{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "RadioShack Sucks", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/187610619733/", "html": "RadioShack Sucks\n

collapsedsquid:

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Did you just work a particularly shitty shift at Walmart? Visit \nwalmart-blows.com to vent about your boss. Had an especially crappy \nexperience flying United? Go to Untied.com to blow off some steam.

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This was the promise of the \u201cgripe site,\u201d a fixture of an earlier era of the web. Often using the format CompanyName-sucks.com,\n gripe sites allowed people to anonymously complain about companies. \nNowadays, gripe sites are digital refuse. Their old URLs lead to 404s or\n ancient HTML pages. Indeed, the very idea of having a website dedicated\n to griping about a single company feels antiquated in an age where we \nhave websites like Yelp, Glassdoor, Twitter, and Facebook to meet our \ngriping needs.

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But the rise and fall of gripe sites are an important chapter in the \nhistory of the internet. Gripe sites were far more than a place to \ncomplain. Rather, they offered a lively, anonymous outlet for consumers \nand workers to criticize corporate power, and even to organize against \nit.

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As a result, they faced an onslaught of attacks from companies. Gripe\n sites were the flashpoint for intense legal and regulatory \nbattles\u2014battles that boiled down to a confrontation between two \nconflicting visions of the internet\u2019s purpose. Who owns the internet, and what is it for? This was the core question in the war over gripe sites, and one that remains no less urgent today.

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