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submitted 1 year ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5431344

The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. It doesn't have to be this way. Enshittification occurs when companies gobble each other up in an orgy of mergers and acquisitions, reducing the internet to "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four" (credit to Tom Eastman!), which lets them endlessly tweak their back-ends to continue to shift value from users and business-customers to themselves. The government gets in on the act by banning tweaking by users - reverse-engineering, scraping, bots and other user-side self-help measures - leaving users helpless before the march of enshittification. We don't have to accept this! Disenshittifying the internet will require antitrust, limits on corporate tweaking - through privacy laws and other protections - and aggressive self-help measures from alternative app stores to ad blockers and beyond!

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[-] rickdg@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

The internet will always have many niche places, but overall it can’t escape late stage capitalism.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 54 points 1 year ago

A good search engine would be nice to have (again). How come even duck duck go or other (free?) search engines are also so bad now?

[-] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 35 points 1 year ago

Because operating a search engine is expensive. I personally use Kagi and love it, but that's $10/month for unlimited searches.

[-] pensa@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I tried the 100 free searches from Kagi and compared the results to DDG. In almost every search the results were the same. Even the order. I think the real benefit to Kagi is the lack of ads and tracking, tha's all.

I think the real reason search sucks these days is the AI they put between you and what your looking for. It's no longer searching for what you typed, it's searching for what it thinks you want.

[-] commandar@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The huge benefit of Kagi is that they allow you to customize results and blacklist SEO spam or deprioritize sites you don't care about in your results. Out of the box, I've had a similar experience with the results being very similar to DDG, though. Over time, I suspect it'd be a better overall experience, but that's hard to judge in 100 searches.

I've been on the fence whether that's worth the cost to me, but I've been increasingly leaning toward biting the bullet.

[-] whynotzoidberg@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I’ve been giving it a go, too. It does seem to be a bit better overall, with customized site priorities being the coolest part.

I think I could get on board for 5 bucks, but a tenskee a month is something I’ll look at twice whenever I take a critical look at the subscriptions.

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[-] fruitSnackSupreme@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Noooo no more subscriptions please. Can we please go back to one time payments for apps/services?

[-] Lith@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 1 year ago

I understand hating subscriptions but in this case a one time payment would require Kagi to continually gain an increasing number of members for eternity or run out of operating money and shut down. You could hope for something donation-based like most Lemmy instances, but just expecting other users to cover your costs is selfish. There's a difference between asking your users to at least pay what they're costing you and rent-seeking with things that don't or shouldn't cost you a dime to provide. Subscription services have existed for a very, very long time (see: any government that collects taxes), it's only recently and due to greedy trends that they've been becoming a nuisance.

If you want to empower your own sense of privacy and security, you'll need to accept that you've been paying for services with your data or supposed ad views for decades, and some of those services cost money to run.

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[-] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

I agree that subscriptions for apps becoming the norm is pretty terrible. You should just be able to pay once and use the version you paid for forever, and optionally upgrade to a newer version for a price.

But Kagi is a service. You using their search actively costs them money, so they wouldn't only not gain any money from you after your one-time purchase, but actually lose money.

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[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 6 points 1 year ago

Have tried it and seriously didn't see any difference between it and Google or duck duck go...

How come Duck duck go was close to Google when Google was really good, bug now both of them are serving just crap? Are we sites getting better at climbing the ladder?

[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Duck Duck Go just uses Bing’s results. (Startpage uses Google’s.) There’s only a handful of search engines actually crawling the web so it doesn’t take much for all the search sites to suddenly suck at the same time.

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[-] HidingCat@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

Just want to add, people are also not putting much content online in the way they used to. Between the want to monetise (which leads to ad-filled SEO sits or YouTube channels), or the dopamine-hit of getting likes, content is getting harder to find as well (the latter tends to be in walled gardens that search engines don't get to index).

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[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Perplexity AI has been awesome for me so far, I think someone will take over searches with the current state of the internet. I'm sick and tired of only finding ad filled sites with non-answers on Google.

[-] dan80@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

What happened to DuckDuckGo?

[-] centof@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

DuckduckGo is basically a frontend for bing with some privacy marketing added to it. It still sends microsoft trackers. They are all so bad because of enshittification.

Google and bing are here.

Abuse users to benefit business customers

[-] steakmeout@aussie.zone 5 points 1 year ago

This is not correct. I think what you maybe referring to is an older dig by Brave and brave redditors when they noticed DDG were allowing MS trackers in specific cases.

DDG explained that it was difficult to resolve due to the way MS engages cross-site tracking but it has since been rectified.

Also, research has proven this was not some shady deal between MS and DDG.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-duckduckgo-gates-track-idUSL1N3792HE

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[-] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Well, the thing that gets me all the time is that you can no longer "-" a word. I'm frequently looking for stuff that doesn't contain a word. That feature is completely gone now.

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[-] GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 34 points 1 year ago

We should get paid a portion of the revenue generated by our collective data along with the ability to opt-out completely. If they our data is a commodity to them we should be able to sell it.

[-] nxdefiant@startrek.website 36 points 1 year ago

they can keep my 42 cents and just stop their shit

[-] pensa@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

I bet they sold your info to cambridge analytica for a bit more than that.

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 29 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[-] shasta@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago

If you wanna fix this, there needs to be more incentive for people to develop open source software. It doesn't have to be created by individuals either. Organizations and nonprofits can be used to make basic services for the Internet, like utilities. Or this could be a government agency. There is already talks of classifying Internet access as a utility instead of leaving it to private ISPs. This would be a step beyond that but could be done first.

[-] Amends1782@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

Monetary donations help a ton. Even a few bucks. I always pay for FOSS projects I enjoy and use.

[-] lloram239@feddit.de 26 points 1 year ago

Antitrust and privacy regulations are all nice and good, but I think the core problems of the Internet is a technical one: We don't have peer to peer connectivity on the Internet anymore.

The whole reason for the Internet to exists in the first place was to connect computers, but for whatever reason, that feature of the net never made it down to the average user. Dynamic IP addresses means you can't find anybody and firewalls/NAT means you can't connect to them even if you do. Even trivial tasks like copying a file from one computer to another have no standard solution on the Internet. This means everybody is forced to services like GoogleDrive or Dropbox as an intermediate. Same is true for chat, video calls and so on. Everything has to go through another service to be usable. The majority of those services don't even use standard protocols, lock the user in, which in turn empowers them to use enshittification.

Until peer to peer connectivity is solved I have little hope for the Internet to get better.

[-] vic_rattlehead@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

If someone wants to host something, NAT won't stop them. IMO the bigger problem is that most folks have neither time, skill, nor interest to make p2p a reality. I'm a pretty savvy admin, host a lot of services for myself and family, but I don't pretend to be good enough or vigilant enough to run anything public, i.e. mail server, lemmy server, etc, without major security concerns.

[-] pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 year ago

It'd be stupid easy for assholes to hack or swat you if that was implemented though.

[-] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Part of it is the war between security and privacy vs open architecture. The moment you leave your car unlocked some creep will rob you.

[-] ashtefere@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

We need more than this.

We need a way to make sure that the internet can't be owned, physically.

We need some kind of easy to use and fast and robust open source alternate internet that we can all use.

Something that somehow costs nothing to run, that has enough storage and bandwidth for everyone and everything.

Something that has interoperability built in. Every platform should confirm to openid or openauth or activitypub or something like that.

And you know what? we have the technology!

We all have spare devices lying around. Old PC's, old laptops, old phones - they could all be running some kind of node in a distributed platform of some kind of open source AWS equivalent, and let anyone host anything and post anything without getting ad-raped or data stolen.

It's a pipe dream of mine, and I'm sure others... but with a will and a movement we could just take it all back, all at once.

[-] Rouxibeau@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

and let anyone host anything

That's how they'll spin the legislation to ban it:

Pedophiles and terrorists use that service!

Side note -- I wanted to use 'X' instead as a variable above, but Musk ruined that.

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[-] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That was such a great video. I highly recommend everybody listen to it (there is no visual presentation so listening is enough). Great content, great delivery.

[-] centof@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

Anybody got a TLDW;? Or did all of you just comment on the title and the snippet?

[-] centof@lemm.ee 43 points 1 year ago

Reposting from PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com in Technology@beehaw.org

Here’s an AI outline because this was actually a good talk:

How Platforms Die
    The speaker introduces the concept of platform decay or “enshittification” and how it leads to the death of internet platforms.
        He defines platforms as firms like Uber, Amazon, and Facebook that connect users and business customers.
    He outlines a 3-stage process called enshittification where platforms:
        Are initially good to users
        Abuse users to benefit business customers
        Eventually abuse business customers to only benefit shareholders
    This results in the platform becoming a “pile of shit” that dies.

Facebook Case Study
    He uses Facebook as a case study of enshittification’s 3 stages:
        Initially attracted users by promising privacy protections and custom feeds
        Then broke promises and sold user data to advertisers and flooded feeds with publisher content
        Finally, reduced value to users and fees for publishers to extract all value for shareholders
            This led to an angry user base and brittle equilibrium

Causes of Enshittification
    Lack of Competition
        Weak antitrust enforcement has allowed consolidation across industries
        Companies can use predatory pricing to undercut competitors
        Mergers eliminate competition
            Example: Google relying on acquisitions rather than in-house innovation
    Unrestricted “Backend Tweaking”
        Tech platforms control the algorithms and systems behind their products
        They can arbitrarily change these to alter user experiences
            e.g. Facebook reducing visibility of publisher content in feeds
        Done without transparency, oversight or accountability
    Bans on Reverse Engineering
        Laws like DMCA 1201 and CFAA criminalize circumventing DRM and terms of service
        Makes it illegal to reverse engineer platforms to enable interoperability
        Tech companies use IP laws to prevent modding and adversarial interoperability
            e.g. Apple using IP laws to prevent iOS modding

Solutions
    Strengthen Antitrust Enforcement
        Block anti-competitive mergers
        Break up existing tech giants
    Pass Privacy, Labor and Consumer Protection Laws
        Comprehensive federal privacy laws with private right of action
        End worker misclassification through gig economy
        Apply consumer protection standards to platforms
    Allow Adversarial Interoperability
        Roll back laws criminalizing modding, reverse engineering
        Use government procurement to incentivize open ecosystems
        Appoint special masters to oversee platform legal threats
    Keep Interoperators in Check
        Bind interoperators to the same privacy, fair trading and labor laws
        Determined through democratic process vs corporate policy

Conclusion
    We need to prepare and spread these policy ideas to capitalize on the next crisis
    Efforts are underway to enable a better internet through this approach
[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

The steps to fix this might as well say have Jesus come to life and fix it all... It's depressing, but there is zero chance of any of that happening... Nevermind all of it.

Our best bet is for consumers to fight back with their wallets, but people are on average too stupid to even understand how they are being fleeced. We're fucked.

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[-] los_chill@programming.dev 15 points 1 year ago

While I don't know how well it will work, nor if the implementation is even fully possible, I like the idea of Yep.

[-] patchwork@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago

I tried to find the video on PeerTube, from the end users perspective I think we should encourage others to choose community over corporate and use platforms like PeerTube to post these videos instead of YouTube (Alphabet).

[-] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

To stop enshitification we have to kill all advertising and marketing of products online. Make the net as hostile as possible to people trying to capitalize on it.

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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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