It’s mostly people who refuse to stop using these services who ruin it for those who don’t. I think the solution is to make slick, idiot-proof and easy alternatives with sexy UIs so even the most insta, TikTok, YouTube addicted person wants to switch over. There’s no solution to monetization or ads which doesn’t fuck the experience of the alternative solution. Creating, instilling and appealing to an ideology will also help conversions.
That said, if you like someone’s content, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with you hoping for that person to be paid for it. Forcing ads is such a disgusting move, but any reasonable person wouldn’t mind paying to not to watch ads—there’s a cost to infrastructure maintenance that needs to be met, so it’s understandable. But I’d rather pay to a non-profit or utility.
In general, everyone should oppose big tech monopolies, and ask their politicians to legislate against them. Monopolies are the biggest threats to democracy.
For me the internet is still just about bearable but only because of the following…
Firefox + unlock origin for web browsing.
RedReader for Reddit when I occasionally need to go there.
Lemmy for the best Reddit alternative.
Revanced and NewPipe for YouTube.
Recently moved from Google podcasts to Podcast Republic after Google moved podcasts to you tube music.
Never had Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram.
Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.
It feels like I’m swimming against a strong tide just to maintain a good experience, in no other industry do the major players want to cripple your goods and services if you don’t bend over and accept their increasingly poor goods and services 🤷🏻♂️
No such problems, I don’t use pages which need an account to see the content, or I skip the account Popup, YT without ads and trackers, with extensions or front-ends, fast page loading because blocking all this crap. But yes, free internet is becoming more and more distant since large corporations dominate it with their conditions, if they continue like this, soon you will only be browsing the internet with your ID and credit card and the webcam on.
I’m not internet god, but I have a possible first step forward with a protocol and working implementation ;
Decentralized websites, encrypted and takedown safe. Free, FOSS and based on reciprocal sharing. Nothing very complicated, you need to forward a port and run a program.
I’m just a geek though, not a manager or marketing person so I’d love some people checking it out.
So true. I’d like to add that also because of ads, social media and other websites are full of nonsense clickbait content, and every part of the user experience is designed to keep you scrolling through said content. Even with an adblocker, it’s like wading through a swamp to find anything actually worth looking for. (Of course, there are still websites with no ads, and even the ones with ads aren’t always horrible. But generally, shit sucks.)
I believe you’re referring to “the algorithm”. Which is usually just code for “a bunch of people that view and engage with the content you have viewed/engaged with also viewed/engaged with this”
I understand what they’re doing and I understand why, but sometimes, I just want a reverse chronological feed of my friends activities, so I can keep up to date with their most recent life events.
As far as I know the OED is a very specific dictionary that’s way beyond what most people need and mostly for people dealing with language in their work. www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com would be the more personal variant from what I’ve heard.
It’s sensible that maintaining a current up to date dictionary is worthy of compensation, but I think the tragedy is that such endeavors as “maintaining current information on human language” aren’t just publicly funded, so here they are panhandling for “Dictionary plus” lol.
The OED has been like this for at least 15 years (possibly longer but that’s when I first encountered it). So I wouldn’t consider this an appropriate example of the enshittification that’s been taking place of late.
The OED goes very in-depth into etymology in the way other English dictionaries do not. It’s the size of an encyclopedia. This is the print version of the second edition, which has been supplemented several times since:
And whenever you want to search for information about something the result page gets flooded with AI generated garbage pages with misleading titles and that provide bullshit information.
Top result Top ten results are always things like:
"You are right to question these days indeed, ‘why is the Internet enshittified and Ai is stupid’? Certainly, the world would like to know and you are not alone in wondering why is the internet enshittifed and Ai is stupid.
Today we will be looking at 17 ways the enshittified why is Ai stupid and internet.
Maybe it’s time we all go back to living like it’s the 80s. Watch OTA broadcast TV and read more books and call people on the phone instead of text them. And use computers to do taxes and word process and play simple games.
And you know what would fix it? Building your own website that doesn’t do those things and making the people around you engage with it instead of you capitulating to them, but why put effort into anything when you can sit around and complain about it and do nothing about it?
Lets be real - This isn’t going to change on it’s own. The only way for it to change is if everyone collectively took a stand against it. Which simply just won’t happen. The most reasonable thing to do is to focus your energy on collectives that actively reject such practices. Oh hey, you’re already in one: Lemmy, good job. As long as we work together to create a small corner of the internet that remains true to what the internet should be, we can grow it and create a better internet in the long term.
Back in the day, the GOP was completely controlled by Big Business. A guy named Jerry Falwell saw how Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy had gotten him elected and jumped in. He organized his people at the grassroots level. If there was a local Republican club that got 20 people at the average meeting, Jerry’s church group would show up with fifty. At the start, they were getting dog catchers and county clerks in, but eventually their power grew.
I’ve come to the same terms.
other day I decided to open reddit.com and noticed that almost every other (re)post was from a bot. even the top comments were from bots.
since then I’ve added reddit to my growing blocklist.
I now spend more time on feeder, an RSS reader app.
I haven’t been to reddit much since the api fiasco. If it’s not too much trouble can you point me to some obvious bots so i can get a feel for what that looks like?
The browser in my computer at work doesn’t have an ad blocker. I haven’t installed one because I most of the time I’m using it to access our intranet. But when I do happen to use the internet, damn are there so many ads! They literally block the content I’m trying to read, and come back even when I try to close it.
All that to say, due to enshittification I will forever keep my ad blocker on my personal computer.
It’s wild using a browser without a blocker. I’ve had one since they first started appearing so the internet I know is very different to reality. On the rare occassion I use a browser that allows ads, it feels like shit’s broken. It’s so hard to get anything done and a chore to read or view content.
Can’t imagine what the web is like outside of ublock origin…
The few websites I see on pcs by clients are essentially state backed so they don’t have ads as well.
It’s almost as though the overbearing Yahoo/Ask! toolbars that used to plague everyone’s Internet Explorer back in the day have mutated and infected the internet at large. Now most websites feel like one useless, giant malware-riddled toolbar.
Web 2.0 desperately clinging to life. FOSS self hosted web is the future. Internet speeds are fast enough on home networks that self hosting is perfectly viable for essentially everything, and for the few things that can’t be self hosted by just anyone, FOSS alternatives and work arounds to existing paid services exist.
Internet is becoming harder to monopolize, and increasing amounts of power and control are being handed back to the working class online. FOSS has become a movement that has grown exponentially over the last few years.
Their next recourse will be attempting to make jail time a thing for piracy. Both for hosting it and downloading it.
That would require every government worldwide to be on board. Then you’ll have a couple holdouts, and they’ll take in the dough from everyone wanting to host their content there. While there is a mile-long wishlist from the powers that be, they’re still going to chase what’s profitable.
Have you ever pirated something? If so, have you ever been sent to jail for it?
I’m not talking about hosting companies. Yes, I am aware that prosecution exists for them and has been a thing a long time. I’m saying they’re going to start pushing for end users to face jail time as well. It’s the only real recourse they have.
It’s not so simple. I’ve been trying to go the foss self-hosted way, as well as help p2p projects, and I got stuck because I’m behind a cgnat, unable to forward ports, and my shitty isp has no ipv6. I can’t afford vpns at the moment, so I got stuck. Besides, all that needed a lot of tech skills most people won’t have. This is a serious barrier of entry for a lot of people.
Thing is, most people don’t want to pay for services that to them seemed to be free since forever. And this creates collective social pressure to follow suit. Nothing a big company offers is ever free. You’re just paying in alternate currency.
It’s gross though. Say you started to pay, they would still force ads into their product because they’re greedy and demanding more money. We’re seeing this with streaming sites now.
The funny thing is with youtube, for example, I am a premium user. I deactivated all tracking of my habits on there. Now I am greeted, as a homepage, with nothing else than a call to action to reactivate said tracking. As a paying customer I see less (as in none at all) content on the homepage than an anonymous user would. I am subbed to 170+ channels. Yet they tell me they cannot come up with suggestions unless they can track my every step on their platform. sus. And when saying funny I mean extremely aggravating.
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