Enshittification

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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.

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Above is one of my 2 year old nephew's favourite channels. He watches them everyday. For his parents who work from home, it's the greatest thing. If an ad comes up, he cries and they know something is up.

However, they are clicking the ok button on the TV far too often per video cause of this.

They run that 90+ sponsored content so frequently it's become crap. I've seen Land Rover ads, the one above is a house, and the most annoying is when they run other cartoons like Thomas the Tank Engine or something. If the kid wanted that, no problem. But right now the singing cats are his jam. Cars, property? Someone is paying actual money to get ads in front of 2 year old kids?

Tell me this isn't a scam.

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Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

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Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?

Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.

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Among the most significant changes with this year’s Elements releases has little to do with new features but instead concerns the ways users purchase and own the software. While prior versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements have been lifetime licenses — the user buys the software and then owns it indefinitely — this year’s release has moved to a three-year license term.

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/21985939

Just know I saw this, because I would never ever visit freaking groupon. “Sponsored shortcuts” can be disabled in the settings . Bleh :(

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Oh yes! The 3D experience!

Go ahead sign in! Tell us how our shit product is broken. That's valuable information that we SOLIDWORKS can keep to ourselves and make you create a new username and password combo to remember. Ofcourse your data regarding anything is actually ours. We own it! Thanks!

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During the company’s Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta AI can now process image inputs, allowing it to answer questions about photos and edit them. Want to know what kind of flower you took a picture of or how to make a multi-colored cake? Just ask Meta AI. See a picture of a goat on your Instagram feed and want to repost it as a picture of a goat on a surfboard? Just ask Meta AI. Not sure what to say about the goat on a surfboard? Don’t worry, Meta AI will also suggest captions for your stories on Facebook and Instagram.

And if chatting with Meta AI yourself sounds like too much work, the company will be testing a new feature on Facebook and Instagram that injects unsolicited AI-generated images “based on your interests or current trends” directly into your feeds, allowing you to “tap a suggested prompt to take that content in a new direction or swipe to imagine new content in real-time,” according to pre-event briefing materials.

Not to be outdone by OpenAI’s release of a voice assistant for ChatGPT earlier this week, Zuckerberg announced that users can begin talking to Meta AI and it will talk back in the voices of celebrities like Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key, and Kristen Bell.

The company is also beginning “small tests” in the U.S. and Latin America of a deepfake feature that will translate video content on Instagram and Facebook from Spanish to English, or vice versa. The Meta AI translation tool will automatically “simulate the speaker’s voice in another language and sync their lips to match,” according to the company’s briefing material.

Meta did not immediately respond to questions about whether creators on Facebook and Instagram will be asked for their consent before their images and voices are manipulated.

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Google is doing scummy things, Literally 2024

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/42162061

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/26292451

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Was recently browsing Reddit and noticed a new type of ad which pops up in between comments now. It used to be a few ads in between posts and you would get an ad as the top comment when you click on a post, but now they’re injecting ads in between comments when you are even scrolling comments lol. When do you think this will start having an effect on regular people? Do you think the enshittification will slow down or come to a halt if these companies start losing revenue due to lost customer base?

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What the URL above says. It's getting crazy on Xitter.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17274141

The potential charges, says Marianne Lake, CEO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan, are a result of new regulatory rules that cap overdraft and late fees. Lake says Chase will be passing along those increased expenses to customers, which would put an end to now-free services such as checking accounts and wealth management tools. And she says she expects other banks will follow suit.

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