Thanks for the tip. Most of the people here would fix that somehow, e.g. by tweaking browser settings, finding and following comments like yours. But, why does someone who doesn't deal with tech have to think about that, and will they, should they?

I find their UX approach to SEO more concerning than, say, scoring. For example, AMP pages will receive the same score as equally performant non-AMP content. However, they won't benefit from the carousel view, with instant page loads (prefetch), etc...

Small changes like this, applied at a huge scale to a user base that just can't afford to constantly fight hostile UX are damaging, regardless if they come from Google, an airline site, your mailbox switching to "Promotions" at random intervals or Twitter not allowing you to permanently change the feed order.

Internet feels more hostile than it used to. I don't mind the trolls (I can always block them) but I do mind that we depend on services that deploy hostile UX practices.

> Internet feels more hostile than it used to.

It's not Internet, it's software.

You can really feel it when switching from Android to LineageOS, or from Windows to Linux.

It's the difference between software where "you are the product" and software that has been created to serve the user, to be the best tool it can be.

I'm not talking about UX in the sense that open source software can sometimes feel clunky and unfinished, but I'm talking about breath of freedom you feel when you switch, and suddenly ... you notice that this current you have been forced to swim against, just isn't there any more.

I helped a friend get LineageOS on his bootlooped phone, and he's so happy with it. All these features in the settings that are actually helpful (when in Android you always have to second guess, you know that feeling when a setting's description is really vague and uninformative, "this is probably going to spy on me", is it vaguely positive or negative, because the switch can go either way). All the very basic features that would otherwise require an ad-filled app to perform, of course already there. You get privacy controls that aren't mystifying or reset on updates.

Similarly, I've now been on Instagram for about half a year. Always avoided FB, but there's some art I wanted to put out there, so I gave it a try. And oh my god, Instagram is probably the shittiest software ever? Or at least the most user hostile. It's a social thing where you can share images, comments and messages. Except it isn't, it just appears like one. Literally every interaction feels forced, to show me more ads, make me spend more time in this app (??) and mainly constantly throwing up barriers against interacting with any kind of software or data outside its ecosystem. You can't upload from your laptop, many links are not clickable, many text fields are not copyable, most features in the browser are locked unless you make it pretend to be an iPhone (!!), you can't post or reply to comments. The chat is such basic functionality that it seems hard to fuck up but they did. I should stop, but I can go on ...

This is that feeling of constantly swimming against a current, and somehow we're tricked into believing that is how it's supposed to be, because ... I don't know, some people told me when I complained, that most people don't use instagram in the way I do. Well I guess, but that doesn't seem to be most people's choice.

I think you're definitely misunderstanding what Instagram is. I'm not saying it isn't user hostile and full of ads, because it definitely is, but you're complaining about all the wrong things. All of those things you're complaining about are conscious design choices and have been from the very beginning.

Instagram is not some generic photo sharing software that tries to be open and modular and integrate with everything and proliferate arbitrary visual media with a rich tightly coupled messaging system. It was never that and won't ever be that.

Instagram from the start was just about taking low res pictures with your phone camera, putting a filter on them so they look less terrible and then sharing them with your friends. Every other feature was begrudgingly added to increase accessibility and hence DAUs. So you were never supposed to be able to interact with anything outside of the app. You can't cross-post your posts to facebook or twitter, you can't post from your computer, you can't spam links in your photo descriptions. All of this is literally the point of Instagram. It was like this before it and slightly after it got acquired and people loved it, not in spite of the restrictions, but because of them.

Then Zuck crammed it full of ads and a terrible glommed on messaging system and ruined it.

And Twitter was a service to share SMS text messages of max 140 characters.

I understand that what you describe is what Instagram was, but given what they have both become, they actually have little functional difference.

Amen.

You haven't tried snapchat btw. It keeps getting worse. I'm sure many of us in here are feeling like dinosaurs, unable to fit in.

I did try snapchat but I couldn't stand it, I only had one contact (and "Team Snapchat"! yay) and ultimately got rid of it.

I installed an SSH client on my phone and my life instantly got better.

In fairness, this applies equally to all things one can install SSH clients on.

Totally agree with the Instagram part. Worst software ever.

WhatsApp is second after that :)

This is not AMP. It’s a feature originally called Chrome Custom Tabs [1], and it’s a faster way to open a webpage than a regular “open URL” intent (that would have to launch the entire browser app) or a custom WebView (which sucks for other reasons). The thing is, this feature takes into account your default browser, so if you set Focus as your system default browser, the custom tabs will launch in Focus, with all the privacy protections it offers.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs

if you use google search as your default search, then there is no way i know of to disable amp, no matter which browser you use, even if you request the browser to handle opening the link. google search passes the amp link to the browser.

> Unless I misunderstood, that is something you disable in each (google)app that has that "feature".

> In Gmail for instance: settings: General settings:

> Open links in gmail. Turn on for "faster" browsing.

I changed this setting, but now I clicked a link in gmail and indeed it opens via Firefox, but it still gets redirected through a google-URL before getting to the real page. I want to disable that behaviour most of all.

Then use a generic email client instead of Gmail mobile app or web email interface.

The Fastmail app is very good, for example.

> Tip: Use firefox focus instead as the default browser to open all links.

Unfortunately iOS doesn't support this nearly as well as Android does. On Android you can enforce this pretty much everywhere whereas on iOS a bunch of apps still open links in Safari no matter what you do.