As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders
Ars staffers take aim at some of the web’s worst predatory practices.
They dropped the ball by not mentioning Facebook/Instagram, which started out as a place to catch up with people one knew and then bait-and-switched to a slot machine that will show you some random updates from some of them in between all the ads and inspirational AI pink-slime, and maybe let some of them see what you post if you work hard enough at grustling up your clout and feeding the zuckerbots with plenty of juicy psychometric data.
Facebook started out as Zuckerberg and his twin buddies creeping on Harvard women. Then it deshittified. Then it enshittified again.
Lol do people even still use Facebook tho? Instagram i could see but almost 50% of all fb posts are AI bots. The other 50% i assume only goes on if they get a divorce amd need take it fb official. Plus, the AI isn't what killed FB either. People have been leaving in mass for almost a decade now. It was the whole stealing the data of children that turned most people off to it. Idk thats just my take and you should take it with a grain of salt as I haven't had fb in over 10 years now lol.
Every text my wife receives from her sister sounds and looks like an instagram post. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone that uses it is just posting out of habit and the zuckerbots respond with reactions and comments.
I haven’t made a post on any of that slop in yeah, probably 10 years but every time I’ve had the misfortune of being forced to use it for any reason it definitely doesn’t feel like a place I’d ever want to put any information on.
I honestly do not get John Timmer's problems with PDFs.
It seems more like their issue is that they don't have much use for them.
If I want to quickly send someone a document that has a combination of images and text or one that I just want formatted accurately no matter where it's viewed, what's a better option?
Haha, they are missing a lot.
How about platforms that organised car shares, love interests, stay overs, everything we thought the internet was going to help us with. It’s been completely colonised. We have to organise
No mention of phones becoming shittier with every new release of iphones, because everyone else decided to just copy Apple? Removing physical keyboards (I'll die on this hill), removing headphone jacks, flimsy as fuck, gluing the fucking back cover to make repairs even harder
voice assistants have always been shit though. I've never been able to do anything faster by voice than by just typing/swiping
The only thing i missed is setting an alarm/timer and doing calculation.