go on the "shock site" boards like /b/ and /pol/ instead of checking out the more niche ones like /po/ (papercraft and origami) and /tg/ (traditional games) which are much more like regular hobbyist forums/image boards. I can see why one awful experience would sour the whole thing though and some of the people who post there are sad excuses for human beings.
Edit: Just as an example this is the oldest thread on 4chan at the moment. It was created in 2016 and is still active. It catalogues OP's struggle to make an origami clock.
the idea of someone unironically using 4chan to chat about origami is so funny to me
Yeah but, counterpoint, can you name any other active online origami communities?
Usually webapps.
Ugh, still to this day, persistant file storage is either "the cloud" or file APIs that altho secure, don't allow for saving overtop of existing files. really annoying.
Reddit.
Fragile Mods. Shitty trolls. Dishonest engagements. Little to no good discussion. Opinions are seen as attacks. Power-tripping users and mods alike. Karma whores.
I thought Twitter was a stupid idea when it first started. 140 character limit? What the fuck is the point? The fact they increased that limit shows it was dumb. Everything else about the site just gives further reason to hate it.
ticketmaster.com
Ogrish.
Doesn't exist any more, but definitely traumatized me as a child.
If you haven't heard of it, it was basically a video hosting site focusing on extreme violence and gore.
Tons of clips of people being killed or horrifically maimed in war, car accidents, industrial accidents, 'extreme' magic shows gone wrong, brutal gang attacks, straight up snuff videos...
Some videos off the top of my head I won't ever be able to erase from my memory:
The beheading of Daniel Pearl.
Low resolution video of 9/11, but you could make out people jumping from the towers... and splattering all over the ground. The camera man tracked people the entire distance they fell.
Some insane magic show gone wrong where a man chain sawed his wife in half ... she hadn't managed to fold herself into the right position inside the magic box... her screams and twitching legs were not an act.
A video taken in Fallujah (I think?) of an Iraqi hopped up on an absurd amount of drugs, taken from a US soldier who had just dismounted with most of his squad from a humvee.
Him and others advance down the middle of a street towards the soldiers, all holding AKs. A volley of fire from the dismounted soildiers either took out all the group, leaving them with chunks blown off, writhing in agony, or scattering...
Except this one guy. He's clearly seriously wounded, but is still advancing basically blind firing his AK.
The US soldiers are in shock that he's still walking.
Now for a burst from a 50 cal.
Huge parts of this guy's body are visibly blown off of him, but he still advances.
A second, more sustained 50 cal burst basically liquifies him where he stood.
That and rotten.com have been responsible for a lot of my insomnia, and probably a good chunk of my misanthropy.
You can't unsee things, folks. Don't give in to the temptation. It's not worth it.
How are we measuring?
- Global harmful impact: it's hard to beat Facebook
- Disgusting: long ago, I got a spam advertising a dedicated CSAM site. I looked to see it it was really what it said, and sent it to NCMEC when I saw that is was
- Actively malign: 8chan is up there, as are old fashioned hate groups.