Just now on Facebook the first 15 things on my feed were:
- 4 posts from friends;
- 3 posts from groups I follow; and
- 8 posts from advertisers and accounts I don't follow.
That, my friends, is enshittification.
I remember when, not long ago, 8 posts would be from friends for every 2 that weren't. It's beginning to make Facebook unusable for me. Other things on the Internet have also enshittified to near uselessness, as these three stories attest.
First, Vandenberg Coalition executive director Carrie Filipetti argues that TikTok really is the threat Congress determined it was last year, so maybe let's enforce the ban?
Imagine the following scenario. China decides to attack Taiwan, and, fearing the United States will come to Taiwan’s aid, launches preemptive strikes against American targets overseas. In the United States, Chinese operators launch drone attacks from secret bases located on more than 380,000 acres of farmland China has purchased. As the government considers its options, the 170 million American TikTok users open their feeds to thousands of bots disguised as people, rattling off anti-American propaganda; encouraging young students desperate for meaning to fight their own government; and spreading disinformation at such a rapid rate that it is impossible to discern fact from fiction.
This scenario seemed plausible enough to Congress when it weighed TikTok’s future. Lawmakers were alarmed when Osama bin Laden’s terrorist screed “Letter to America” spread on the app following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack against Israel. TikTok denies it actively pushes political content, but the company only worsened Congress’s concerns about influence operations when its app successfully urged thousands of young Americans to lobby against counter-TikTok legislation. Lawmakers reported children and teenagers flooding their phone lines, often without knowing whom they were calling or why.
Times writer Nation Taylor Pemberton digs into the infantile nihilism in the corner of the Internet that seems to have informed Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin:
The only thing that can be said conclusively about Mr. Robinson, at this moment, is that he was a chronically online, white American male.
The internet’s political communities and the open-source sleuths currently scrambling to place Mr. Robinson into a coherent ideological camp certainly won’t be content with any of this. Nor will they be satisfied with the other likelihood awaiting us: that Mr. Robinson, the son of a seemingly content Mormon family, probably possesses a mishmash of ideological stances. Some held dearly. Others not so much. They also will not be satisfied that this horrific, society-changing act of violence was most likely committed both as an ironic gesture and as a pure political statement.
If your head is spinning from the internet’s attempts to read into Mr. Robinson’s alleged choices and political identity, that’s understandable. We’ve fully stepped into a different historical moment: the age of brain-poisoning meme politics.
And finally, NNGroup's Kate Moran explains why she (and I, for that matter) continues to collect physical video discs instead of relying on ever-worsening streaming services:
What used to make analog media inconvenient now feels charming. Choosing from among a limited set of curated, favorite movies feels like a relief compared to endlessly browsing through tens of thousands of options.
With physical media, I also feel a sense of security knowing that most of my favorites are available to watch at any time. I don’t have to go hunting through multiple streaming apps to figure out which one happens to have the rights to that film this month.
But the blame for subpar streaming experiences doesn’t lie solely with streaming apps. We have to talk about “smart” TVs.
This is an example of a deceptive pattern: I purchased a display, but the manufacturer treats it as a data-collection platform without reliably delivering on its basic functionality. It’s one thing to trade my privacy for a good experience. But I should be in charge of that decision. LG has not earned its privacy invasion in this case.
So now, I have a Roku attached to my smart TV. The TV has become a dumb display like in the old days, except worse.
I'll give you a concrete example of why physical discs make more sense in many cases. A streaming service recommended that I watch Le Bureau des Légends, a taut French series about agents in the DGSE (the French equivalent of the CIA). I loved the first season, which was on the streamer that recommended it. The second season, however, was on a different streamer, and they wanted $3.99 per episode to watch it. So instead of spending $40 on each of the 4 remaining seasons, I bought a 5-disc BluRay edition for $44.99. And I can watch them any time I want.
Don't even get me started on older stuff, like the ABC series Life Goes On that has a special connection to my family and which simply doesn't exist online anywhere. Or a Joss Whedon limited series that ran 6 of its 12 episodes on HBO before vanishing entirely. HBO produced all 12, and they exist somewhere, but I may never get to see them.
I wonder, has enshittification happened before, with other technologies?