this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I'm with the OP. I just gave up on tomshardware pages entirely, even with ublock origin, reader mode, and other tricks. The enshitification just makes it to difficult to garner the info I want, and it's easier to find it elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Where else do you like find that kind of info? I still have a Tom's Hardware shaped hole in my heart what needs fillin'

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

Anandtech. Oh, wait!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Here you go. A beautiful and open source news site article text scraper called "newswaffle" Now feel free as you browse the tomshardware articles with all that crap cut right out. I love it! Let me know if you are interested in how this works.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's pretty impressive. I've been using Omnivore but newswaffle might work better. I like the open source existence. Did you find it or are you the developer?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I am a part of the Gemini protocol community. Newswaffle is a service hosted on the Gemini protocol to render web pages as gemtext (a simplified variant of markdown). Newswaffle the web article scraper is developed by Acidus. Here is newswaffles github .

I'm not a developer for it however I am one of the few people on this planet who actively use it and have had many email conversations with the dev over the years. Some of my suggestions made it into their services like lowtechmagazine be added to main newswaffle page and the simple English Wikipedia being added to their wikipedia gemtext mirror.

The github you linked is actually to the portal.mozz.us which is a seperate project that let's me share Gemini protocol stuff like newswaffle over the web with regular people who dont really know about or understand Gemini and the small net. portal.mozz.us is developed and hosted by Michael Lazar (Mozz)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

What are you reading on? I'm using my phone and stock android. It looks fine, no more ads than a local paper might have.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Mix of Firefox derivatives on LineageOS, or Cromite. Firefox or ungoogled chrome on a desktop.

Try reading tomshardware with ublock origin on, and without using a reader mode or other trick I couldn't get past it's adblock detector and Captchas (on VPN). That was several years ago so I just stopped visiting. My mental blocklist persay. Looks like it's more accessible now, but I'll probably still avoid it.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

A big point is that all written tech news has been going downhill for ages. Anandtech just closed, in case y'all missed it.

They simply can't keep up with SEO blogspam, social media and ad enshittification.

Gamers Nexus is this weird intersection of old and new, like an old school hardware outlet that grew up on YouTube. They're lucky in that respect, not many outlets are so fortunate.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Plus he has a following of people who like his take on being open and to the point. It feels like a breeze of fresh air sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There used to be tons of outlets like that. Techreport was stellar with methedology and transparency, I even wrote some articles as a side thing for HardOCP, and the owner of that site was very blunt.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Tech Jesus is awesome

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago

I didn't know this community existed until I saw this article on the front page. I think it's awesome. Subscribed. I'll even withstand the shit emoji, which I absolutely hate.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Should someone tell Steve about adblock?

[–] [email protected] 139 points 1 month ago

Yes, but their point about how awful the website is without adblock is still valid.

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 month ago

Gamers Nexus is making a point about what it's like as a consumer. Obviously they know how to block ads, but they're looking out for other people, not themselves

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Oh no no, you can't use that. That's piracy 'member?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I know you're joking and referencing Linus, but you can consider it piracy and still be ok with doing it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Saying that like Linus hasn’t been pro piracy for as long as I remember

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just out there raw dawgging the internet and asking why there's weird stuff showing up

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The problem is that we used to "rawdog the internet", including Tom's Hardware, and there wasn't a problem, but now there is. Enshitification is only understandable when compared with an internet where shit like this didn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

He's just scrolled to the bottom of the article? I can see the comments button

That said I do hate sites like this and yeah, I can use ad blockers but it's easier just to avoid the website

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Easier? Really?? I disagree. An Ad blocker has 0 cognitive weight, just a few cpu cycles and ..voilà! Meanwhile, avoiding the site, to me, means reading a thread on Lemmy without opening the link. Something I do oftentimes, but not always.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Back to you Steve

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

I tried to follow them via RSS. It's much more readable... However they just regurgitate so much shit from other sites it's not really even worth reading anymore.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I just block sites like that from by browser. They’ll get one hit from me to see what they’re about and they’re gone. If more people did this, this wouldn’t be a problem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do this too but it really looks like OP scrolled to the bottom to make a Lemmy post.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yes it does. Agreed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How do you do it? I've been thinking about just blacklisting some sites altogether from my search, but couldn't find a solution to do it across most big search engines - duckduckgo and Google - that I use. Also plus if it is just a simple click on a result.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I generally do this but I only ever use the internet from my phone. Haven’t used a computer in years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I mainly browse on PC, and have an Android, but thanks for the effort nonetheless.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Works fine for me? I looked up a random article and got death stranding graphics testing. All the ads were in text breaks with decent sized chunks of article text readable. I'm not a fan of the 1.5 paragraphs to ad ratio but it wasn't what you claimed either

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago