Enshittification

1628 readers

1 users here now

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.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

550

The Internet is becoming genuinely unusable without an ad blocker (self.enshittification)

submitted 6 months ago by sunglocto to c/[email protected]

124 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Where there is a will, there is a way.

You might not be able to use the same beaten paths as everyone else, but you can always hack a new path.

At the end of the day, I can’t speak for the entire industry, but when I look for new employees, I care less about resume experience and more about education, drive, and creativity. Once they’re in the role, I can show them the ropes. We also (hopefully many others, if not a majority) invest in serious training and learning platforms to keep people updated.

Infosec is about continuous learning and curiosity. You don’t have the luxury of learning the skill and being done. Security, arguably, changes the most out of all the tech spaces and you need drive and curiosity above all else.

If you’re serious about infosec, you sometimes have to hack it to make it. A -> ? -> B

If you don’t mind me asking, what field are you in rn?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Thank you dude! I appreciate you.

I work retail right now as a manager and although I have a skillset for it, have made great strides, and have changed the company in a few ways for the better, it's not my desire to stay in this path.

P.s. You say the things I say to others. It's good to have it thrown back at me lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Of course man - the world is your oyster. Not everyone is as privileged as me though, so I try to help out where I can to give ‘em a boost. Not everybody knows what they wanna do on the first shot and that can be tough