cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17201554

> Mozilla acquired Anonym, an ad start-up

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.

Discovered this today while browsing featured media on Wikipedia Commons.

Today's video on Media Of The Day was a video about having sex in space. It is also pinned to the top of Wikipedia's Sex In Space article.

It was amusing, but didn't include citations or appear otherwise credible. It was made using a service called "simpleshow foundation", which brands itself as "giving you the power to create simple and engaging videos with an easy-to-use, AI-powered video maker platform".

So, yeah, more AI slop.

https://fosstodon.org/@sponsorblock/112603139898164385

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/16690091

> > Spotify has announced that it's hiking subscriptions for new customers in the U.S., the second such price increase in the space of a year.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15542273

> >Netflix has managed to annoy a good number of its users with an announcement about an upcoming update to its Windows 11 (and Windows 10) app: support for adverts and live events will be added, but the ability to download content is being taken away. > > >Netflix must realize that it's a huge frustration for people who relied on offline downloads to watch content without internet access: on planes, trains, and campsites, and anywhere else where Wi-Fi is unavailable or unreliable. > > >There's a small chance that Netflix will change its mind if it gets enough complaints, but the streaming service seems determined to add as many money-making features as possible, while taking away genuinely useful ones.

I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this, but it’s the first place that came to mind.

I just saw an ad on YouTube advertising penis enlargement pills with nothing but a video of a doctor that had a handful of jump cuts, and the video was paired with audio that had no noticeable cuts.

Most notably, the doctor’s lips were clearly edited by an AI to make it look like what she was saying matched the audio, even though the video and audio were obviously recorded separately.

I just think it’s downright fucking hilarious that YouTube now has the same ads that porn sites have. Damn, Google. What a dumpster fire.

Body of the toot:

>Absolutely unbelievable but here we are. #Slack by default using messages, files etc for building and training #LLM models, enabled by default and opting out requires a manual email from the workspace owner. > >https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/trust/data-management/privacy-principles > >What a time to be alive in IT. 🤦‍♂️

Sov Cit - I'm not under your jurisdiction. driving is a commercial activity, I am traveling and that doesn't require a license.

Big Tech - We're not a taxi company, labor laws don't apply to us. We are an app company that allows independent contractors to find customers.

Sov Cit - I am not the legal person, I am the flesh and blood living person. I do not need any identification.

Big Tech - We're a hotel network. We're a website that enables peer to peer short term home sharing. Neither we, nor the people who rent on our website should be subject to any sort of existing regulations.

Just a thought.

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

The unique relationship that many creators have with Patreon seems to shield it from even very light criticism. While I think there are many, many positives to come out of Patreon's rise, I thus wanted to try and view the company through a more detached, nuanced lens.

I've hesitated to include too many predictions about what might happen to Patreon next. My naive hope would be that they decide to refocus on the basics and building a sustainable business model using the features that made the platform so popular in the first place.

The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things b...

On techno-feudalism

Enshittification isn't inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

Reminds me so much of tacky dating sites. Pay and be able to message! Ughh

I miss the glory days of .99 cent apps. :(

I only hope they won’t touch youtube Premium, it’s the only thing that makes youtube barely tolerable.

There is a new word for the degradation of the internet, but it’s been happening for years. Why do we tolerate it?

Took a few minutes to make in Krita, feel free to repost and distribute around.

Author: The Oatmeal

A part of preventing enshittification is preventing corporate EEE, which is itself prevented by preventing corporate access to the Fediverse.

Here we discuss about how the lifecycle of VC backed big tech platforms and the ad business model has centralized and ruined the internet for regular people to favor advertisers and finally the platform itself.

Also how we can leverage the Fediverse to make the internet a better place to exist overall.