H B.

And out of 5 or 6 (or 7), this was one of the more useable ones. And it often isn't

So my conclusion is...

VPN's really are not mature technology. They are prone to disconnections, freezing, and aren't ready for "standard surfing" yet

Also when you disconnect the vyprvpn connection, your system tray icon turns from a very blue small shield icon, into a blank space. Something other than a blank space would be useful...

I won't rant...

But lets get past the "I can write something that appears anywhere in the world" stuff.

Disqus does massive shadow censorship (log out, check your comment is publically visible) and also has big sync issues. Your comment might not show up for an hour or two.

Whenever you post content. Anywhere. Log out, and check your content is still publically visible.

The layout is decent.

Where it falls down - classification of some programs is questionable. They class "reality tv" as a documentary. No. They need an extra colour titled "sh... I mean, reality TV".

Anyway.

The review section? The review section is "the internet of things". ("moderation" is questionable [like a few places], automated, sometimes doesn't work, and no reply to emails)

You get the message:

Your comment will be automatically approved and appear on this page (assuming it hasn't been flagged for manual approval)... does anyone actually know what that means? "assuming it hasn't been flagged for manual approval" - well, Has it? If it doesn't appear, we'll "assume" it HAS been flagged for "manual approval", and WASN'T approved.

"automatically approved". No, they don't mean "automatically approved" - that sentence means nothing. What they Mean, is "your comment will pass through our automatic swear filters". But they didn't say that.

Once again... this is "the internet of things". Making vague statements that don't really make sense. But it's only a webpage, right? So it doesn't really matter

This is actually the deal - on some programs, they aren't accepting 'comments' any more. Some are. But they don't tell you this. Anywhere. The way you find out if they are not accepting comments, is by commenting, and it not appearing. That's "the internet of things" - automated, and not reliable.

tvguide.co.uk seems to be MUCH shoddier than you would expect an official-*looking* tv guide to be. Tvguide - just a thought, when you randomly don't publish review, people tend to get annoyed and leave negatively bisased reviews for other programs. Oh... you don't care, do you. Is there anyone even working in the tv guide offices?

I don't think picbear have been in the office for the past 6 months. For every 100 clicks, you'll get one successful page load. If you're lucky.

Instagram us absolute cr**, lets make that clear.

Youtube shadowcensors (similar to shadowban). In youtubes case, it applies to comments on videos. Whatever website you're on, log out and check your comment/content is still visible.

Facebook, twitter, huffington post, maybe others do it. Your comment is still visible when you are logged in to the account that made it, but isn't publically visible. In the UK "the election" is bringing out all sorts of dodgy website censorship practices.

Maybe more to come in this review later.

Sitejabber, on my profile, my "view count" goes up, even when the review isn't publically visible

Also I've commented on other reviews. My comments are visible from my own account, but don't show when I log out?

Reddit calls it shadow-censoring... twitter, facebook and possibly others do it.

Your update button doesn't work. "updating" causes reviews to disappear (still visible from your own login, and the view count still mysteriously going up slowly, of course)

You still initially get a chirpy email response saying "thanks for reaching out". Then nothing

Highly suspicious...

(I mean, at least you don't have "trust" in the name, like some review sites)

Also your review edit field is tiny... encouraging minimal text in reviews?

Always check your submissions are visible when you log out of your account, whatever website you're on.

alexa.com isn't the microphone in your house that tells the government what you say.

It's a website analytics utility website.

I've opened the website for about 5 years. It's now, from my point of view, on version 3. Version 3 has less information than the version 2 it was on 2 months ago

They MONEY seem MONEY to MONEY revamp MONEY their MONEY website MONEY every MONEY so MONEY often

I'm a casual user, just interested in a website general rankings. 2 months ago, alexa (version 2) provided me with a 12 month history. No problems.

Now (version 3), they don't. They've confirmed that the previous 12 month history they offered for free viewing, is now for paid accounts. Free viewing is now 90 day history.

Version 2 also gave you a nice little latency ping number, so if you thought a site was slow, alexa would confirm that, yes, it did take 3 seconds to load and was slower than 80% of other sites. Version 3 doesn't.

It would be vaguely interesting to view alexa.com's 90 day ranking history on their website, to see how many people use it. It would be even more useful to view alexa.com's 12 months ranking history, but you can't do that anymore. (not only that but the version 2 12 month history, gave you a useful Y-axis scale on the traffic stat history. Version 3's 90 day history gives you the data's minimum/maximum end points)

Version 2 if I recall gave website ranking up to 1 million, version 3 only goes to 100,000

So, um, pay, don't pay, do whatever with this site. Knock yourself out.

Here's a review I wrote a couple of years ago (I didn't publish), after they revamped it from version 1, to version 2.

(Version 1 gave the information about which sites linked into the website you were enquiring about. Version 2 removed that feature. Do you expect me to view? No Mr Bond! I expect you to pay) or, to use focus group language, "people appear to be getting value out of our site, without providing us with anything". Apart from word of mouth free publicity. Which I won't do anymore.

Alexa's email support also has an interesting format. You ask a question, the subject of their reply says "your ticket has been resolved". Unless it hasn't... in which case... you reply to your resolved ticket. I can't imagine why older people (and sometimes other people) sometimes find the Internet confusing

Version 2

It's funny how austerity never seems to apply to imaginary software companies. Or "the internet of things".

Alexa firmly falls into the category of sites that 99.9% of the world have never heard of, but the company only sees the traffic stats from that 0.1%, and suddenly thinks there's massive revenue to be made.

The result, is that they turn a good, sensible, useable site, into a mess that has "premium membership only" written all over it. When lots of people need a screwdriver, they use a knife. Alexa's tools are website information equivalent of a multimeter, and my budget for a multimeter is less than the subscription price many websites ask for.

When I own a multimeter, I own a multimeter. Alexas site content changes from week to week as the programmers think of different ways they want to try and extract money. Who knows what the website is going to look like in the next weeks/months, as they try to scrabble as much perceived money from pockets as possible.

At a rough glance recently alexa seems to have gone for the microsoft pencil case and rucksack, because it's changed to the cgi 2-colour green blue interface.

One of the signs that alexa is not a 'normal' billing site, is that when you cancel your subscription, you loose access immediately. Most billing systems give you access until the re billing date. When you try your subscription service, you learn that it is much less cobbled together than you were hoping for.

It isn't a comprehensive utility which is worth a subscription. It's a roughly collected bunch of numbers that they are trying their luck at asking money for.

This review absolutely isn't stating that alexa is useless. It isn't. If the alexa site had no purpose, this review wouldn't exist. The only reason for writing this review is because the site has useful info on it, but the programmers seem to want to clutter the site up un necessarily and jump on a subscription model.

Alexa.com really is..."the internet of things" (wouldn't survive if it was a high-street business).

(might update this soon. The site has almost been behaving itself for 48 hours. 96 hours later, it is still mostly behaving itself. Pikdo, STOP REFRESHING THE PAGE EVERY 60 SECONDS)

Update 13/06/2019 11pm ok. It seems that when instagram is down, pikdo gives unpredictable errors.

There's quite a lot I could write about the site, but. I don't want to. For now. Pikdo should really get their act together

I recommend... you download a program like sharpkeys, and remap your F5 key to something you can access easily.

Update - It seems Huff Post have removed the single redeeming feature of their website. I'm waiting for them to reply to my email, but the comments facility seems to have been removed.

Huff post is quite left wing and liberal. They like immigrants and DIVERSITY, they dislike Brexit (they're pro europe). Huff P seems to hate white males, and will champion anything to do with anything else (feminazi's, LGBT, list goes on). Their diversity seems to be that anything *other* than white males is good, and is a victim.

They seem to censor any views which are contrary to their own agenda. (unlike the BBC who censor any views which are against the house rules. But then again, the BBC doesn't let you comment on everything. Then again, half the stories on Huff have '0 comments', which might make you wonder how many other comments they have censored)

Huff Post employs something which reddit calls 'shadow bans/censors'. That is, if you use a censored word (like 'muslim', or 'liberal' - seriously) your post will still appear to your own login but won't appear to anyone else. So unless you log out and view the page, you won't know you've been censored. Then you figure out which word has been censored, and either edit or delete/edit/repost it. Spread the word.

Huff Posts left-wing stance does get so mildly irritating sometimes, that even the Daily Mail's website can be a refreshing break.

Huffpost actively censors. Including the word 'censor'. And they have a list of usernames they censor, so if you post something they don't like, they'll be monitoring for your comments (it does actually say this in the T's & C's of the website).

Interesting stats https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/huffingtonpost.co.uk (alexa.com is less useful than it used to be)

This review mainly applies to the UK site (huffpost.co.uk) but some/a lot of it might also apply to the US.

Huff post is quite left wing and liberal. They like immigrants and DIVERSITY, they dislike Brexit (they're pro europe). Huff P seems to hate white males, and will champion anything to do with anything else (feminazi's, LGBT, list goes on). Their diversity seems to be that anything *other* than white males is good, and is a victim.

They seem to censor any views which are contrary to their own agenda. (unlike the BBC who censor any views which are against the house rules. But then again, the BBC doesn't let you comment on everything. Then again, half the stories on Huff have '0 comments', which might make you wonder how many other comments they have censored)

Huff Post employs something which reddit calls 'shadow bans/censors'. That is, if you use a censored word (like 'muslim', or 'liberal' - seriously) your post will still appear to your own login but won't appear to anyone else. So unless you log out and view the page, you won't know you've been censored. Then you figure out which word has been censored, and either edit or delete/edit/repost it. Spread the word.

Huff Posts left-wing stance does get so mildly irritating sometimes, that even the Daily Mail's website can be a refreshing break.

Huffpost actively censors. Including the word 'censor'. And they have a list of usernames they censor, so if you post something they don't like, they'll be monitoring for your comments (it does actually say this in the T's & C's of the website).

Interesting stats https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/huffingtonpost.co.uk (alexa is less useful than it used to be)