Cory Doctorow knocks it out of the park with his piece "Tiktok's enshittification". It's a 5 minute read and it explores why the internet has gone to hell over the last decade and how there is little hope it will recover and why that is not a bad thing. https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ I'm old enough to remember when the Internet wasn't a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four.
Derivative article on how ChatGPT is going to destroy the knowledge of the internet and destroy expertise. (38 minute read per author) https://castlebridge.ie/insights/chatgpt-and-the-enshittening-of-knowledge/
Very good and depressing read. TL;DR version, Amazon, Google, FB, and Tiktok are just like any other company. They start providing a good service at a fair value and through greed they eventually destroy themselves by getting away from what made them popular. Instead they alienate viewers by forcing them to content they don’t want and siphon money from content creators who have to pay for the privilege for clicks.
Weird. Safaris reader says 30 mins while the other reader extension i use on desktop said 16. I let it read to me on 1.5x. First article was well written and had many footnotes to insights I've longed missed in a "journalistic" op/ed. On the topic of the quality of media analysis, corporate news and punditry are a couple steps shy of becoming a faceless AI hydra. Instead of feeds, they regurgitate talking point slop with a garnish of hot takes. Hot takes makes your blood boil while the slop cools you down enough to discourage you from disengaging (Stephen AI Smith). Maybe autopopulate a 80/20 comments section to boot. That's the enshittified state and not the original bait product. Speaking of chatAI, it reminds me of Oracles from Greek myths. Visit the church of Zuck, Bezos, or Alphabet for your unique tailored answer. Could be gift or curse, but spurn the Gods at your peril! Is societal enlightenment cyclical? Our foundations of democracy were written by dead folks 2000 years ago. Maybe nannybot is needed to prop it all up.
