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EveOnlineTutorials's avatar
EveOnlineTutorials

I might be being stupid here but I am not entirely sure what kind of opinion you are asking for. Are we talking about how Facebook spams people with ads to paywall stuff? Sorry, clarification is required here a bit.

Alex Sinclair's avatar
Alex SinclairMod
EveOnlineTutorials

This article explains it well: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/11/users-advertisers-we-are-all-trapped-in-the-enshittification-of-the-internet

This article explains the concept of enshittification well. In brief, it's the decay and degradation of online platforms, from Google to Amazon to Facebook. Let me know if you'd still like me to clear anything up.

EveOnlineTutorials's avatar
EveOnlineTutorials
Alex Sinclair

I shall give it a read when the school run is done and submit my response :)

Sturmer's avatar
Sturmer

For anyone who struggled to get Wired article - you can use the latest version of the page from the web archive here - The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok | WIRED (archive.org)

Or use adguard home or similar stuff to block their ad scripts

Alex Sinclair's avatar
Alex SinclairMod
Sturmer

Thanks Sturmer. And here's another paywall-free article that explains the concept well:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/11/users-advertisers-we-are-all-trapped-in-the-enshittification-of-the-internet

Damien Mason's avatar
Damien Mason

Edited to be more pertinent to the definition, as I've since read past the paywalled Wired article.

Content avenues

Being as reliant as we are on Google is an absolute pain. The big G feeds us whatever's most popular, and popularity doesn't mean good. You get dodgy and irrelevant pages sniping the top SERP results from legitimate sources. Sponsored content dominates above all else. And the advent of generative AI makes this way more complicated, as a text box aims to tell you your answers without clicking on a page. This kills the websites behind such answers and pushes more ads to make up for the lost clicks.

We need to break the monopoly using different sources, aggregates, and places to go for our content. Just About is a great start to breaking the mould, complete with good moderation, but it'd benefit from competitors rivalling with similar outlooks. Gaming Tribe perhaps comes the closest off the top of my head.

Social media was actually a good start until fake news skyrocketed and bots became an issue. I'm not sure what to envision, but down with Alphabet's giant is the main fix. If that means burning everything to the ground and starting again, then so be it.

Regulation

Driven by capitalist markets, there's no real regulation. Government bodies could step in to limit the amount of sponsors and ads we see. Currently, so long as something is marked as sponsored, it's fair game. What if there were limits to the amounts of sponsors that could appear on a page or at the top of Search?

Mass boycott

We're talking about an absolutely ideal world here and something that's never going to happen. We are partly responsible for crafting the world we live in. Companies respond to what we click on and how we navigate. If we simply stopped using services, switched from Google to Bing, or put down out phones a bit more, there's a chance we could influence those in charge.

It'd have to be enough people banded together to make a statement. Since we're talking millions, I can't see it happening, but it's an interesting thought experiment at least.

Enshittification-adjacent ideas

It's not just companies that need to change. It's us. Here are some more things that could better the internet landscape:

Quicker laws

Laws regarding online offences seem to take an age to get past government bodies. Despite the prevalence of revenge porn in the decade prior, the UK only made it illegal in 2014. Talk about dragging your feet. There's a debate surrounding just how strict we should be with the offence. Is South Korea right or wrong to put a five-year sentence on those caught cheating in games? No matter what laws we put in place, we need to identify the problems quickly and then organise legal punishment even quicker.

De-anonymisation

Most problems on the internet stem from the ability to hide behind an anonymous persona. The fact people can get away with saying or doing just about anything without being held accountable for their actions promotes toxicity of all kinds, from bullying and harassment to spam.

Tying accounts to a physical identity would create a deterrent in fear of punishment since everything easily traces back to the sender. This creates several privacy woes that I won't get into here. I disagree with almost anything that goes against the welfare of the common person, but living in one of the most surveilled countries on the planet, I can't help but consider that we should benefit from the lack of privacy already in place.

Alex Sinclair's avatar
Alex SinclairMod
Damien Mason

Thanks Damien, I really enjoyed reading this. On your point about quicker laws, I think it's often a reflection of governments' lack of understanding of internet-related problems coupled with not taking them seriously enough. By the time policy and regulation comes in, the issue that they aim to tackle has already evolved several times.

EveOnlineTutorials's avatar
EveOnlineTutorials

Okay, now I understand what's being asked here, I am going to be super blunt.

The internet is a crap storm, it was started with very good intentions in terms of its original "start point", now however it has become a cesspit of porn and advertisers spamming you nonstop, the main issue is the fact that because you never quite know who owns what, you look at an add on Twitter and the next thing you know, you get the same stupid add on Facebook.

It is as the article states, I now ask people for "direct" links to things we are talking about because again as the article states, we get spammed with a crap ton of ads for things we aren't asking for. Because and I say this with the utmost contempt here, they are "sponsored".

This is not just limited to Google, Facebook is even worse, I am constantly getting spammed with "loans" and "car loans" when I don't even need to buy a car nor have I for a long time. So why are these add's being pushed on me?

The phrase "targetted advertisement" is just a shit box answer for "spam as many people as possible" whilst playing innocent on the morals of the situation. As the article states, this all started around 1980, before the web existed.

Can it be stopped? No, it cannot, not without holding advertisers to a higher moral standard.

Morals & Money don't mix, no one ever gets rich being "nice", you have to betray, crap on, and use whoever you need to to make it in this world because of the very human nature we nurture into our children and the nature our parents nurtured into us, nice guys always finish last. We teach our children to take any opportunity to further themselves.

As a father I am guilty of this when my daughter asked me "But she (her best friend) won't move up with me in sets" I turned around and said "That is not your concern, further yourself in school, not worry about people being left behind"

We are stuck in this endless cycle of, as the post calls it enshittification, because there is no way out of it.

So, that's my very blunt answer, hope this doesn't lower people's opinions of me.

Paul's avatar
Paul

I feel there are two types of enshittification in social media and the Internet in general. The first is the toxic users having a platform and the other is the toxic use of adds or sponsors. Other then banning adds or paying for a subscription Im not sure how to combat that however I do have a simple, if slow burning, solution for the toxic users.

I feel the only way to stop or minimise toxic people, without ignoring their rights, is to block them as soon as you encounter them, even if it isnt you they are directing their crap too. This gives them less people to speak to and you see less people being horrible to others. Eventually, the only people toxic users would be able to speak to are other users with the same mindset so...win win.

Obviously if somone is actually using the platform to be abusive then make sure to report them before blocking so they hopefully lose the account.

"But they can just make another account".

Yes they can, so if a user is blocked or banned, it should not just be the email but the IP address aswell, this would ensure the safety of all users and make the experience better for everyone.

Sturmer's avatar
Sturmer

The concept of 'enshittification' is multifaceted and layered, requiring a nuanced understanding. To delve into this, we first need to establish a taxonomy of the term as it applies to various online platforms. For instance, social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn operate differently from gaming platforms like Steam and Epic, or dating platforms is a completely different world, but all 3 suffer enshittification.

When we use any service, especially free ones, it's essential to remember that there are costs involved in development, marketing, and operations. These costs are usually recouped through monetization strategies. Therefore, it's unreasonable to express outrage over the user experience or ads on a free service like Facebook. After all, we haven’t paid for it (at least I didn't), and if the platform's direction or quality doesn't align with our preferences, we always have the option to disengage.

'Enshittification' varies across different platforms, and our reactions to it should be informed by an understanding of the business models that underpin these services.

Dave's avatar
Dave

I think most things have already been covered which I generally agree with and understand in all cases so I'm going to write a bit about it from a bit of a different angle.

In a lot of the examples given in the article, this comes down to the age old problem of a monopoly in all but name or an uncompetitive market with the barriers to entry so high, and the few big players so big, that no one has a chance of competing in. A selling marketplace that has so much power over it's sellers who haven't got many options to go elsewhere happens because regulators let it happen and fail the markets they are supposed to regulate.

It's standard big business monopolistic, economies of scale behaviour that you offer this amazing service better than all the competition or cheaper than them, then have the bigger pockets to outlast them while they lose so much of their custom that they have to close down and can't afford to operate. Or just buy out the competition to remove it. Buy up the small startups to prevent them being a threat, take the assets and close them down. Also combine your different services allowing a loss leader in one by giving it away for free, to make big money on another cross subsidised. The company whos only product is now being given away for free is dead. I'm simplifying and generalising here of course.

Once this happens, you have that much power and control you can keep putting your prices up, reduce your costs and lower service levels. I think we are all feeling the effects of this now across various services on the internet and when the service is free the "price" is our time and inconvenience, and this gets more expensive in terms of "spending" more time watching ad, scrolling through them etc.

I'm not sure what the solution is as it's already too late, the regulators lost and didn't pay attention. In the case of search, some people think AI is going to bring in some new services that will break the stranglehold on the market, but back we go to the cross subsidisation of services and loss leaders. New start ups have to pay a fortune in compute costs as do the big players, but the big ones are giving it away for free and sucking up the cost, how can you compete with free (for the consumer market, not enterprise) and why would anyone pay for something else when they don't have to?

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