this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Enshittification

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What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

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I don't know if it's just me, but browsing virtually any mainstream website without an ad blocker or with alternative frontends is becoming harder and harder to justify. It's getting to the point where adblocking isn't an optional luxury - it's a requirement to effectively get basic information about things.

Yesterday, I was trying to search some information about Ghouls from Fallout. This lead me to this Fandom wiki page which had ads on almost every corner of the website, autoplaying video in the corner, asking for my age as soon as I clicked on the site, injecting polls and random unrelated videos into the communty wiki content and being incredibly slow to browse. A query that in the past that took 5 seconds now takes 50, for what? Money?

I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate, but the sheer level of degrading quality is not OK. This is just one example of how services are completely barreling towards the shitter at 100+ MPH with no brakes or airbags. I feel some guilt for using content blockers, but that guilt is being wittled away every single day because of websites like this.

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate

They don't, though! Pages of static HTML are tiny and cost almost nothing to serve; they bring the cost upon themselves by ballooning the page with multiple megabytes of ad-injection and tracking scripts. That claim is like 99% self-serving lie.

[–] Audalin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Discounting temporary tech issues, I haven't browsed internet without an adblocker for a single day in my entire life. Nobody is entitled to abuse my attention; no guilt, no exceptions.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I have but only because in the late 90s and 2000s they didn’t really exist, partially because the problem wasn’t present that they were designed for. Been using once consistently since probably around ‘08 tho

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago