4 ms·

The mainstream web seems to be crumpling under the weight of its enshittification.

by bufio 3y ago

aphatankha 3y ago
None of it is due to organic interest anymore. Just gamification of attention to try and spread a viral sales pitch. Paul Graham did some napkin math on Twitter a few months ago highlighting his approach is just try to get ahead of a trending but still not quite super popular idea. It’s Shark Tank; film the show months in advance, get the viable product for sale before it airs, because you know copycats will be right behind you. All to preserve a hallucination reality will collapse without a fiat currency game to play.
- biorach 3y ago
  > Paul Graham did some napkin math on Twitter a few months ago highlighting his approach is just try to get ahead of a trending but still not quite super popular idea. got a link?
noman-land 3y ago
I've been referring to it for years as the corporate web but unfortunately I think these are the same things.
dv_dt 3y ago
The stupid part is that profits are really not optimized by the enshittification profit campaigns - there is so much incompetence in isolated C-suites making these decisions.
- danudey 3y ago
  I've said it before, but why do social media sites try to monetize through methods which provide no tangible benefits? A blue checkmark, some shitty NFT avatars, being able to badge someone's comment or post - I don't care about those things, definitely not enough to pay for them. If Reddit wanted to monetize me, give me something tangible. I'd pay $5/mo for a 'pro' tier or something if it had unlimited third-party app access on top of some other real benefits. Instead, Reddit is making everything worse (like their new, awful, web view, or their official, awful, app) and then getting mad that people don't like the shit sandwich they're being fed. Charge people for pro tiers, charge subreddits for 'pro' moderation tools (and actually build the moderation tools you say you're going to), introduce some kind of subscription service (YouTube Premium, Discord Nitro, that kind of thing) that actually benefits both users and subreddit moderators. Let subreddits provide perks to community members who are willing to contribute, or be able to make them subscription-only (or posts and comments only by subscribers) and the money will roll in. Generally just make the site better and people will appreciate that. Don't isolate us from the apps we like and then tell us "we're doing it because we care", because no one believes that.
  - tayo42 3y ago
    you can pay 5dollars a month for premium and not get ads along with some other minor features already
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Because it's hard to create tangible benefits. Reddit doesn't want to have any functionality that makes the site hard to use. They don't want to say, limit how much you can post because you're making content for free for them and keeping other people engaged. Minor quality of life improvements are easily addressed with browser plugins like RES. It has to be something that can't be provided that way. So what you get is very niche features like the ability to load more than 500 commments and a shiny badge.
  - samstave 3y ago
    Reddit can eat a bag of dicks. I ran /r/conspiracy for more than a decade - and when I was setting policy to have that sub be a-political, and some other mods complaing about their pecking order in the mod list, I was restructuring the mod list at the request of mods, then an admin's alt account 'complained' (and this mod was the actual mod who requested the org change) and an admin cam in, ousted me, and put said account in charge. That account is assuradly an admin alt account throwaway.
  - sb52191 3y ago
    I think the question is what are the tangible benefits people would actually pay for? Social media companies have the incentive to figure out how to make more money from their product. I think the fact that none of them have really proposed any pro-tier that is adopted by a majority of users shows that most people aren't really willing to pay for anything they provide.
    - leadingthenet 3y ago
      They’ve never even tried, so how could they know for sure?
  - balder1991 3y ago
    I think it’s the same reason countries don’t simply get better as we expect they should: there’s no omnipotent entity with that exact goal in mind. Instead, we have a lot of people just going for their own interests, playing politics or corporate game, moved by vanity or greed etc. which often do more harm than good for the company’s supposed goals (not even mentioning larger companies tend to attract certain types of people who are more parasites than “builders”). This why it’s funny that when the Victoria 3 game was released, people realized and it became news that Communism was more effective to make your country thrive. Well, no shit? You’re playing as an external entity which only purpose is to make your State greater in a century, so the more power over the economy the more effective you are at reaching your goals. Real countries don’t work like that, and the same logic applies to companies.
- plonk 3y ago
  Reddit's profits seem to have exploded along with its awful redesigns, see [1] and [2]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/reddit-charity/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/reddit-charity/ [2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/reddits-ad-revenue-expected-to-double-to-at-least-350-million-this-year https://www.theinformation.com/articles/reddits-ad-revenue-e...
tpmx 3y ago
And Google itself is the primary instigator, with Google AdSense. Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. I'm not crying for them.
trollied 3y ago
I think curated indexes, with associated search, will come back. Yahoo! was before its time. Now we need a human-curated search engine/index that only has verified human generated content. I guess everything goes in cycles.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  We have their modernized update of that already: pay to play adwords, which is the end state of a for profit curated directory
- silvestrov 3y ago
  Problem is that the curated index becomes so valuable that money speaks louder than the quality. As long as the company is on the stock market or is made using VC money, it will result in enshittification: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai The only solution I can see is a mom-and-pop site like Craigslist which are owned by a family which don't want to optimize for money as they think they already have more than enough money.
- rfgmendoza 3y ago
  [flagged]
dabluecaboose 3y ago
Enshittification was already causing reddit to ruin google results. Reddit's new garbage redesign contains other posts from a subreddit in the page. So often times you'll google a term and get a link that looks like exactly the post you want, but it ends up being a different post in the same subreddit, and the one you were looking for was just in the suggested posts for that one. Also, reddit has ruined filtering by time somehow. I'll often try to search for information on e.g. a new update for a game and find posts from years ago about old mechanics, despite filtering to "last 30 days"
- Avamander 3y ago
  > Reddit's new garbage redesign contains other posts from a subreddit in the page. StackOverflow has done that for a while, by linking to related or recent questions (which obviously aren't the same each visit).
- tectec 3y ago
  You'd think that reddit would be smart enough to show web crawlers a cleaner version than real users, or is that not allowed? Maybe google needs whitelist some of the biggest sites on the web so they can feed searchable data into google in a more efficient way.
- elpocko 3y ago
  > Reddit's new garbage redesign Five(?) years in, it's still "new garbage redesign". I love it.
willio58 3y ago
Man that word at the end really made me chuckle - thanks for the laugh
- ciroduran 3y ago
  Sounds funny, yes, but it's part of Cory Doctorow's essay, which is spot on https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

The mainstream web seems to be crumpling under the weight of its enshittification.

by bufio 3y ago

The mainstream web seems to be crumpling under the weight of its enshittification.

None of it is due to organic interest anymore. Just gamification of attention to try and spread a viral sales pitch. Paul Graham did some napkin math on Twitter a few months ago highlighting his approach is just try to get ahead of a trending but still not quite super popular idea. It’s Shark Tank; film the show months in advance, get the viable product for sale before it airs, because you know copycats will be right behind you. All to preserve a hallucination reality will collapse without a fiat currency game to play.

biorach 3y ago
> Paul Graham did some napkin math on Twitter a few months ago highlighting his approach is just try to get ahead of a trending but still not quite super popular idea. got a link?

noman-land 3y ago

I've been referring to it for years as the corporate web but unfortunately I think these are the same things.

dv_dt 3y ago

The stupid part is that profits are really not optimized by the enshittification profit campaigns - there is so much incompetence in isolated C-suites making these decisions.

danudey 3y ago
I've said it before, but why do social media sites try to monetize through methods which provide no tangible benefits? A blue checkmark, some shitty NFT avatars, being able to badge someone's comment or post - I don't care about those things, definitely not enough to pay for them. If Reddit wanted to monetize me, give me something tangible. I'd pay $5/mo for a 'pro' tier or something if it had unlimited third-party app access on top of some other real benefits. Instead, Reddit is making everything worse (like their new, awful, web view, or their official, awful, app) and then getting mad that people don't like the shit sandwich they're being fed. Charge people for pro tiers, charge subreddits for 'pro' moderation tools (and actually build the moderation tools you say you're going to), introduce some kind of subscription service (YouTube Premium, Discord Nitro, that kind of thing) that actually benefits both users and subreddit moderators. Let subreddits provide perks to community members who are willing to contribute, or be able to make them subscription-only (or posts and comments only by subscribers) and the money will roll in. Generally just make the site better and people will appreciate that. Don't isolate us from the apps we like and then tell us "we're doing it because we care", because no one believes that.
- tayo42 3y ago
  you can pay 5dollars a month for premium and not get ads along with some other minor features already
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Because it's hard to create tangible benefits. Reddit doesn't want to have any functionality that makes the site hard to use. They don't want to say, limit how much you can post because you're making content for free for them and keeping other people engaged. Minor quality of life improvements are easily addressed with browser plugins like RES. It has to be something that can't be provided that way. So what you get is very niche features like the ability to load more than 500 commments and a shiny badge.
- samstave 3y ago
  Reddit can eat a bag of dicks. I ran /r/conspiracy for more than a decade - and when I was setting policy to have that sub be a-political, and some other mods complaing about their pecking order in the mod list, I was restructuring the mod list at the request of mods, then an admin's alt account 'complained' (and this mod was the actual mod who requested the org change) and an admin cam in, ousted me, and put said account in charge. That account is assuradly an admin alt account throwaway.
- sb52191 3y ago
  I think the question is what are the tangible benefits people would actually pay for? Social media companies have the incentive to figure out how to make more money from their product. I think the fact that none of them have really proposed any pro-tier that is adopted by a majority of users shows that most people aren't really willing to pay for anything they provide.
  - leadingthenet 3y ago
    They’ve never even tried, so how could they know for sure?
- balder1991 3y ago
  I think it’s the same reason countries don’t simply get better as we expect they should: there’s no omnipotent entity with that exact goal in mind. Instead, we have a lot of people just going for their own interests, playing politics or corporate game, moved by vanity or greed etc. which often do more harm than good for the company’s supposed goals (not even mentioning larger companies tend to attract certain types of people who are more parasites than “builders”). This why it’s funny that when the Victoria 3 game was released, people realized and it became news that Communism was more effective to make your country thrive. Well, no shit? You’re playing as an external entity which only purpose is to make your State greater in a century, so the more power over the economy the more effective you are at reaching your goals. Real countries don’t work like that, and the same logic applies to companies.
plonk 3y ago
Reddit's profits seem to have exploded along with its awful redesigns, see [1] and [2]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/reddit-charity/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/reddit-charity/ [2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/reddits-ad-revenue-expected-to-double-to-at-least-350-million-this-year https://www.theinformation.com/articles/reddits-ad-revenue-e...

tpmx 3y ago

And Google itself is the primary instigator, with Google AdSense. Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. I'm not crying for them.

trollied 3y ago

I think curated indexes, with associated search, will come back. Yahoo! was before its time. Now we need a human-curated search engine/index that only has verified human generated content. I guess everything goes in cycles.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
We have their modernized update of that already: pay to play adwords, which is the end state of a for profit curated directory
silvestrov 3y ago
Problem is that the curated index becomes so valuable that money speaks louder than the quality. As long as the company is on the stock market or is made using VC money, it will result in enshittification: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai The only solution I can see is a mom-and-pop site like Craigslist which are owned by a family which don't want to optimize for money as they think they already have more than enough money.
rfgmendoza 3y ago
[flagged]

dabluecaboose 3y ago

Enshittification was already causing reddit to ruin google results. Reddit's new garbage redesign contains other posts from a subreddit in the page. So often times you'll google a term and get a link that looks like exactly the post you want, but it ends up being a different post in the same subreddit, and the one you were looking for was just in the suggested posts for that one. Also, reddit has ruined filtering by time somehow. I'll often try to search for information on e.g. a new update for a game and find posts from years ago about old mechanics, despite filtering to "last 30 days"

Avamander 3y ago
> Reddit's new garbage redesign contains other posts from a subreddit in the page. StackOverflow has done that for a while, by linking to related or recent questions (which obviously aren't the same each visit).
tectec 3y ago
You'd think that reddit would be smart enough to show web crawlers a cleaner version than real users, or is that not allowed? Maybe google needs whitelist some of the biggest sites on the web so they can feed searchable data into google in a more efficient way.
elpocko 3y ago
> Reddit's new garbage redesign Five(?) years in, it's still "new garbage redesign". I love it.

willio58 3y ago

Man that word at the end really made me chuckle - thanks for the laugh

ciroduran 3y ago
Sounds funny, yes, but it's part of Cory Doctorow's essay, which is spot on https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/