• KingScoob@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Wow, the ‘enshittification’ of the internet is really taking off now. Sites are either already dodgy, or well on their way there!

    I know this has been a bit of a slow burn for a while now, but it really feels like it’s all coming to a head suddenly.

    • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      We really gotta back decentralized platforms if we don’t want everything to become an overmonetized hellscape where all information and communication is skewed to suit business interests. I wouldn’t pay for Reddit Gold and Twitter Blue but I should send some money to the Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon folks.

  • Clown_Tempura@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Oh sweet, it’s dot.com 2.0. Grab your popcorn, it’s time for the internet to implode… again! Never ever underestimate shareholders’ willingness to self-destruct a product for short-term profit.

    • KingScoob@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Similar to what happened after the last dot com crash, it’ll be interesting to see how the internet evolves and what comes next.

    • piecat@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s called fiduciary duty and it’s why every mega company sucks.

      Cut costs by replacing cashiers with self checkout? Write a fat check to the shareholders! Then, shoplifting is becoming an even bigger issue from the self checkout… Cut costs again by preventing shoplifting by having people man the self checkout! Write another fat check to the shareholders!

      Nevermind that it would have been easier and cheaper to just keep the system we had. Looking at you, Target.

      • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Fiduciary duty is an absolute circus. Obligating companies to maximize profits at the expense of the wider society is the exact opposite of how law should work.

      • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Hey, but self-checkouts are good. Dunno how they use them at target, but at shops I go to they allow me to get to the shop, grab what I need and leave within 5 minutes.

        And not so sure with cheaper. Again from my experience, shops have a setup of 6 self-checkouts per 1 employee.

          • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            They’re only good if they pass the savings of not having to pay a person to ring up your groceries onto you

            I’m with the other person on this one. Self checkouts have really reduced the queues where I live. They’re much more compact than the cash registers and the shop near me basically doubled its cash register capacity because of them. I rarely have to wait in a queue these days.

            Tesco even has a scan as you shop service which is really convenient. You get a barcode scanner before you start shopping, then scan all products you want to buy and place them directly in your bags. At the checkout, you scan a barcode attached to the checkout machine, it prompts you to pay, you pay and leave. All your things are already bagged.

      • rodneylives@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Remember! You can’t say “fiduciary duty” without saying “douche” and “doody.”

    • Rannoch@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Forreal, what’s going on? Why does it seem like so many separate sites are suddenly so much worse/going downhill quickly?

      • ugh@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        Billionaires bought the internet and now they’re realizing that it isn’t profitable.

        • the_lennard@feddit.de
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          2 years ago

          Question is what do you do then? First, you try to reach profitability. Get out of the red by milking users and reducing costs, but there is little chance to get that really sweet ROI that you dreamt of in the last decade. What do you do next? My guess is that we will see some websites change ownership into some shadier hands in the next years. The personal data collected could still be worth something after all.

          • ugh@lemm.ee
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            2 years ago

            Do websites even make much from collecting data? There are so many trackers and only so many people. Ads are obvious, but it’s clear that relying on those two isn’t enough for revenue.

            I’m guessing that websites with a large userbase will start charging for access to their sites. It might look like the NYT, where you get your 3 free articles, sign in for more, then you’re required to pay. Free tiers won’t be a reasonable compromise like they are now.

            Will people stay and pay, or will they migrate? Most likely the former, especially for the older demo. Moving to the fediverse has been confusing enough for many of us who actually committed to learning about it. An average Twitter user wouldn’t put in this much effort.

            • Crisps@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              I’m skeptical that ads themselves actually have a return on investment. There are so many, they are almost entirely ignored. Of course the advertising companies have done a good job convincing people to buy ads. But do they work well enough to justify the cost?

              • ugh@lemm.ee
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                2 years ago

                Ads don’t make enough. I play a solitaire game that pays out money for sitting through the ads. Those ads are highly targeted and very likely to drive traffic to those other apps that say they will also pay you to play solitaire or even Candy Crush! I still only get maybe $.10 per game and sit through around 3 ads. I accidentally click ads a lot, too.

                What else are web companies going to do for revenue, though? It doesn’t really cost them anything to host ads.

      • GallowBooby@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Our entire Internet enjoyment has been heavily subsidized by venture capital for the last 30 years which hoped to monetize us more than they have been able (believe it or not).

        Now they are calling in their bets…

        • Raildrake@vlemmy.net
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          2 years ago

          How will enjoying the internet look like in the future? Lots of things we took for granted clearly weren’t, and now we’re used to a kind of internet that might just not be sustainable.

          I guess things aren’t looking too good.

          • GallowBooby@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Interesting question…probably going to be a lot more expensive for us, which will result in fewer services being used, and therefore higher amounts of service lock-in due to personal investment into specific service(s)…

      • Ragerist@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Apparently they have been living on life-support.

        I can’t claim to fully understand how it worked, but apparently as long as sites could show user growth they could attract investments, but with inflation causing interest rates to go up (and other economy hocus pocus) , that money is quickly drying up.

        I don’t know if the investors believed that if the user base could grow large enough, someone would buy the companies, or they suddenly could come up with some fantastic monetization of said user-base.

        Now as companies are listed on the stock exchange, and facing the falling investor interest, they are expected to react (aggressively) to secure future revenue.

        • CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 years ago

          Adding to what you said about interest rates: We’re at the end of a long period of cheap borrowing (very low interest rates) during which overvalued assets were used as collateral to secure loans for investments. These propped-up assets are beginning to drop to their true (intrinsic) values. In other words, speculation and irresponsible practices were propping up a house of cards that’s starting to collapse, and now investors are scrambling to cash in or cut losses wherever they can. So they’re deciding that time has run out for online platforms that promised to grow but still haven’t hit their numbers/monetization goals.

          tl;dr: Infinite money glitch got patched (because it was wreaking all sorts of financial havoc) and now investors need to end life-support for risky/unprofitable investments.

          • Matdan@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Streaming fell apart quickly, it’s so hard to find anything decent on most of them. It’s become clear they can’t curate new content as readily.

            • Ziro@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              It’ll be even worse when there are no new series to watch because all of the people who write them are on strike. The content mines are drying up.

        • Technotica@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          The internet was far more enjoyable 20 years ago, so if content goes back to being user hosted instead of corporation hosted I’ll be happy.

          • Ragerist@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            I agree. But I think spam-bots, especially backed with ChatGPT or better level AI will prevent real user generated content, on that level from 20 years ago, to resurface.

      • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        They are unable to find investment funding because boomers are retiring and taking their money out of stock market.

  • The times, they are a changin’…

    I’ve watched the internet evolve since I first logged on to CompuServe in 1990. I don’t think I have seen such a dramatic and fast change since the beginning of the WWW over crap like CompuServ.

  • -V0lD@programming.dev
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    2 years ago

    So, twitter, Reddit, Imgur, and now Gfycat are all killing itself

    Has the internet bubble finally popped?

  • Paradox@lemdro.id
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    2 years ago

    Gfycat was the only good gif hoster. The rest, tenor, giphy, etc, are all corporate buzzfeed slop, that were primarily used by dimwits to decorate their shitty blog posts with (remember the various reddit admin feature announcements that had like 300 stupid gifs in them?)

  • Jay@lemmy.tf
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    2 years ago

    Kinda glad GIFs are dying… they were beyond annoying specially in discussions. didn’t help that reddit started incorporating them into the comment section.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      2 years ago

      The other comment already mentioned that Discord uses Tenor, but you’re probably thinking of Giphy, which is another service similar to Tenor. Gfycat is a bit different, and was more like Imgur.