just to get it out of the way: yes, i know i can use a spam email/phone number. yes, i know i can opt out of promotional emails/texts. that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. i don’t need a growing list of empty accounts for websites i only spend an hour (or less) browsing through. don’t even get me started on restaurants that ask for your phone number when you scan their QR code…
they ask me to make an account, I close the tab and go on to something else.
Me too.
Curiously, I’m not at all tired of websites that make me create an account to use them, probably because they’re the fastest to get through of all websites.
As a side note, I’ve worked in B2C Smartphone Apps at one point, and in the customer acquisition pipeline forcing people to create an account in order for them to use your app (and should be the same for websites) is one of the best ways to lose a huge percentage of potential customers (depending on the situation, we’re taking over 80% of people dropping at that point).
This. Also, when I use Firefox, uBlock Origin (or when I use Safari, Wipr2) usually blocks these prompts, so I don’t see them as much. When I do see them, I just go elsewhere.
when google asks me to prove i’m human, I go to DDG
this is the exact reason I switched the default on my phone to ddg
it’s usually slightly worse (which is shocking with how bad Google itself has gotten) but good enough. “don’t annoy me” is my lowest baseline
Try something like Degoog or Startpage, you might like them
thanks for the recc’s!
Hint: you can eliminate a step by not using Google’s products.
Waterfox has been working well for me so far
Same, but I sometimes use BugMeNot.
This is the way