What is the worst website you have ever been on?
What is the worst website you have ever been on?
I'd like to see just how horrible someone can make a site. Facebook is a good contender.
How are we measuring?
- Global harmful impact: it's hard to beat Facebook
- Disgusting: long ago, I got a spam advertising a dedicated CSAM site. I looked to see it it was really what it said, and sent it to NCMEC when I saw that is was
- Actively malign: 8chan is up there, as are old fashioned hate groups.
An absolute classic
Ogrish.
Doesn't exist any more, but definitely traumatized me as a child.
If you haven't heard of it, it was basically a video hosting site focusing on extreme violence and gore.
Tons of clips of people being killed or horrifically maimed in war, car accidents, industrial accidents, 'extreme' magic shows gone wrong, brutal gang attacks, straight up snuff videos...
Some videos off the top of my head I won't ever be able to erase from my memory:
The beheading of Daniel Pearl.
Low resolution video of 9/11, but you could make out people jumping from the towers... and splattering all over the ground. The camera man tracked people the entire distance they fell.
Some insane magic show gone wrong where a man chain sawed his wife in half ... she hadn't managed to fold herself into the right position inside the magic box... her screams and twitching legs were not an act.
A video taken in Fallujah (I think?) of an Iraqi hopped up on an absurd amount of drugs, taken from a US soldier who had just dismounted with most of his squad from a humvee.
Him and others advance down the middle of a street towards the soldiers, all holding AKs. A volley of fire from the dismounted soildiers either took out all the group, leaving them with chunks blown off, writhing in agony, or scattering...
Except this one guy. He's clearly seriously wounded, but is still advancing basically blind firing his AK.
The US soldiers are in shock that he's still walking.
Now for a burst from a 50 cal.
Huge parts of this guy's body are visibly blown off of him, but he still advances.
A second, more sustained 50 cal burst basically liquifies him where he stood.
With Facebook and x.com you pretty much understand the risks going in.
But with stack overflow there's so much naivete required to create an account and begin asking questions. The good stuff is laid out right in front of you: people asking similar questions and getting thoughtful responses to deeply technical questions. It feels rewarding to get your first answer approved.
But then after months of "trying" you hit the wall. A sudden deluge of hostility and toxicity. Bipolar moderation staff suddenly deciding your content has no value and dumping you on a curb at night with a shitty smug comment, to the applause of bloodthirsty hoards of bootlicking trolls.
Nothing could have prepared you for this. It's hell. All of your work for nothing, any chance of justice or restitution gone. Every promise broken.
It's insidiously evil and I hope every member of their staff (unpaid moderators included) goes bankrupt and loses their home to foreclosure.
literally any restaurant website. I disabled Facebook from my entire network (pihole).
I can no longer order food on a website because Facebook is deadzoned.
Also, about half of big box brick and mortar online stores stopped working as well.
In terms of social, political, and geopolitical harm, no platform beats Facebook. At least in X there are community notes. In Facebook, none of that.
Eons ago I made a shocksite-"game" where you basically could trick people into visiting, and you got a point for each unique visit. The site was basically a collage of the usual, such as goatse, tubgirl, et.al. I guess that was the worst, and putting no effort into the design didn't help either. Once the /b/-tards on 4chan found out about it, traffic really skyrocketed.
Anyways, years went by, and I didn't have time or interest in maintaining it anymore, so I let the domain name Expire. I chuckled a bit a while back when I realized that the domain had been bought by a jewelry brand, and they used it as a webshop. If only they knew the history.. they obviously haven't checked out the internet archive for that domain.
Spotify. Only website/service that makes their service intentionally worst and people still pay for it
Publisher's Clearing House.
So this company has ads on local free tv stations in the US about how you could win $5000 a week for life, but when you go to the website it's like 97% ads and maybe 2% contests, and some contests are straight up unenterable if you have an adblocker. Then before you can officially enter, you have to go through 3 pages of 'as seen on tv' crap that it tries to sell you before you can finish entering. Also it lags like a motherfucker with or without an adblocker, cause there's so many ads taking up that much bandwith, cause heaven forbid a webpage ad be a static image. And of course you have to have an account, so your spam folder and paper mailbox fill up with the worst things possible.
Lately, google.com has been absolute trash.
I think the time I was like 7 and was looking at hamster photos on Google to print and cut out. Scrolling along I couldn't find any that looked exactly like my hamster named Cinnamon after a black streak along his back.
Getting to the 3rd or 4th "load more" buttons on Google and it started showing me stuff that wasn't hamsters I got desperate. I saw there were a few images that had text along the top and bottom, "for more cute hamster photos go to xhamster.com".So naturally, I went there.
Turns out xhamster.com was not a site where hamsters share selfies and is, instead, pornography.
Adobe.
Once, you sign in, good luck finding anything you need.
fcc.gov. Those goddamn "Sign into the Federal Fucked Up Document System with your FFUDS PIN now" things that just don't actually work. The layers of garbage between you and renewing an amateur radio certificate is truly Idiocratic.
Terms and conditions apply. This site was intentionally made to be as infuriating as possible.
Stileproject and rotten.com were absolute horror shows. Stileproject just seems to be porn now, but I saw a photo once in like 2005 or so of a guy standing on his head with his legs apart with a full size fire extinguisher jammed deeply into his ass.
Almost any "pop" news / science / gossip / chat / lifestyle article site with ad and pop-up blockers off. Just. Jesus Christ. What the fuck. The fact that some people browse the internet like this... AND the fact some people actually made it in the first place..
It's hard to pick out one as THE worst, but generally, if I have to use the site for some external reason, the experience is awful.
Health insurance, doctor's offices, etc are generally pretty bad. Oddly, tax sites aren't as rough.
Also oddly, vacation related websites are awful.
Time Cube (now archived). I feel bit bad saying it, but omg the layout. It was bad even by 90s standards.
Edit: the creator died in 2015.
Edit2: CW, anti-queer rhetoric, but I find it very hard to take it seriously in the midst of waves hands vaguely at the rest of the website
Yeah, probably mobile Facebook, Pinterest, or Reddit mobile.
In terms of terrible design choices, the TempleOS home page ranks pretty high.
For horrible design, spam.com does really well
Rule 34?
Yelp
Some government created sites I had to use for byrocratic reasons.
DHL.
Website designed by hateful people who seem to make it as hard as possible to pay duty fees on parcels.
myspace
Oh I forgot Tumblr. I had to create an account to see a thing once, I saw all the users there and I left, never looked back, cringe ass place. Is like being in one of those weird cons with furries...
I once had to use the NY State government website for info. Finally found the page. Open page up and see a blue background with dark blue font. Un fucking readable.
Anything owned by billionaires.