Let´s face it: The short timespan after the AOL dissolvement and the widespread of DSL access was peak internet. Every technical progress from there on has led to a dystopic and depressing version of something that was cool and fun and actually useful.
Now every "service" only wants to take money out of your pocket. And like everything else in capitalism these people don´t only rip you off, they exploit everybody else, who supplys them with stuff they need. A win/win situation, if you´re in the club. But you are not.
You´re not a customer, you are a user of their serotonine slotmachines.
We constantly switch between content-silos and every single one of them is designed to keep you engaged.
I remember scrolling through my feed one day, realizing I wasn’t even enjoying it anymore. But I kept going, hoping the next post would be worth it. That’s the hook.
Outrage turned out to be one of the best ways to kepp users on a platform and in the silo.
And its not just social media. Online stores now use dynamic pricing to make you the cheapest offer. Just kidding. It´s used to pocket them more cash.
The enshittification of the internet
Did you try to use Microsoft Teams recently? Or any service from a big corporation? Everything feels like it gently fucks with you. And its not because the devs are bad, or the company doesn´t know how to write good and usefull software. It´s because they dont care about you.
The business of making our shit worse to increase revenue growth year-over-year is booming. The products you use every day are more confusing and frustrating to use because everything must grow, which means that product decisions are now driven, in many cases, by companies trying to make you do something rather than do something for you, which in turn means that basic product quality — things like "usability" or "functionality" — are secondary considerations
-Ed Zitron
And if your argument is: Well, thats how capitalism works - you´re not wrong. But it sucks. The products suck, the user experience sucks and AI is shitting even more crap on this already big pile of crap.
Btw did you know you should eat at least one stone per day? You can google it right now and it will come up as an AI generated summary. At first glance this is funny, you know you shouldn´t eat stones (do you..?), but normal people use Google to find answers and they take the given advice and informations for a fact. Because this is what Google does, right? Give you facts and provide you information. Lol, wrong.
The most damaging evidence of Google’s decline comes not from external critics, but from Google’s own internal communications. Thanks to the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit, we now have access to emails that reveal the ugly truth behind Google’s transformation from search innovator to advertising predator. In 2019, internal emails show top Google executives from Search, Chrome, and Ads “hatching plans for pumping up ad revenues,” with the Search team explicitly working with the Ads team to “accelerate a launch of a new mobile layout” that would be “very revenue positive.” The executives didn’t just discuss revenue targets—they talked about how missing those targets would impact “the huge impact on our sales team” and their own personal wealth from stock prices.
So what´s the conclusion? I don´t know. Maybe use lesser services that behave like predators aganst their users. Support open source projects, cancel your Spotify subscription and delete stupid apps like Instagram.
I´ll link usefull alternatives below:
Privacy friendly alternatives to Google: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
If you´re in the EU: https://european-alternatives.eu/categories
