What world is the author living in? Probably just the world of a web developer. Most people use the modern web all the time, it sucks, but sucks != unusable. Very clickbait headline.
I realized, while making a Christmas list this year that I don't know how to shop for things on the internet anymore.
I am not a web developer, but I have grown up as the internet did and I've seen more of it than most people.
Amazon: Its tolerable if you know exactly what reputable-brand item you want, but if you don't you immediately find yourself in an unusable cesspool. Fake reviews. Chinese knockoffs. Low quality promoted items. I searched for "clamps" in the "tools and home improvement" category and there in my Amazon search results were trashy supermarket novels.
Amazon alternatives (e.g. Jet?): The selection is so poor that they are not usable for general shopping unless you are willing to settle for whatever one item is available.
Google/Bing/etc: Haha no. Sure you can find 1 bazillion retailers for any item you can think of, but they feel solidly sorted by "amount of money they pay google." Google shopping is more-or-less useless, and regular google search results don't allow you to compare products. Also, since it is not hard to find decent web developers, it is next-to-impossible to judge the reputation/quality of the bazillion retailers by their website polish.
Ebay/craigslist: Oh god no. Paypal hates me for some reason (it never accepts my perfectly ordinary credit cards) so payment can be literally unusable. All these sites feel like you're just selecting from a long list of scams. The amount of BS you have to manually filter out is completely ridiculous, and you are clearly competing with people who scrape these sites for items to flip for a profit.
Facebook: Unusable by anyone who actually cares about their privacy.
Chinese importers (ali/dx): shipping times of multiple weeks is unusable for many things. At least you know that you will be getting cheap Chinese products, so you can plan accordingly.
I have a similar impression of the current Amazon experience, but what works for me is shopping at small-ish stores using Amazon Pay. Hassle-free, no registration needed and I get proper service if required.
