Enshittification

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What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

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The Internet is becoming genuinely unusable without an ad blocker (lemmy.zip)

submitted 4 months ago by sunglocto@lemmy.zip to c/enshittification@lemmy.world

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I don't know if it's just me, but browsing virtually any mainstream website without an ad blocker or with alternative frontends is becoming harder and harder to justify. It's getting to the point where adblocking isn't an optional luxury - it's a requirement to effectively get basic information about things.

Yesterday, I was trying to search some information about Ghouls from Fallout. This lead me to this Fandom wiki page which had ads on almost every corner of the website, autoplaying video in the corner, asking for my age as soon as I clicked on the site, injecting polls and random unrelated videos into the communty wiki content and being incredibly slow to browse. A query that in the past that took 5 seconds now takes 50, for what? Money?

I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate, but the sheer level of degrading quality is not OK. This is just one example of how services are completely barreling towards the shitter at 100+ MPH with no brakes or airbags. I feel some guilt for using content blockers, but that guilt is being wittled away every single day because of websites like this.

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[–] joe_cool@lemmy.ml 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://getindie.wiki and the Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I tried that, and for some reason it redirects me to an outdated version of the wiki I'm trying to browse.

Logopedia especially is one of my favorites, I just wish it moves out of Fandom. Using Indie Wiki Buddy, it pretends the current date is a few months back, which is kinda odd.

[–] joe_cool@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That is odd. Something must be broken for the wiki you tried. It's most useful when there is a real alternative like for the various minecraft wikis. Here is a full list of alternatives: https://getindie.wiki/listings/

Sometimes you just have to check ~~wikia~~ fandom because they are the only ones with an up to date page. But I'd rather avoid it.

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

It really sucks that I have to continue relying on Fandom for one of my most visited wikis.