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Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious to hear what people think are the top 3, because I feel like Twitter and Instagram are strong contenders. Or if indeed Twitter belongs in the top spot.

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I would place Twitter at number one.

I can very easily remove Facebook from my life. Even though I still have an account, I can easily restrict it to only using Messenger for group chats and maybe checking the feed for less than 1 minute every few days (my usage statistics can confirm this).

With Twitter, I am constantly bombarded with people soapboxing their opinions, trying to start arguments, virtue-signalling, trying to force group outrage, witch-hunting... all manner of things. Even news articles have started using Twitter as sources. Its ridiculous.

I can't get away from it, despite not even having a Twitter account.

> With Twitter, I am constantly bombarded with people soapboxing their opinions, trying to start arguments, virtue-signalling, trying to force group outrage, witch-hunting... all manner of things. Even news articles have started using Twitter as sources. Its ridiculous.

What stops you from removing Twitter from your life just as easily as Facebook?

The 2 worst thing to happen to the internet is too much advertising and data collection services masquerading as free products.

In order: 1. Techno-snobbery (e.g. this tweet) 2. Spam (to the point of justifying email centralization) 3. html/css/js over-complication (to the point of unreasonable implementation requirements)

1. Government surveillance

2. Misguided government regulation

3. Corporate greed

Honorable mention goes to malware.

I have to play a bit of devil's advocate for malware. I see the constant arms race between the red and blue teams as a sort of immunization process for our technical infrastructure. Where there are weaknesses, someone will exploit them. Then someone will shore them up. Over time, I would argue malware (technically, the response to it, but there needs to be some instigating agent) improves the health of our technical infrastructure. Like how forest fires are necessary to the forest ecosystem.

I expect the same will be the case for BGP hijacking. There'll be some high-profile hack (higher profile than the ones that have already happened) and finally people will get the hint and implement secure BGP like when everybody was in a panic over Heartbleed and Spectre.

With Twitter I can pretty easily block/unfollow/etc people. I can also ban words. I use Twitter to follow interesting people.

On Facebook I want to follow friends, but I can't mute topics, which means I get a ton of crab.

People complain about Twitter because they don't block enough, or because they can't stand the idea that some people out there have different opinions than they do; which will cause them a ton of grief, but if you can't figure out how to use a tool, does that make it a bad tool?

Google is the worst by far. Page rank has horribly distorted the content and structure. It affects the way people write and think e.g. I have to reuse my title in post for google ranking! I have to include these keywords! I can’t link because I want to keep my “juice”. I’d guess a majority of all content on the internet is fake, created to manipulate page rankings. And that’s just the beginning, people believe a 30 second video needs to be stretched to at least 10 minutes because that’s want YouTube wants to rank in search. Amp? At least many of Facebooks worst features are locked inside their own garden. The page rank effect follows me into real life! I get emails every day, and even periodic phone calls from people trying to pay me to put their content on my site just so they can get back links.

In what world is this not the case? One without a search engine at all?

Any world where a search engine exists, people are going to try to do what ranks best. I would argue the world is better with a search engine (and these side effects) than without one.

Your page ranks not because it is inherently good content, but by how many people link to it and how they link to it (link text). So it creates externalities.

- Mandatory javascript.

- Spam and online ads (same thing really)

- Free platforms monetized by analytics.

I'd rate it a grab bag of google, twitter, and InstaFaceSnap.

If you forced me to choose just one that was the absolute worst, I'd probably choose Google. Google is definitely the "patient zero" or the "Typhoid Mary".

* spam e-mails

* JavaScript on web pages

* Flash

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