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An early morning chill hangs in the room as you drift back into consciousness. Thankfully the alarm that cut through the silence has been taken care of, but a well-fit screen is now cradled in your palm. It would be foolish to feed the desire for more rest, so with a simple gesture it is unlocked and ready for instruction.
The applications that once excited and captivated, you now regard with a sense of dread. Traveling through the various levels of user interfaces must be treated as a deep forest excursion with thumbs for machetes, slicing away notifications as they cover the trail. A web browser is finally located. There used to be forums around here, vibrant community watering holes of information. They dried up like towns along the railroad as highway systems were built, altering our travel routines.
A few favorable places still exist but they are difficult to find. They are more rural and bespoke than the decaying metropolitan areas that were once social media. One of the few common areas is Y Combinator's Hacker News. It is far from perfect, but at least there are a variety of academic topics floating around accompanied by discussion from humans that value nutritious information. Most important, it has retained a simple interface with no hidden surprises.
Maps plotting destinations similar to this are difficult to track down, but they exist. Navigational tools like The Brutalist Report are providing true community service, delivering on their promise of "The day's headlines delivered to you without bullshit." Cognitive capabilities are a precious resource, and it is apparent when something is designed with the intent of protecting ours.
We identify undesirable software by many names; malware, adware, bloatware. While they could be argued as attributes of many digital offerings, none of these are fit to describe much of the software around us today: dreadware. It scrambles senses with visual distractions (ads, notifications), is unpredictable (complete UX redesigns), and heavy on system resources (telemetry outside a reasonable scope). With each of us circumnavigating a worldwide web of bullshit, it may be worth taking note of what isn't and sharing that list with others.
Do you have a resource to share with the (not)Dreadware whitelist? dreadware {at} protonmail {dot} com