Adios, Yahoo

[zimon66]

Yesterday, after YEARS of doing next to nothing with it, I deleted my Yahoo account.

Way back in early 2001, I discovered Yahoo Clubs and what fun they were.

Some months later, Yahoo changed then into Groups with email communication set-up. The reason? Easy ad placement aka money makers, all over the place. Then they got the bright idea that anything in a Group flagged "adult" and or Group designated as "adults only", said Group would immediately be put behind a wall so it wouldn't turn up in any search, "to protect minors from accidentally stumbling across it".

There was no reversing this at all period. Didn't matter if some pervert (complete with dick pic in their profile) or a porn bot had snuck in and posted something questionable, if it got reported before Mod removed it, BEHIND THE WALL WITH YE!!! Didn't matter if an "adults only" Group wasn't about anything sexual and completely legal (for example: smoking/cigars), BEHIND THE WALL WITH YE!!!

Of course, Yahoo didn't do much about perverts, white power freaks, bots, and other highly questionables that were running around all over the place.

By the way, supposedly some pedophiles had, for awhile, a successful Group going.

To be fair, highly questionables were present during Clubs. But, by my observation, switch to email communication and the whole wall jazz caused them to multiply.

Groups went downhill. Fall 2002, I came here to LJ.

Held on to Yahoo as an alternate email, which again I hardly used. Other, better alternate email places came along. Then the recent hack, seeing the months of spam in my box, few signs of life on the site - screw it, DELETE.

Comments

[little-talks.livejournal.com]

I've had several Yahoo email accounts over the years (most of which are forgotten are floating around in the aether somewhere), and only have one now that I use to sign into Flickr, I think it is? I never got into the whole groups things, which is probably just as well by the sounds of it :/

[zimon66]

It wasn't all bad. Get a decent bunch of people and the interaction is good. Plus, back in those early Internet pre-LJ/FB/etc., days, there wasn't a lot of options to meet-up with others online with similar interests. So you kinda had to take the bad with the good.

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

I have fond memories of Yahoo Groups. I still belong to a couple although they're very very quiet these days. With LJ now almost dead the irony is that Yahoo Groups is actually still the best option for running a subject-specific online discussion group but hardly anyone uses it.

Those were the glory years of the internet, back when it was still exciting.

[siduri1959]

I have messed up my Apple ID trying to change it from Yahoo. Meh. It is too bad Yahoo did not do anything to keep its products relevant and usable.

[zimon66]

They really lived up to Gulliver's definition of "Yahoo".

[wicked-jester.livejournal.com]

(I lost my comment, so if it posts twice, apologies.)

I still have a Yahoo account which is more of a backup email than anything really.

The security issues are its ultimate downfall. I recently read in the news that a lot of personal information got stolen in 2014. And we're only just now hearing of it, naturally.

[zimon66]

10 bucks says they weren't forthcoming with this info to Verizon aka "Oh, here hell come".

[meathiel]

I never had Yahoo ... are there still groups on there?

[zimon66]

Yes, but I dunno if there's still any real activity in the majority of them. What little I saw appeared to be auto and bot posting.

[1-rhiannon-1.livejournal.com]

I still have a yahoo email but I'll be damned if I know why. I should get rid of mine.

[zimon66]

It's hard, cause there's "I might need it" that pipes up whenever you think about chucking the account. Took me over a decade, so I understand why you're still holding on.

[of-salfarro.livejournal.com]

Yeah I was just recently all nostalgia-ey looking for and at old groups.. sad some are gone and old convos lost forever
. I would delete but I got an old Flickr account

[zimon66]

Hard to believe it used to be a huge social hub.

Yahoo's piss-poor decisions and blog sites that came along soon after, no surprise Group model is pretty much gone the way of the dodo. If Yahoo had introduced their own personal blogging service back then, instead of waiting years later and buying money bleeding white elephant tumblr....

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

If Yahoo had introduced their own personal blogging service back then

Actually they did. It was called Yahoo 360. You probably don't remember it because it had a total user base of about forty people worldwide and it disappeared very quickly.

Does tumblr still exist?

[zimon66]

Talk about going in the blink of an eye - nope, never heard of it until now.

Yeah, tumblr is still around. Dunno for how much longer though. The free and unlimited posting of pics&gifs is the main reason why the majority of people are there. That set-up is very costly to support as Yahoo found out the hard with that money bleeding white elephant. No way is Verizon going to foot the bill for a bunch of freeloaders.

[anwyn-elfmaiden.livejournal.com]

Yahoo sucks a lot, I am still in deco groups but the new Yahoo is so wonky...

[zimon66]

The layout is terrible. And Bali demon mask as a header for every Group - what the hell???!!! It makes no sense.

[dancingdragon3.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're happy with your decision. I would get rid of my yahoo also, but for some reason the writing workshops from Romance Writers use it.

[zimon66]

I heard it's still popular with some writing circles. Guess it's much easier to maintain anonymity/pen names there than on FaceBook.