cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27708324
The long-term effects of tech enshitification are becoming apparent in how people perceive software bug reports. A software defect that would have been easily regarded as a bug in the 1990s is now seen as software functioning normally and as expected. The rise of enshitification and fall of software quality has conditioned consumers to unwittingly lower their standards of quality.
In the case of millennials and gen-z, they are starting off with a baseline of low standards as they were immersed in enshitified tech from the beginning.
Observation ①: Software ignores user’s instructions. The enshitification-era perception→ “not a bug”
The Lemmy web client enables users to generally block whole instances in their settings. Users can also subscribe to specific communities. The web client supports user input to block a whole instance while simultaneously subscribing to a community on that blocked instance.
People with a history of exposure to well engineered software naturally expect treatment that simultaneously accommodates all user instructions. The only way to honor both of the user’s instructions in this scenario is to prioritise the specific instruction to subscribe to a particular Lemmy community above the general instruction to block the node that hosts it.
To invert that priority necessarily entails disregarding the user’s specific instruction to subscribe to the community. This is what Lemmy does today. A machine that silently disregards user instructions without even so much as any sort of notice to the user can only be regarded as a poorly designed application that disservices the user if your exposure to technology pre-dates the era of enshitification (pre-2000s).
Reaction to this bug report shows the result of a devolution in perceptions of software quality. To be clear, Lemmy is not enshitified because enshitification is more of a consequence of conflicts of interest. Lemmy devs most likely simply failed to be adequately meticulous, yielding an honest bug. However, enshitification has downgraded users’ standard of quality so they cannot identify a defect when they see it.
Google demonstrated a parallel analogue to this. I used to search using dejanews before Google bought it. The search engine honored my queries. In particular, negations were respected. That is, searching “foo -bar” would yield results that do not contain the token “bar”. Likewise in Google early on. Today Google generally scraps the negation. You negate a word and Google nannies you by not only showing results that the include the negated word but in fact Google internally rewrites the query to suit its business interest.
The population accepts it. Google is still the top search engine. People have become conditioned to accept machines that ignore their instructions.
Observation ②: Lemmy deceives senders on status of msg delivery. The enshitification-era perception→ “not a bug”
Gen-Xers have an expectation that non-defective software is truthful. When a machine lies to the human user, it’s a defect. It is a most obnoxious kind of defect in the context of communication from human to human because of the importance of knowing whether a message is delivered. A false message about delivery can cause embarrassment, outrage, or loss of respect toward another human -- when in fact the machine is to blame.
Example: Bob blocks the Lemmy.World instance. Alice@Lemmy.World DMs Bob. To Alice, the message appears to be delivered. Nothing signals to Alice to indicate non-delivery. And nothing signals Bob that an attempt was made. Alice is deceived about the delivery and Bob is deceived about what to expect because blocking an instance does not block everything from the instance (e.g. public comments from LW users are still presented to Bob). Bob would not naturally expect a DM directed specifically to him to be blocked when public comments from the same person are shown to him.
Yet in this enshitification era, a significant number of people regard the deception to Alice and the astonishingly baffling contradiction of behaviour as software functioning as expected.
People born before the 90s tended to be disgusted with the idea of email servers that silently blackhole email, which accepts an email for delivery but then throws it away without anyone knowing. Then Reddit comes along with their rampant practice of shadow banning, which is even more abusive than blackholing because the deception of false delivery is bolstered by showing the user their own msg where it was sent to proactively maintain the deception.
I believe Reddit did a lot of damage there by conditioning the younger generation to accept being lied to about the comms status of message delivery.
Just as smoking changes personalities, so does enshitification
A study found that cigarette smoking actually modifies the personality of the user to become more accepting of filth. This is because the filth of cigarettes is unavoidable. Ashes are very lightweight and get carried everywhere. Ashtrays catch a majority but there are always some ashes in sight as well as cigarette butts. A smoker would have to have an unlikely high level of OCD cleanliness to counter it. So their personality gives. Smokers just become accepting of filth.
Enshitification of technology has the same propensity to modify people’s personality to accept the burdens it brings. Those who solve CAPTCHA become increasingly more willing to solve them. The industry of all things enshitified is banking on this effect. The more willing people become, the better enablers they become which supports current and future manifestations of enshitification.
As an enshitification resister, I have the burden of writing paper letters instead of email or web. It’s comparable to resisting cigarettes to not be conditioned to accept a filthly environment, but with more effort.
The fix
I don’t see the onslaught of enshitification being fixed. Software quality is worse as Ada loses popularity. But I believe if more people would read Tim Wu’s Tyranny of Convenience essay it would perhaps get more people to loosen their grip on convenience and the addiction thereof. The grip on convenience is a death-like grip as enshitification enablers refuse to acknowledge their own role in it.
In any case, this needs to be studied. Enshitification will proliferate non-stop if we don’t gain understanding on why consumers accept it.
You’ve got your Xs and Zs confused.
boomers: assembly, c, vax vms
gen-X: text terminals, emacs, RMS’ principles, proper high level langs, design first then code, OOD/OOP, UML
millenials: GUIs only, javascript, IDEs, facebook addiction
gen-Z: GUIs only, FB addiction, snapchat, programming by asking chatGPT to write a program, programming by drag-and-drop.
Uh-huh, whatever you say lead brains, maybe get off Facebook/TikTok/whatever you old people use for a bit and smell the roses: FOSS is reaching new heights, Vim, Tmux, i3, gopher/gemini is all gen-z. There are plenty of people out there reasoning about design and software dev better than ever before at a much higher complexity level and plenty of low level C chads, just look at the kinds of insane attacks we have now and the sheer complexity of security.
I know C myself and I can read a bit of x86 Assembly for reversing and that's all just from hobbies to me as my job is more GRC side of things.
On top of all that we got over the OOP brainrot and left Java in the dustbin of history where it belongs, picking up Python on the way. UML is still very much taught, so is actual proper parallelism, your average Gen-X melts at the sight of a semaphore, and your average millennial at a for loop.
On top of all that we got self-hosted and homelabbing and actual politicization of FOSS and open willingness to push back against corpos, we go where Stallman never dared and honor the legacy of his ideas, and we don't go where he did bother, like his age of consent thing, not repeating the mistakes of the past.
That’s your gen buddy. Gen-x is Usenet, IRC, not this enshitified advertising-rich garbage that millennials and gen-z got easily baited into. There are now public universities that depend on Facebook for communication. Students w/out FB accts are excluded from that content, but it’s only a problem for gen-Xers returning to uni for an extra degree because /all/ gen-z is on FB anyway. Not a single student among the young pushes back against it. It’s sad to see.
New heights in easy-to-use dumbed down UIs and a stupid amount of resources are going toward phone platforms that are vulnerable & obsolescent by design. At the same time, there has been a steep decline in terminal apps for proper platforms. The only terminal app for Lemmy is broken. Yet there are many phone apps for Lemmy. Gen-z has suckered for the smartphone hysteria.
Gopher is before your time. Your gen was not wise enough to adopt Gemini, which is why we are still chained to an enshitified web.
Nonsense. They go straight to code. No design. Managers actually block devs from doing model work now.
Yikes. Shit language that gives meaning to whitespace. At the same time, gen-z lost sight of the single most important language, Ada, which was “too complex” for brains conditioned on easy GUIs and shiny buttons. So you needed a dumbed down and watered down replacement: rust. This is the same reason LaTeX is a dying art. Gen-z wants the easiest path: WYSIWYG.
Bullshit. You bent over to lick Microsoft’s boots. Gen-z dances for MS and Google. Most unis lost the competency to self-host email. They outsource to Google and MS now. Gen-z lacks the discipline to reject MS and Google mail servers, which blocks homelabs on the basis of IP reputation. Pushovers have been bred on such a large scale that there isn’t enough pushback to take back the self-serving power gen-x had w/home servers. Gen-X unis were self-sufficient w/out dependency. Campuses were not dependant on tech giants like they are now. It’s sad to see the competency drain away as schools set a poor example of capability and self-sufficiency.
Universities are not leaders anymore. They used to teach gen-X what industry was doing wrong so students could make it better. Now modern day universities are followers.. they look at what industry is doing, and factory-train students to accommodate.
On a recent visit to a college of science and engineering (~5 or so years ago), every student had a laptop running Windows or iOS. Not a single student running linux or the like. Also not a single UNIX or linux lab was in the school. There was strong resistance to LaTeX and text editors. These future science/tech students clung to Google Docs for writing scientific papers. It was sad to see.
Ok grandpa, let's get you back to bed now, maybe you can tell us how you decided to curse the world with JavaScript again or why every Linux distro before zoomer devs took over in 2015 sucks ass after you get some rest.
Phone apps being there for Lemmy is because everyone has a phone for their bank etc., you don't have to like it but it's the truth. I agree on your bits with university campuses, but the bleakness you describe is far from universal, heck even I know LaTeX.
It's true our gen has fewer power users, and there are fewer hackers today, but those who exist would give anyone past and present a run for their money, because they had to go so much more out of their way to learn this stuff, and the stuff itself has gotten so much more complex than it ever was with far more layers of abstraction.