I’m now on the curious onlooker stage.
This is going to DESTROY the site… The explosions might be interesting 
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It’s very possible… but even if BB survives, it will never be what it was, because too many of the amazing voices in the community didn’t cross over. Between that and the pay-to-play mechanic, commenters at BBSuS will likely skew to more affluent and less margnalized folks… dare we say, an “echo chamber”?
That holds no interest for me. I don’t want to be at a party where so many of my friends don’t feel safe or comfortable. And I expect at some point those “free lifetime” subscriptions will expire (not necessarily at BB’s choice-- Substack is now the ultimate decision-maker there, not TPTB at BB, unless they got an exceptionally good contract when they came aboard.)
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Really I feel like most of us have a pretty good chance of outliving Substack anyway. How many pages like that have lasted for decades?
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Although MF has claimed, and Ken pretty much confirmed, that they have been pleasantly surprised by the number of real subscriptions bought in the first few days. I don’t think the adblocker thing will destroy the site, per se, the community, of course (which was probably pure cost and zero revenue) is already destroyed.
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Reasonable excuse for posting wonderful things here, I guess.
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I totally understood the logic of using AI as a way of producing generic illustrations, but the major problem was that AI-generated images were being used in the context of articles whose whole point was, “come look at this particular thing,” where the AI image was not that thing. (But by using it in that context, it was then mistaken for that thing, not just on BB but in search engines as well.) If rights issues meant that using the image that was the whole point of the article wasn’t feasible, then using no image at all was infinitely preferable. (But the image in question often was behind a click-through, lower in the article, which made it seem like the use of the AI image was intended purely to get readers to click through. Except, if you didn’t click through, one couldn’t know that the image wasn’t the thing that was the point of the article, and the context was completely lost when it showed up on search engines.)
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So glad you’re here!
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Isn’t that a normal feeling?
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Is it? I have no idea…
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Both of you are valued and appreciated!
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Are you one of the thirteen Icelandic Yule Lads? And if so, which one? Giljagaur? Pottaskefill? Askasleikir? Skyrgámur?
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Update to my earlier post…
I got the screen shown above on one of my Macbooks.
On the other much older Macbook, I can still read BB without that overlay appearing. As far as I know both browsers are configured in the same way, and I think the versions being run are the same. 
(And the shrug emoji here is not as expressive as the one over there was.)
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Different blocklists on the ad blocker? That drifts for me on multiple machines.
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Out of curiosity: I tried opening it on different browsers (not on my regular lists anymore):
- Firefox (w/ uBlock): overlay triggers
- Vivaldi (w/ UBlock, internal adblocker disabled): overlay NOT triggers
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Well, it’s not an ad blocker as such - Brave Browser in default ‘shields up’ mode. There may be version/config differences but they are both pretty much ‘out of the box’ installations. Hey-ho.
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I started getting it the other day after I updated ublock on Chromium. I had to set up a custom filter to disable the popup and restore overscroll default behavior (they also hide the scrollbar when the popup is up). Then I had to turn off JS for BoingBoing because they use an event handler to force scroll to the top to account for people who restore the scrollbar.
It was.quite aggressive. The no JS will have some side-effects like no embeds, but it’s fine, I’m sure.
I have the SuS subscription but mostly I browse from my RSS reader, so usually I find myself reading articles at the old website.
For all BB’s failings as a media platform it does still have the occasional pointer to an interesting story. But the enshittification has definitely come.
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I’ve basically resolved all this internally to the analogy of a failing pub rebranding itself as a disco.
I suspect The Other Place’s leaders felt it was time for a change, knew the old patrons would be unhappy, but made the call.
I don’t harbor any ill-will - you see this happen in many industries. The good news is that the Regulars have a new place to call home - HERE!
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Eh, I don’t really want to harbor any ill will…but suddenly and without warning moving in with a Nazi bar feels like a slap in the face of people who gave time and energy as volunteers to maintain a safe, welcoming community. Like we have a strong LGBTQ contingent…can you really say that telling them “good news, we don’t care any more” wasn’t cruel?
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