cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38632180

NOPE NOPE NOOOOOPE fuck that man.

Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about it

From the article:

A software update rolling out to Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerators in the US is putting ads on the fridges for the first time. The “promotions and curated advertisements” are coming despite Samsung insisting to The Verge in April that it had “no plans” to do so

Samsung is calling it a pilot program for now, which — I kid you not — is meant to “strengthen the value” of owning a Samsung smart fridge

From the toot:

Also a good time to look at the #PeerTube ecosystem for an alternative way to share moving pictures. Things Bending Spoons has bought and enshittified already: Brightcove, Evernote, Meetup, komoot, Remini, and WeTransfer.

Original announcement

from the article:

For several years Sony had offered a free “External Monitor” app that let you use select Xperia-branded phones as an external display for some of the company’s high-end cameras. The Xperia 1 VII originally shipped without that feature, but now you can use the phone as camera display… if you pay at least $5 per month or $50 per year for a subscription.

Not only that, but for older phones that had these features for free, with the new version of the app, some features are locked behind subscription:

But on August 28, 2025, Sony announced an update that “expanded paid plan lineup for greater flexibility.” That flexibility locks a few key features behind a paywall, including: ...

ChatGPT head Nick Turley said he’s “humble enough not to rule it out categorically,” but hedged that OpenAI would need to “be very thoughtful and tasteful” about how ads could be integrated into ChatGPT.

You can tastefully go fuck yourself.

In fairness, I don't know that any AI service that starts barfing ads can be said to enshittify, since it was already shitty to begin with. I guess the ads are par for the course...

What a perfectly garbage feature.

Latest update is that he’s retained a law firm to sue Volvo into providing a refund.

Issues include: complete loss of throttle on the freeway, unable to lock the car, and infotainment screen blackouts (the screen which controls nearly every feature of the car). All in a car that cost over $150,000 CAD 😵

Remember the "I want a white one" video? That's the first video I clearly remember having a text-to-speech voice-over. It was really bad TTS, and it was awesome. Lately, though, I find myself wishing video hosting services like Youtube and Peertube (to a lesser degree) had a filter so that I could filter out any videos with TTS voice overs. Does this bother anyone else?

I'm a little torn about it. There are legitimate reasons for people to use them; I've seen commentary from posters about social anxiety that makes even recording audio difficult, and TTS must be fantastic for ~~mute~~ non-verbal(?) folks. Non-native English speakers may be more comfortable with it. I'm sure the platform doesn't help... how many videos do you have to post where the peanut gallery mocks your verbal mistakes before you give up and just have an engine read your written text? I've also noticed that the use of TTS is far, far worse on Youtube -- I have yet to come across a single video on any Peertub site that uses it, although it must exist.

Like a lot of technology, generated speech is getting abused, and since TTS has valid uses, I put it in the "enshittification" category. It's used on every bulk, low-effort "N greatest/funniest/random-adjective" videos; I hear it in increasingly in those suspiciously AI-smelling, ad-ish "reviews" that just read specs and make an odd comment about how cool it is; and there's so much more low-quality, low-information content that feels AI generated uses it -- or maybe it feels AI generated because it uses it. It's almost always on just awful content.

TTS on video content is a perfect example of "this is why we can't have nice things." I am starting to hate it so much, I abort whatever I'm starting to watch as soon as I hear the absurd cadence and mispronunciations -- I'd rather hear an honest non-native speaker making mistakes than that terrible TTS crap.

Whatever the reason, the use of TTS is a trend I'm putting firmly in the "enshittification" category, but am I overreacting here? Do you have a way of dodging or identifying content that uses TTS, in advance?

I recently attended the Teardown 2025 conference in Portland, OR where Cory spoke about enshittification among related topics. A documentary film crew were present, filming some of the talks, so there should be a documentary forthcoming at some point about his perspective on the topic.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31478575

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