My opinions
Internet: internet is BLOATED! I don't know exactly when web developers decided it was a good idea to shove a fuckload of JS scripts that screw up privacy and usability in EVERY webpage, but it seems to be the norm now. Most of the time there's simply no reason for that, specially when the page's main goal is to deliver articles, tutorials and other kinds of simple textual content.
Internet also became more bland and centered around commodification of personal data. It used to be a symbol of a new horizon, a tool that would finally free people from mental shackles, a place of knowledge and creativity, but as time passed it became clear that human social problems are too tough and pervasive to be solved by a mere tool.
Technology: every piece of goddamn modern technology we use is now is bloated, clunky, less durable, less fixable and more resource intensive.
Commodification of personal data: the worst monstrosity that has been vomited by corporations in the history of internet. It's bad for privacy, for civil rights, for human progress and for all of us.
Dark patterns: just another bullshit vomited by corporations as well. A neologism coined by the UX designer Harry Brignull, dark patterns (also called "deceptive design pattern" according to wikipedia) is a user interface created to trick users into doing things like buying overpriced products, sharing more information than they intend to, installing unwanted third-party software along with the main program etc.
Social media: the concept of social media by itself is not the issue, the main problems are:
Social media websites were reduced to behaviour induction machines. They collect your personal data, learn about you, customize content based on your taste and use it to slowly shape the way you think. They use your own data against you. Just read about the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
- It's designed to make you addicted to their platform and burn a lot of time that could be used in more fun, produtive or fulfilling activities.
It's being managed by greedy amoral douchebags who ironically promote the erosion of social relations with business policies and algorithms that reinforce and reward anti-social behaviour.
The arbitrary community guidelines and the obsession with family-friendly content destroyed originality and creative power. Social media is not user-oriented, it's data-collection-oriented.
Injects constant doses of anxiety and fear in users.
Encourages doomscrolling and narcissism.
People behind them don't care at all about your well being, they actually profit from your misery.
People behind them don't respect you AT ALL!
Big tech social media is not designed to help people connect to each other in any meaningful way, they are designed to colonize your behaviour, reward political lunacy and ruin your mental health in the name of profit.
Promote your business on social media may not be an option either unless you're willing to abuse clickbaits and work like crazy to please their algorithms. You'll be their hostages, and all the work you put into it can turn into dust if they decide to shutdown your page.
Our time are much more valuable than big tech profits.
Windows: became unusable after the deprecation of windows 7. It wasn't extraordinary but was sane enough to use. Windows nowadays is just a spyware to mine personal data.
Some people say that if a digital product or service costs you no money then it's you who are the product. Guess what, you have to pay for legal copies of Windows and still was transformed into a product by Microsoft. They put a digital leash on you and you paid for it.
Except for security updates, Microsoft hasn't added anything really important to Windows since version 7, they just put a new interface on top of the old version with a bunch of crapware that consumes a lot of computer resources and turns the processor into an electric oven.
We can safely assume that Windows now is exploitative trash, it turns your computer into a data mining machine for Microsoft, reducing their computer costs by making you "share" some of your PC's valuable parts and power to perform their tasks of interest while also getting your valuable private data to increase their profits.
Microsoft: Microsoft power lies mostly in vendor lock-in and not in quality. Dependence on their products is considered a now a serious threat to sovereignty and even bureaucratic hells like governments are sparing no efforts to cut ties with them.
Google: "Don't be evil"...who the hell wants evil things nearby anyway? Any reasonable person wants goodness around, right? RIGHT?! Well, it seems that google realized that the "don't be evil" code of conduct wasn't good for business like their shareholders expected, so they throwed it away and did massive ammounts of corporate turd polishment using algorithms, marketing, and UX design.
Google haven't innovated for a while, and they adopted the same strategy as Microsoft: acquire and destroy projects to sideline the competion. They killed so many of it's own projects that someone made a virtual cemetery to keep a record of them all (and show you alternative services that you can use in their place).
2025 update: google has lifted a ban on using AI for weapons development and surveillance. How can they square that with "don't be evil" and "democracy values" is beyond me. "Don't be evil" is trully dead now. Who would have guessed?
Youtube: the decline of youtube quality wasn't that surprising given the googlish mentality behind it.
Chaotic algorithms that make good channels lose viewers and subscribers, arbitrary community guidelines that encourages the creation of bland content, ads that lasts more than 2 fucking minutes...and now, to complete the icing on the googlish fecal cake, they're trying to fight adblocks with everything they got.
Android: a cool idea in the beginning, now it's riddled with spyware and junkware. Googled Android is an Orwellian device that became much more important than it should.
Nintendo: talented but overly litigious company that adamantly defend even the breadcrumbs that fall from their table. They use legal proceedings to shut down anything from fan projects and emulators to YouTube videos.
They don't provide viable means to play old NES/SNES games but sue websites for distributing game ROMs that otherwise would be pretty much dead.
They sued a small grocer in Costa Rica named Super Mario, a store that’s been around with that very same name for over 50 years. Don't believe me? See by yourself.
It's an ugly mix of greed and plain pettiness.
Blizzard: this company was a symbol of inovation and good quality electronic entertainment with games like Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and WoW. It pains me to see the state of their stuff now. "Do you guys not have phones?" REALLY?!?!
Steam: I don't hate Steam, but I failed at every atempt of getting used to it, which leaves me out of the main walled garden of gaming. I'm in the wilderness of electronic entertainment I guess.