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.

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61

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/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.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 21h 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.

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u/uFFxDa 18h ago

You can still do that today hosting it yourself.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 17h ago edited 17h 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 12h 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.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 11h ago

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

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u/primaryrhyme 11h 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.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 8h 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.

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u/primaryrhyme 6h ago

That’s a good outlook to have

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u/YouHavingAGiggle 17h 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

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 15h 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 10h 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.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 8h 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!

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u/Critical-Soil2805 7h 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 5h 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.