Enshittification and the Internet's future

[creaturefeature]

Twitter stuff caused me to use Mastodon more now and Reddit stuff caused me to get on Lemmy.

Anyways.

Apparently Threads won't be available in the EU due to it not complying with EU privacy laws. If the big masses move to Threads, if all the fanartists will be posting on Threads... then I'd be pretty mad about being left out. In that situation, I wouldn't mind being able to see the stuff through Mastodon. Assuming Meta can't steal my private info through there.

I think EU banning threads might a blessing in disguise. Luckily for me I managed to joined  fandom mastodon instances that attracts the type of fanartist i´m more interested in seeing, thanks to them having a strong stance against people harassing others based on ships/fanart, lean towards free artistic expression and being queer friendly. plus I could always follow other artists from different instances.

Which is probably more than you could say about places like Instagram. Which their moderation is kinda...yikes.

[Memory]

Looking at the iOS store page of the Meta Threads app clearly shows the issue and why it is not (and will never be in the current state) EU compliant

I'm not surprised that Facebook is going to harvest all that data, but I wonder how much of that Facebook is going to try on other parts of the Fediverse it can access. Man I wish California can get privacy laws like the EU.

The web revival needs a lot more hobby-specific communities and a lot less catch-all communities.

I've been thinking the same also. I like Melonland but I'd love to find a forum that focuses on a specific topic or two. I've been looking around for a forum that focuses on discussion technology and current Internet events, but so far I can't find anything that fits that. I hope that as the Internet Underground grows more forums popup.

[debleb]

Funnily enough, in a different tab I am currently reading this discussion that also brings up these issues. The discoverablity on the fediverse is bad and interaction is made very hard; someone aptly said "Honestly, requiring legwork to make the site interesting is something that will keep it from ever taking off." which echoes the points here about having to compete against addictive, easy to use sites pretty well too.

i hadn't heard of this tildes thing before but it seems like a place i'd like to spend time in  ! do u have an invite link for it? (sorry off topic :P)

[shevek]

do u have an invite link

No I just lurk, to be honest! last I heard, invites were offered on migration subreddits, maybe you'll find some there.

[debleb]

No I just lurk, to be honest! last I heard, invites were offered on migration subreddits, maybe you'll find some there.

i see! thanks for telling me!

[Grimlock]

honestly with how poorly major sites are being run right now, either due to incompetence or desperation, i wouldn't be surprised if enshittification got a major kill or two, especially now that getting funding is going to be harder when some social media sites allegedly don't make much if any profit, and then the waves of that impact causes even more issues

[virtue]

I think people collectively just need to stop being so gullible and getting used using unsustainable venture-capital funded services like Twitter, Discord, Tumblr. Its ridiculous that people let these kinds of things become the standard. It just like how people let taxis go out of business by getting used to the obviously unsustainable prices set by Uber specifically to drive them out of business and get people hooked. Why must people keep being so gullible? Either way yeah. Make a constant conscious effort to consider the sustainability of any internet service you use and avoid it if it seems too good to be true, because it definitely is if they don't actually explain how its funded.

[Cobra!]

I was going to make a new thread about this, but it seems it already exists!

I was watching a video on the enshittification of streaming services lately, and it looks like things have gotten really bad now!

I never subscribed to these services when they were new, preferring to own my media, and have argued about this kind of thing in college, and my friends not getting why I’m so untrusting of them. I’m very very tempted to say “I told you so!” as it appears I predicted some of these problems 10 years ago, but it’s probably not a good idea to.

It’s become a serious problem for many people now.

[grubbyfox]

I just know that any time any "big corp" comes into play, it means whatever they touch will be dead or completely uninteresting after a while (dead or uninteresting for me, I mean)

Granted, Facebook was always "big corp" in a way? Or it wasn't like, overtaken the way we imagine big corp comes sliding in.
But I remember Facebook used to be just kinda funny. You had loads of those wdigets you could add to your "wall" (MyRoom, Grafitti, Superpoke, Aquariums etc). Tons of fun little "things" that people could interract with, send stuff, etc.

Later there were actual games (obviously cash grab addictive fomo stuff etc, but still....games.) MafiaWars, FarmVille, Pet Society, I remember there was like an Indiana Jones games too, and some Sims game? There were TON of games!

At some point, Facebook went from "just you and your friends and family poking around on a platform together" to like, a sort of digital marketplace for all companies to exist and push their stuff onto "followers" (People...).

Like, I dont consider Facebook a social platform anymore, just a "universe" where you have a profile and companies are nagging your feed nonstop. It's not even just "companies", but media, (newspapers, tv channels, etc). Not that I care about FB anymore, but it's so bizarre that it went from us giving superpokes and drawing on our "walls" to just this highway of every company in the world having a "page".

I also will never forgive MSN's shutdown, and how Skype was supposed to be the "new" thing, even though it looked awful, you couldn't customize it the same way, it was sluggish and prone to crashing/bugs (I disctinctly remember having to help neighbours, family, etc a lot because their Skype was just garbage.).

And now we're left with just crud like Zoom, Discord, Teams, whatever you have. Oversized, bulky, ugly UI, no customization, no personality, etc.
Yes I know Escargot MSN exists, but for how long? It seems they have a hard time with funding.

I hate that I cant view Instagram, Twitter, Reddit without logging in (at least Reddit on mobile is nagware at this point imo.)
Same with Discord, but personally I believe that's not Discords issue, that's user issue. People will use Discord to relay/"save" important information and then it's gatekept there because that's how it works.

The second Meta starts sinking their ugly fingers into any smaller spaces, that's it, it's over. Either they'll do anything they can to siphon out information/data, and/or they'll elbow their way in and take over. Tale as old as time, as far as I'm concerned.

I find that once you're in places like Melonland    it's very easy to rabbithole and find new places, how we used to back in the 90s / 00s. I had a hard time finding anything before MelonLand (though I guess I sorta new I could look at places like Neocities), but that was basically my experience too back in the older days. I would sit for hours and search for fansites of stuff, and then one site has a forum, that forum has users, that give other websites, with more forums, and so on.

A lot of people know they want everything handed to them, and they just want empty entertainment. Hours of tiktok scrolling, doesn't matter the content, snapchat messaging, just basic ass text on white background, no personality, no nothing, just whatever. Just an uncanny bitmoji character peeking sometimes. I'm not blaming them, they've just been baited to get addicted to it, to not be more sceptical, to not care. The algorithm sustains them, so why should they bother? They get empty nothings in an endless scroll, they're happy (sort of).

As for the future, I dont know. And I cant worry about others, I want to take care of myself, lol. A lot of my internet-friends for example, they say they want to move from Messenger/Meta, yet they dont. Just "because". I've provided them a bunch of options (Discord, Escargot, Signal/Telegram, not sure group chats are possible on Signal tho, but I believe so, I think the Escargot team also has AIM in the works, and more.) but it's so "convenient" for them to keep using Messenger.

I will say, I love that there are always someone who works on OpenSource stuff. Those people are some real heroes of the internet. There's always someone making a good alternative that is free and opensource, etc. And sometimes maybe it's not the best, or maybe it's for example limited in space, but for me that does not matter much.

Sorry I am rambling. I was going to go on about the enshittifaction of Discord, but we all know how lame Discord is turning (and has always been).

I posted this in the other thread, but I will post it here because it basically gets the essence of a lot of my gripes with enshittification, lmao. And it gives me a good chuckle.

(invidious link: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=cvDGqAtNzUc)

@Cobra! that video about enshittification was very good. My dad was tallking about this exact format a few weeks ago. We were talking specifically about how I had looked for a compass as a store, and that the compasses were cheap, but the reviews were like "yeah this shit doesnt even work" lol, and he basically said the exact same thing as that video. It's crazy how it's just literally everywhere these days.

[Paprika]

Wow, many interesting things I've read in this topic, it's been years since I've seen something so well debated between people without needing to put "links in bio" or "follow me and click on the bell" in between. I don't have much to add, a lot of what I was thinking about that topic is already well said by several people.

However I'm putting a little shade on the enshittification of the internet. I'm not gonna deny it but in 2005 I wouldn't have found sites like NeoCities or Melonland Forum because I thought "core web" would fill every need and that personal websites would die since wikipedia had everything. Years passed and I yearned more and more for personality. Seeing Twitter and Tumblr UI looking like clones made my heart sink a bit. I sort of believed that everything was doomed until I found a post on Tumblr mentionning NeoCities and giving several links for learning HTML/CSS.

Like it was said earlier, you can find stuff you enjoy online but you need to make an actual effort to find it. I feel like Facebook and other big Internet companies are some sort of "fast-food web" where it's easy, fast and can be "consumed" 24/24 7/7. peripheral web is a bit like learning to cook by yourself and exploring a library to find a recipe that will suit you. And it's pretty interesting ! huge sites will try to retain you and your attention span. Exploring the lesser_known web is a bit like and adventure into the jungle. There's cool stuff and marvelous places but there's also mosquitoes, tough plants and sometimes you even wonder why you spent so many hours to find the HTML snippet you're looking for or if it was worth the effort.

It might sound exhausting but it gave me a feeling that I thought I'd never have ever again after knowing the web 1.0 where you had to search and make efforts.

I do believe that as long as there's huge, ominous entities anywhere, you'll always find recluse, small communities hidden away trying to thrive for themselves. Melonland has that vibe for me. I am glad that we're in 2023 and the peripheral web is developped enough to help me in my quest for my website and finding that little web corner hosting a forum that feels like a second family to me. It's special places like this that makes me ignore the bad sides of internet.

[PurpleHello98]

I'm not surprised that Facebook is going to harvest all that data, but I wonder how much of that Facebook is going to try on other parts of the Fediverse it can access. Man I wish California can get privacy laws like the EU.

I've been thinking the same also. I like Melonland but I'd love to find a forum that focuses on a specific topic or two. I've been looking around for a forum that focuses on discussion technology and current Internet events, but so far I can't find anything that fits that. I hope that as the Internet Underground grows more forums popup.

Same here! There are a couple k-pop forums on-line these days, but sadly fans of my favourite group (Verivery) seem to be few and far between on these forums. :(