10.Twitter
Twitter is evil, saturated with too many hot takes, and full of Nazis. Reporting legitimate cases of abuse to the site gets ignored. Call-out culture is exemplified through this social media outlet (looking at you, Mr. President). Twitter is bad. Get off Twitter.—Emily Zoda, Digital Producer
Stop giving Nazis a platform under the guise of showing „both sides“—Sean Carroll, Managing Editor, Software
9.Facebook
No, Facebook probably won’t die in 2019. But will it be regulated? Trust in the company is at all-time low, and Mark Zuckerberg’s attempts to fix his social network have so far failed to satisfy critics on both the left and right. So as the the 2020 presidential race gears up, we wonder if social media regulation might become a key campaign issue. It was a crises-filled year for a company that continues to deal with fake news, hate speech, and data privacy scandals. And yeah, the company inadvertently helped fuel genocide in Myanmar.—Michael Kan, West Coast Reporter
8.Facebook Portal
While we’re at it, the Facebook Portal is just another scheme to get this creepy social media site deeper into your personal life. After a breach of trust via data misuse and fake news, the bright idea Facebook execs came up with was a video chat hub to scrape even more data through conversations with loved ones. We need to exorcise the trust we have in this company…like yesterday.—Emily Zoda, Digital Producer
7.Games-as-a-Service
It’s time for games as-a-service and everything that comes with it to go. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has no single player, Diablo Immortal is a mobile MMO, Fallout 76 and everything wrong with it… the huge successes of games like Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption 2 before its multiplayer even launched show that single-player games aren’t dead. People actually want to just buy games and play them without needing servers, loot box systems, or lots of other players present to enjoy the experience.—Will Greenwald, Senior Analyst, Consumer Electronics
6.Lightning Ports
Apple launched its new iPad Pro with USB-C, which is the one port we’ve ALL been waiting for. After spending $1,000 on a new iPhone and then investing in an iPad Pro, they don’t even use the same cable to charge or connect to other devices? Countdown to a USB-C iPhone starting… now.—Emily Zoda, Digital Producer
5.Rising Smartphone Prices
Flagship smartphone prices have been steadily increasing for years. It used to be $600 to get the best new phone. Now it’s $1,000 for an iPhone XS, and hundreds more if you want a bigger screen with maxed-out specs. When you drive up the average smartphone price by more than half within only a few years, it’s easy to make a more „affordable“ option like the iPhone XR look appealing. It’s still pretty damn expensive. —Rob Marvin, Associate Features Editor and Will Greenwald Senior Analyst, Consumer Electronics
4.Reply All
Let’s leave „reply all“ in 2018, please. With the amount of email we have to receive every day and the messaging apps we all use to avoid email completely, I don’t need a reply from someone contributing to a conversation I’m not intimately a part of. No one needs the confirmation „Got it!“ because yeah, so did everyone else. If you can’t tell the difference between replying to one person or to all people, just Slack me.—Emily Zoda, Digital Producer
3.Vertical Video
I could explain all the reasons why vertical video is bad, but I wouldn’t do half as good a job as PCMag Lead Analyst Sascha Segan in the video above.
2.CAPTCHA
I shouldn’t have to prove I’m not a robot! I click all the boxes with the pictures of cars or buses, and then the damn CAPTCHA throws up MORE pictures of MORE CARS AND BUSES. It’s maddening beyond comprehension, and a good way to make sure I never visit that site again for any reason, hopefully. Even that one checkbox that lets you prove you’re not a bot is really too much.—Eric Griffith, Features Editor
1.Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in the VPN Industry
There’s always been a healthy competition among security vendors to provide the best product, and while it can get tense most of the time they always recognize that everyone is on the same side, trying to protect normal people from the bad guys. The same isn’t true in the virtual private network (VPN) industry. It’s not uncommon for VPN companies to fling unfounded rumors back and forth.
A host of semi-anonymous blogs (which may or may not be operated by VPN vendors) purporting to have scandalous, inside knowledge of the sins within this or that VPN company doesn’t help. VPN technology has been around for years, but it’s only been within the last few years that interest in VPNs has exploded and the market responded with a host of new companies. It’s time that the industry grows up and plays fair, and recognizes that the churn of disinformation in the sector only hurts themselves.—Max Eddy, Software Analyst
