Enshittification

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21966139

A lot of tech knowledge is jailed in #StackOverflow, #StackExchange. Too much. The tech world is very dependant on this single gate keeper. This week, freedom to access SE’s indispensible tech knowledge has been lost.

Timeline

• pre-2016: SE jailed itself inside Cloudflare
• ? - At some point SE became “openly” accessible and Cloudflare-free. But a massive #cookieWall blocked content and it was broken to a large extent. That is, in some browsers there was no way to get past the cookie wall.
• 2022 - #AnonymousOverflow was founded. This front-end platform made the cookie wall problem go away regardless of your browser and anonymity.
• 2023 - SE reverted back to Cloudflare, effectively making the need for AnonymousOverflow more dire; more important.
• This week - SE tunes the Cloudflare settings to aggressively block AnonymousOverflow instances, ultimately killing off free-world access to tech information.

Ok so I don’t need to tell you that prices for basically everything you buy have been climbing faster than they really should be

Sustained inflation has been a major problem in most major economies around the world for almost half a decade at this point, BUT there are other… sneakier ways that your spending power is being eroded, that get much less attention but probably do much more harm.

You might already know about shrinkflation, where instead of the goods you purchase just getting more expensive, they stay at the same price, but they get smaller.

Toblerone’s that look like this when they used to look like this, YouTube play buttons that looked like this now look like this, or the packets of Oreos that are half empty for some reason, and if you were ever wondering why you can’t get a nice girthy can of soda anymore, well shrinkflation is probably to blame.

The price tag may have stayed the same, but you are still getting less for your dollar, and you need to repeat your purchases more often, so in the end it’s the same thing as just raising prices.

The problem for companies is that people are starting to catch onto this… in some countries food items now need to be labelled with their total price as well as the price per kilogram of the products inside.

Now this video isn’t about regular inflation or even shrinkflation, it’s about shitflation, which is probably costing you a lot more than these other 2, while also hurting your health, wasting your time, and just being a massive inconvenience.

“The average American,” Zuckerberg says, “has fewer than three friends, fewer than three people they would consider friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's something like 15 friends or something.”

Zuck thinks AI should fill this demand. The future isn’t the Metaverse anymore. The future is Meta’s phantom AIs that will pal around with you and slake your thirst for social interactions. It’s like Mark Zuckerberg heard about Zombie Internet Theory and decided it was a feature, not a bug.

And I guess I’m just curious who possibly wants this future. Who is this for? Why? You have all the money in the world. Why can’t you focus on building something interesting? Or at least just stop degrading your own existing product?

I suspect Mark Zuckerberg’s phantom-friend-network will follow the same route as his ghost-town of a metaverse. He’ll spend tens of billions chasing a future that no one actually wants.

I do not want AI companions to replace or augment my actual friendships. That sounds hollow, pathetic, sad. A world where we have four times as many AI friends as real friends is a world where we have just, collectively, given up.

And I don’t think this is a radical statement either. A future filled with AI companions is plainly a dystopia to be avoided, not a benchmark to strive for.

Googling about an event in a Europen micro-nation, I ended up in an archive of the 1957 LIFE magazine. I was shocked at how reminiscent it is of modern news website, with advertisement everywhere that does its best to blend in and pretend it is content.

The next generation of "smart" TVs, that nobody asked for:

"LG TVs will soon leverage an AI model built for showing advertisements that more closely align with viewers' personal beliefs and emotions. The company plans to incorporate a partner company’s AI tech into its TV software in order to interpret psychological factors impacting a viewer, such as personal interests, personality traits, and lifestyle choices. The aim is to show LG webOS users ads that will emotionally impact them."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7204240

A few days ago I sent a GDPR request to some company to delete my personal data. They said to install their app and send a ticket from the app. The email was sent from the email address to which the account is registered. Is this even legal?

"Good day,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the deletion of your account.

Please contact us in the application to delete your account and verify your information.

If you have any further questions, we are at your disposal."

Catherynne M. Valente

https://substack.com/@catvalente

Google offered three options: $50 cash money, a $100 credit to Google's online store, or a free battery replacement....

Bharath wanted me to know that I was eligible for the money and it would soon be in my hands... once I performed a small, almost trivial task: giving some company I had never heard of my name, address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, and bank account details...

To get the cash, I had to create an account with something called "Payoneer." This is apparently a reputable payments company, but I had never heard of it, and much about its operations is unclear...

And though Google promised "no transaction fees," Payoneer appears to charge an "annual account fee" of $29.95... but only to accounts that receive less than $2,000 through Payoneer in any consecutive 12-month period.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19813319

The Dangers of For-Profit (Creative) Software | EndVertex

CrowdSec "Community" offering only gets worse and worse!

First, they had raised a paywall around querying details on IP addresses that triggered Alerts. Only 30 queries per week for the "Community".

Now, they have extended that paywall to cover the whole Alerts feature! Only 500 alerts per month for the "Community"!

Enshitification meets cybersecurity!

While onboarding with Aftermath, I went on a tangent, laying bare all my frustrations with manga-reading apps while pitching a blog. After spewing a word salad for what felt like a century, I was met with horrified expressions from my colleagues. The leading cause for concern wasn’t my pitch (thank god) but my casual comparison of the manga-reading ecosystem to streaming subscription services with the bonus of predatory practices rife in live service games. Reading the latest chapter of your favorite series involves jumping through a series of overcomplicated hoops that include microtransactions and earning points.

The source of my ire are Square Enix’s MangaUp and Kondansha’s K Manga. Like every good drug dealer, K Manga and Manga Up let you read the first couple chapters of a series for free. After that, you have to play ball with their respective ticketed and microtransaction coins to read new manga chapters. Similar to Hoyoverse’s umbrella of gacha games, K Manga and Manga Up gamify reading comic books through log-in bonuses, accruing bonus points for completing assigned chapters, and “paying to win” to give yourself a modicum of freedom from their respective bullshit.