We all know the struggle of beloved services slowly going downhill. What’s one service, tool, or website you’ve been using for years that’s still great and hasn’t turned to crap?
Wikipedia.
Dreamwidth.
Craigslist
Hasn’t changed much at all, and their app is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more–i think the only thing I wasn’t able to do in the app was clear a saved search, but there’s no bloat, no ads, don’t need an account unless you’re posting or saving searches.
The site still looks like it came right out of the late 90’s and that’s all it needs to be
Every few years I’ll look for something on craigslist and every time I’m amazed that it’s still going strong and it’s still exactly the same.
There is currently an amazing amount of top-quality, open source, design and development software: Blender, Godot, Inkscape and Krita, for instance.
That’s different, those are open source projects, not walled off paid service from companies
My local ISP. They are not a monopoly, they are local only, they provide fiber and great customer service. You call and they answer instantly, they don’t treat you like an idiot when you call. They don’t restrict anything and you have unlimited data. It’s very simple.
Last month T-mobile bought them after years of great service so I expect the enshittification to come any day now, but so far nothing has changed.
Mine too!
Still local, small time with a few thousand customers. They don’t upcharge internet prices if you skip linear TV.
All emplyees are local and I see them drive around.I don’t care how good your pitch is, Mr. Salesman at my door: I’m sticking with what I’ve got!
I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who loves their ISP since the early days of transitioning from 56K modems.
It’s increasingly rare.
Steam. I think a lot of people are unappreciative of how user friendly and open it is. When Gabe bites the dust I think it’s going to get very shit very quick.
Yeah when hes gone it will go the way of ea and ubisoft, no question. There’s so much untapped market there. First thing will be steam subscriptions. Starting at 10 dollars a month. Then limiting your game downloads to 2 per month so no installing and uninstall ing as you wish.
Mark my words. Prepare to leave steam.
The risk is real, but it depends. If it goes pubic it’s all over. If it stays private or worker-owned it stands a chance.
Definitely best to keep steam away from the pubics
Let’s you register an easy to remember domain name linked to an IP address you specify. It’s useful for self hosting or avoiding having to buy a domain name.
Free version makes you confirm every month that you still want the domain name, but that’s just a couple of clicks from the email they send you.
Thank you for this. Not sure how I’ve managed to completely miss it.
My local library.
Eh, if we are talking about online stuff then VLC.
VLC for android is somehow getting worse with updates via loss of features.
Not sure if they qualify as “services,” but discogs, rateyourmusic and genius are holding up fairly well. IMDB is also pretty good, still.
I swear I ran into a problem with IMDb having some basic stuff like “what has this actor been in recently” stuck behind their IMDbPro paywall at some point in the last couple years.
But I just went and checked a few movies and shows, can’t seem to replicate that issue anywhere.
I either hallucinated it, or they rolled back the enshittification after seeing a drop in traffic, not sure
They toyed around with moving things in and out of public. I’m not sure i’ve seen the what else get chained off, but for a while you coudn’t get much information about anyone. That’s when I started using Wiki
IMDB is also pretty good, still.
Sure, it’s still useable. But the redesign a few years ago made it harder to use and I’m still mad about them removing their forums. Who dares to talk about movies and TV shows on a platform meant for that.
IMDb is so enshittified nobody uses it anymore. Bad example.
what do people use instead?
Piratebay.
I was so happy to learn about Libro.fm randomly. Makes things so much easier to just download and have on my dedicated audio player. No DRM to strip or having to use their player. Only thing that annoys me about them (along with other audiobook services) is that they list books that they can’t sell due to DRM. Most of the time if they don’t have a book you just don’t get a result, but for some reason they will show some books and I get excited to see them. Just to then load the page and see that they currently can’t offer it due to DRM. Would much rather not see the search result. Another mildly annoying thing with their search is that searching for books by authors will include other authors and show results for all their books. Both are just annoyances that aren’t deal breakers so long as everything else is kept the same.
They have always provided downloads from filehosters, torrents, Usenet and a VPN. And at the end of the year, there has always been a good deal to get the service for a whole year (or even two).
It’s too good to be true and every year I wonder when they’ll enshittify. But they haven’t done so, yet.
Commenting for future reference
Are we using the colloquial definition* or the definition of the person who coined the term?
*“Stuff I don’t like”
The colloquial definition is still the original one. A handful of people misunderstand and think it means just “is shitty” but mostly it’s used correctly.
We have had different experiences.
It’s no use. Resistance is futile.
Signed,
Someone Who Raged Against the Destruction of “FUD” Back in the Day
😭
Wikipedia.
Though I could do without the endless donation blockups.
You can login and it’ll stop with the pop ups for a year.
I can forgive Wikipedia and Internet Archive for the spam. Both sites are incredibly valuable and completely ad-free.
They are one of the highest achievements of humanity, imho, that even make me feel proud to be a human.
It’s hard not to try to support them.
The “spam” is for them to operate, not maximise their profits.It’s not that simple and transparent actually. Wikipedia doesn’t really need those donations to operate. They have money reserves for many years of expenses. I don’t have a great source right now but this article looks decent. I didn’t read the whole thing though.
Gotcha, it’s another anti-European (and anti-USA), anti-male, quasi-Marxist organization. This is what your donations to Wikipedia are going to. Wikipedia spends more money on left-wing causes than actually running an encyclopedia, and by a very long-shot.
Well shit, I guess I’ll start donating
I see nothing wrong with that.
I just think it’s fair to say the way they ask for donations is at least a little bit disingenuous.
yeah agreed
I came here to say both of those things about the Internet Archive, but I also hope both of those orgs get tons of donations regularly because I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them
I just pay the 52$ once a year and know I’ve done my part for knowledge.
You know what?
I’m gonna start doing that.
It’s not just the spam, there is other enshittification like the endless co-option with AI companies and private info disclosure (aka surveillance capitalism) under the self-serving excuse of being anonymized or aggregated.
Just found these custom ad block filters. Seems to be working so far
wikipedia.org##.nag-trigger wikipedia.org###centralNotice wikipedia.org##[id$=“banner-nag”] wikipedia.org###frb-inline wikipedia.org##.cn-fundraising
