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Why tech platforms start to work worse... Enshittification

William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
Over time everybody notices that the smart device wants more and more of your attention.
That should be less of you attention, because it is supposed to be a smartphone. Higher efficiency when it comes to useable time.
Look at the larger desktop pc builds os versions. Constantly notifying, clinging onto you.

This documentary is about Enshittification, en what that really means.
There is also a book by Cory Doctorow who coined the term : Enshittification.

There are multiple words we can all think of : Enshittification, platform defecation , crapform decay.

The documentary is in English :
Small excerpt from documentary (10:20)
"
Lets take nurses.
To exploit desparate labor, meaning if you really desperate for money you will be automatically payed less, because you have no choice anyway, the databroker takes care of that...
"

 
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That is an interesting thought : AI assisted programming, pushed by employers, to prevent that (employees) experienced programmers form a union to protect their interests.
Because hey, with AI chatbots everybody can program. The AI bubble being used by the employers to force experienced programmers not to form a union to protect themselves from nasty managers (read employers).
 
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17:40
Reverse engineering made illegal. A law made by the USA. And forced upon the EU as well. Nice free market functioning here 😱.
Instead of having a liberal free market, the USA uses import tariffs to control the EU to protect a few big tech companies. 😡
 
William Gaatjes said:
That is an interesting thought : AI assisted programming, pushed by employers, to prevent that (employees) programmers form a union to protect their interests.
Because hey, with AI chatbots everybody can program. The AI bubble being used by the employers to force experienced programmers not to form a union to protect themselves from nasty managers (read employers).
Click to expand...
Programmers have (generally speaking) had the ability to form a union since well before this wave of AI, and haven't because they were typically more able to dictate the terms of their employment (based on what I've read in the past).
You're referring to what I believe is called "vibe coding", which can produce a functional product, the problem comes in when there's an issue and nobody actually knows how it works.
 
nakedfrog said:
Programmers have (generally speaking) had the ability to form a union since well before this wave of AI, and haven't because they were typically more able to dictate the terms of their employment (based on what I've read in the past).
You're referring to what I believe is called "vibe coding", which can produce a functional product, the problem comes in when there's an issue and nobody actually knows how it works.
Click to expand...

I think that now since the AI programming chatbot is being pushed so much, i see it everywhere. I tried it myself just for interest , but i noticed that to write good code, the person in question must know what the code does and how it works.
Still you have to use your brain and think of all situations.
Let's name as example creating a website. When the website is finished an ethical hacker can the website check for leaks and programming errors.
If data is being stored , we get front end stuff and backoffice stuff. All code that needs to be checked by an ethical hacker for sure. Even more so than with tradional written code.
If not. That can be a very dangerous situation.

Vibe coding : Indeed . Nobody knows and then there has to be reserved a lot of work hours for experienced programmers to find out what is exactly going on.
There goes the profit for the upcoming months.
 
jpiniero said:
AI is being pushed so much because of stonks.
Click to expand...
Indeed. If you mean Stock, shares.
When i look up the translation, this is fitting too : Military bombardement.

See how it is possible now to control hundreds of drones as they for example do as firework replacement, like for example in China but also other countries.
A huge cube of hundreds, nearly thousands drones. Let say these all carry a bomb.
The overhead to control such a formidable military apparatus is enormous and good to control with AI.
Forgot to add : So many small drones at once each with a bomb, kind of reminds of cluster bombs. And i thought these are forbidden.

For more information see post #1429 in "the AI discussion thread "about the AI bubble.

The AI discussion thread

Page 58 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
forums.anandtech.com
 
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It seems companies never know when to stop "innovating". They will get a product to a point where it's perfect, and instead of accepting this and leaving it alone, they need to change it to justify their existance. Facebook is a good example of that, in the fairly early days it was a pretty good platform but every time they update it, it gets worse. The code for that site is so shitty and bloated now it's unbelievable. The site is super glitchy.

Windows is another good example. They perfected it around Windows 2000. Then it started to go downhill.
 
Red Squirrel said:
It seems companies never know when to stop "innovating". They will get a product to a point where it's perfect, and instead of accepting this and leaving it alone, they need to change it to justify their existance. Facebook is a good example of that, in the fairly early days it was a pretty good platform but every time they update it, it gets worse. The code for that site is so shitty and bloated now it's unbelievable. The site is super glitchy.

Windows is another good example. They perfected it around Windows 2000. Then it started to go downhill.
Click to expand...
A windows 2000 user interface and the same speed and look and feel, combined with the modern windows NT kernel . Without enforced cloud accounts, or enforced play store accounts. That would be such a lightning fast and stable system.
Pre windows 8, Windows took care of all the 2D graphics and did an amazing stable and fast job. But after microsoft changed everything to 3D to match the UI from a kids game. It went down the drain.
The windowmanager in windows is drastically changed giving more control to the applications.

Facebook, i will never use facebook again. It is garbage and has a whole API to read out your entire system, to the level your os allows, when it comes to security. You smartphone, your pc , everything is probed for data by the facebook API.
 
You don't seem to have that problem with libre software. I wonder why it's so different than proprietary stuff? On average, the quality should be equal between them, yet there's a difference. Hmm... What could that difference be?!
 
I have noticed that Newegg and Amazon search functions have become much worse over the years, as they try to push certain sellers/products. Does this count?
 
Shmee said:
I have noticed that Newegg and Amazon search functions have become much worse over the years, as they try to push certain sellers/products. Does this count?
Click to expand...
According to Cory Doctorow (from the Tegenlicht interview) , to get as many ads as possible to show the user. The site is created in such a way that searching takes longer and the user gets presented more ads.
 
lxskllr said:
You don't seem to have that problem with libre software. I wonder why it's so different than proprietary stuff? On average, the quality should be equal between them, yet there's a difference. Hmm... What could that difference be?!
Click to expand...
I think that has to do with the mentality of many opensource software writers : "He it works, all the functionality is there and has no bugs". Then there will be no incentive to constantly update, it is stable software. There is also no manager that needs to justify his or hers 10000 dollar a month paycheck, with useless features or the same features under a different UI in the software.

But also : Nowadays there is especially with programs connected to the internet a constant desire to write updates because of security bugs in the software.
 
William Gaatjes said:
According to Cory Doctorow (from the Tegenlicht interview) , to get as many ads as possible to show the user. The site is created in such a way that searching takes longer and the user gets presented more ads.
Click to expand...

I wonder if this is why some sites make you click a million times to accomplish stuff. Facebook is horrible for that. Instead of seeing a post, and all the comments, you only see like 3 comments at a time and have to click and click and click just to see more. it's so aggravating I actually spend less time on there so it's not having the effect they want on me. Lot of news sites will do that too, have to click so much just to see more of the article. Just X out the tab and move on, I didn't want to see it that badly.

I don't get how web advertising is even still profitable, like who is paying this money? Most people run ad blockers now days.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I wonder if this is why some sites make you click a million times to accomplish stuff. Facebook is horrible for that. Instead of seeing a post, and all the comments, you only see like 3 comments at a time and have to click and click and click just to see more. it's so aggravating I actually spend less time on there so it's not having the effect they want on me. Lot of news sites will do that too, have to click so much just to see more of the article. Just X out the tab and move on, I didn't want to see it that badly.

I don't get how web advertising is even still profitable, like who is paying this money? Most people run ad blockers now days.
Click to expand...

Making websites more complex to navigate through while showing more ads at the same time , that makes sense.

There are a lot of people out there who actually think ads are important enough to watch. All of those ads. 😳
 
I just watched the documentary again, it is funny how AI supported programming is now used as a bargain method between senior programmers and their employers.
 
tedium.co

How I Made Google’s “Web” View My Default Search

Forget AI. Google just created a version of its search engine free of the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. You just need one URL parameter.
tedium.co tedium.co

tldr - to get google search without all the ai bullshit , create a new search in your browser and use this url instead -
personally i just use ddg for almost everything now, and if i'm really in a bind kagi
 
William Gaatjes said:
Yes indeed but it is an ancient NT version.
For as far as i know some new kernel features were added like Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) and other modern security features these last 10 years. Windows 10 has kernel version NT10.
Click to expand...
Ah, I thought you were mistaking Win2k for WinMe. I understand what you mean now.
 
ME's biggest issue was stability, I don't remember it looking too different than 2k, assuming it was not in the process of displaying a BSOD. 😛 Although I think it did have more "refreshed" icons and such.

I really don't know enough about GUI coding, but always thought it would be fun to make a Linux distro that looks and feels like Win2k. Call it Linux 2000.
 
Windows ME was fine compared to the consumer focused predecessors, but it shouldn't have existed with 2kpro *right there*. It was basically the same o/s, but shitty. I wasn't paying attention to computers then, so I don't know what the rationale was, but whoever decided to make ME should be bitch slapped.
 
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