Friday, March 6th, 2026
This morning, I discovered YouTube had force-logged me out from all browsers across all my computers.1 To re-authenticate, I first had to sign into my password manager using the biometric finger-scanning device on my computer, but the grace period had expired, so I also had to enter my password manager’s password before it would then fill in the site password, but 2FA is enabled, and my passkeys were no longer working, so next I needed YouTube to send an access request to the app on my phone where I could approve it manually. Repeat for every browser on every computer.
After all that, I thought I’d take a minute to try out the Qobuz music streaming service. It’s unconnected to Spotify, Apple, or Jack Dorsey, and is said to pay artists the highest rate per stream. That meant setting up an account, but it’s a paid service, so you kind of need one. While creating an account, I ran into an error. Apparently, the random password generator in my password manager was including non-alphanumeric characters, but the site’s rules for passwords require they consist of eight or more alphanumeric characters, containing at least one capital letter and one number, e.g., A1111111.
I snapped.
I’m so done with the World Wide Web. I can hardly stand to look at the place for what it’s become. I’m not creating any new accounts or even logging into anything unless I absolutely need it. I’m doing a lot of unsubscribing and canceling, too. I do not care anymore.2
Footnotes
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I look forward to reading the impending press release about some data breach or another. ↩
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Will I continue to maintain this blog, potentially adding password protection in the near future without a trace of irony? Probably. And I’ll keep my photo site up, definitely. I may keep my Mastodon instance running, but only to use for a software project I’m working on for my portfolio. ↩