I audited the privacy of popular free dev tools, the results are terrifying

3 hours ago (toolbox-kit.com)

Comment is a bit of an aside, but it's a shame what happened to JSONFormatter.org. The UI was preferable to alternatives for me, it ranked highly in Google so I could just search "JSON formatter" and access it, etc.

Now the site freezes 50% of the time when loading it on my Mac and when it doesn't freeze, there's a 5 second period of waiting before I can paste any input. Not to mention ads taking up 40% of the screen. The classic tech cycle of life.

Can we stop it with "and the results are terrifying", "and you won't believe what I found", "the <x> situation is insane", etc.? The over-hyping of low quality, low effort content is making it hard to find actually interesting or informative things.

  • Yea I was thinking the same thing.

    When you reach for the most exaggerated, over-the-top word possible when describing something relatively mundane, what will you use when you talk about something that actually is "terrifying?"

    • “The most terrifying thing you’ve ever heard”. You can even stick with that one as long as your subjects are monotonically scary.

  • Find a better and more accessible solution than clickbait.

    Please, do it.

    • "Privacy concerns found in audit of popular dev tools" (or something along those lines) would work without feeling sensationalized.

      1 reply →

    • "better", "more accessible"? What the hell are you talking about? Clickbait doesn't make anything better or more accessible.

      Instead, it makes it impossible to pre-select for interesting information. Instead of telling you what something is about, it tells you how you should feel about it. That's not improving accessibility.

      2 replies →

Glad that I am using Firefox with:

- uBlock Origin

- cookieAutodelete

- privacy badger

Any additions to my arsenal welcome!

That's why real programmers are those who can work offline without the Internet. (just the repositories)

:)

local first.