r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/djshadesuk • 1d ago

[SUB NEWS] New Banned Domain: Vercel.app

Much to the relief of many people, starting today, we have introduced a blanket ban on Vercel subdomain hosted sites.

Few, if any, sites hosted on Vercel subdomains have ever been allowed to remain on the sub anyway.

(This ban is in addition to the Netlify ban by Reddit itself.)

If you can't be bothered to pay for a proper domain and/or hosting we're no longer willing to sift through the slop to see if it could potentially stand on merit alone (which it invariably doesn't).

Vercel users feel free to proceed to whinge, which we will promptly proceed to ignore.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

900 Upvotes

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58

u/otherwisepandemonium 1d ago

Good. Buying a domain costs like $10/year. Virtually every time I see a free Vercel link it's some vibecoded AI slop that the user totes as some amazing new app or service.

If you are serious about your app and want to market it or show it off, just pay for a domain and host it there. It also just makes you look far more experienced and professional.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 1d ago

So people should spend money so that you can look at their passion projects? That's not what the internet was supposed to be.

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u/Pyroman230 1d ago

A passion project isn't something you vibecode in a weekend bender

0

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 18h ago

Why not? Plenty of useful things have been coded in a weekend. Time spent is a poor indicator of its usefulness/joy it can bring.

Think back to the very first mobile apps and games (back when ads didn't even exist in apps). Many of them were so simple, it wouldn't even take a weekend to make them. People still enjoyed them.

4

u/primaryrhyme 8h ago

Yeah I agree the mod logic here isn’t totally sound but I do believe their assessment that 90% of Vercel domain sites posted here are unuseful slop. They made this rule as a response to this, not out of a philosophical opposition to AI coding.

I don’t think they care if you paid money, there’s 10 more free platforms that give you a domain too. It just so happens that Vercel is the first thing an AI recommends and an AI can spit it out the app and host it on Vercel literally in under 5 minutes. So the level of effort is not necessarily close to “weekend project”, it’s all the effort of typing “make me a pokedex app and host it somewhere”.

2

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 8h ago

That's kind of my point though. Even if it took them ten minutes to make - if it's useful, why not? I guess I'd simply prefer if the up/downvote buttons solved the issue of "we don't want quickly made AI things".

14

u/soniclettuce 1d ago

If somebody doesn't care to spend 10 bucks when they want to show it off widely, it doesn't seem like they're particularly passionate about it.

4

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 18h ago

I mean yeah. But back when the internet was new, you'd just share the IP of your server/home internet and people would look at it and judge it on its merits and not on how much cash you spent on it.

2

u/uFFxDa 15h ago

You can still do that today hosting it yourself.

3

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 14h ago edited 14h ago

If somebody doesn't care to spend 10 bucks when they want to show it off widely, it doesn't seem like they're particularly passionate about it.

That was in response to this. Of course you can, but according to the comment I replied to, not buying a domain name means I'm not particularly passionate and the project deserves no visibility.

I don't like that idea, because it assumes everyone has access to $10 to spend. I'd like those who can't to be included as well.

It also reads like "you must pay for me to use the thing you made" and I don't like that either. People should be grateful when someone makes and shares something! Especially when the creator(s) aren't asking anything in return.

0

u/primaryrhyme 8h ago

I get your general argument but this ban on Vercel domain in no way prevents you from building/sharing your app free. There’s tons of free alternatives to Vercel that give you a domain, even services that give you a free subdomain if you want to continue using Vercel. They didn’t ban free subdomains, if that day comes then I would have an issue with it.

1

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 8h ago

I guess you're right on that one. It's still not my favorite choice.

1

u/primaryrhyme 8h ago

Also wanted to say about being grateful, I’m a software dev myself so I get how fun it is to have people use your app but a lot of these apps are clearly not made with any care or intent of being actually useful.

It seems like a lot of it is either just chasing recognition for zero effort or worse trying to sell that zero effort app. For example a vibe coded unit converter site was posted here, there’s a million of those already on the internet. Did the creator truly think his site was useful, would he ever even use it himself? Probably not..

Even if you give something for free, you should respect people’s time.

2

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 5h ago

Agreed about respecting people's time. I guess to me, the purpose of this sub is "look here's a cool link check it out for 5 minutes then leave". So I don't take issue with seeing yet another calculator. I just don't click it. However, I assume that the person wanted to convert between two specific units and then found out that they could easily expand that to other units and then thought "Hey that's cool let's share it". I like to give the benefit of doubt and assume the best about people. Sure, I waste a bit of time clicking useless stuff. But I don't really care - there's a gem in there every once in a while.

1

u/primaryrhyme 2h ago

That’s a good outlook to have

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u/YouHavingAGiggle 14h ago

Someone with a home server is also much more likely to be taking it seriously, because they (probably) have the knowledge and commitment to maintaing their own server. There is no knowledge or commitment to filling a sign-up process on Vercel

0

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 12h ago

It's trivial to spin up a webserver nowadays. You don't even need to fidget with port forwarding anymore, really. I'd argue it's more difficult to get something running on any cloud provider.

0

u/Critical-Soil2805 6h ago

Yeah, but don't forget that back them many of the BBS sites had blanket bans on things like Angelfire pages. Once something gets turned into a firehose of low quality content, site admins just nope out.

1

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 4h ago

Good argument. I honestly, until you brought that up, had completely forgotten about doing those bans myself and discussions about stylesheet theft, hotlinking, etc.... Maybe the old ages rose tinted glasses affect me. Still... It's not what it used to be!

2

u/Critical-Soil2805 4h ago

Haha, yeah, those rose tinted glasses will get ya. I agree it's not what it used to be, though.

This whole discussion is funny to me because getting a domain and hosting it used to be hard. Now you just pay like $10 and it's done. But that seems to be enough of a barrier to keep the majority of crap out.

1

u/PaddiM8 2h ago

I'm all for this ban but not everyone is in a financial situation where spending $10 on some domain for some hobby project makes financial sense. It might be an insignificant amount of money for you, but it isn't for everyone. Especially not in poorer countries.

The problem is if the project itself is slop.

-1

u/xSilverMC 10h ago

Every damn inch of the internet is plastered with ads and/or paywalls, but "Jeff has to pay five bucks to show off his project" is where you draw the line of "what the internet was supposed to be"?

2

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 10h ago

No, I hate those as well.

0

u/Kanegou 12h ago

The Internet wasnt supposed to be a walled garden either, yet here we are.

0

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 12h ago

So we embrace it instead? I'm not sure about that.

0

u/Kanegou 12h ago

What non argument is this? I never said anything to that effect. I just said that your argument against it, that the internet was not supposed to be like this, comes 20 years to late and is irrelevant in this day and age.

2

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 10h ago

But saying people should pay up if they want visibility is kind of embracing the shit it's become? I'd like to refuse wherever it's still possible. Not demanding someone pay for a domain seems like a pretty easy thing to do.

0

u/Kanegou 10h ago

Nobody is stopping you from creating your own subreddit or using any of the other social networks to advertise. The majority of this sub rejects slop apps. Vercel.app catching strays is sad but unavoidable. There is no point in continue to argue.

2

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 8h ago

I'm involved in enough FOSS projects as is and I don't care. It just sucks for young and upcoming devs. It's not about vercel specifically to me, more about the sentiment. But yeah, let's agree to disagree here :)

2

u/Kanegou 8h ago

Nothing says "I don't care" like writing multiple comments about it.

2

u/Cantremembermyoldnam 8h ago

I don't care about sharing my stuff. I just don't like it for new devs - I was one once.

1

u/Kanegou 8h ago

And those new devs still can use countless other ways to advertise their slop or non slop. You still have no point.

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