DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow
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The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things b...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5431344

The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. It doesn’t have to be this way. Enshittification occurs when companies gobble each other up in an orgy of mergers and acquisitions, reducing the internet to “five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four” (credit to Tom Eastman!), which lets them endlessly tweak their back-ends to continue to shift value from users and business-customers to themselves. The government gets in on the act by banning tweaking by users - reverse-engineering, scraping, bots and other user-side self-help measures - leaving users helpless before the march of enshittification. We don’t have to accept this! Disenshittifying the internet will require antitrust, limits on corporate tweaking - through privacy laws and other protections - and aggressive self-help measures from alternative app stores to ad blockers and beyond!

  • dan80English
    3·
    9 months ago

    What happened to DuckDuckGo?

    • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
      115·
      9 months ago

      DuckduckGo is basically a frontend for bing with some privacy marketing added to it. It still sends microsoft trackers. They are all so bad because of enshittification.

      Google and bing are here.

      Abuse users to benefit business customers

      • steakmeout@aussie.zoneEnglish
        72·
        9 months ago

        This is not correct. I think what you maybe referring to is an older dig by Brave and brave redditors when they noticed DDG were allowing MS trackers in specific cases.

        DDG explained that it was difficult to resolve due to the way MS engages cross-site tracking but it has since been rectified.

        Also, research has proven this was not some shady deal between MS and DDG.

        https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-duckduckgo-gates-track-idUSL1N3792HE

        • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
          32·
          9 months ago

          This is not correct. While you may be correct about DDG not sending tracking to MS currently they do have a history of doing that. That does not change the technical fact that DDG is a frontend for Bing with a privacy focus, therefore they are just as subject to enshittification as Bing because their results are Bing results with a different User interface. DDG may be better from a privacy perspective than Bing but they are still subject to enshittification.

          • steakmeout@aussie.zoneEnglish
            21·
            9 months ago

            Why are you lying? I literally shared a well-researched article disproving your statement.

            • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
              12·
              9 months ago

              I am not lying. You are nitpicking a piece of my argument and then surmising that the rest of my argument doesn’t hold. The details of if they are currently blocking tracking is largely irrelevant to my point. I agree with you but you are misdirecting my words into your own ideas.

              • steakmeout@aussie.zoneEnglish
                2·
                9 months ago

                No that’s what you’re doing. I fucking posted evidence you’re wrong and you’re ignoring it.

                • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
                  13·
                  9 months ago

                  In other words, I hear and agree with the facts of what your saying but disagree with the implied conclusion of the facts. I am now disengaging as it is clear you are acting emotionally to my rational argument.

    • FauxPseudo @lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Well, the thing that gets me all the time is that you can no longer “-” a word. I’m frequently looking for stuff that doesn’t contain a word. That feature is completely gone now.