Everything is Shit: Tracking the Great Enshittening

[Fudge Nuggets 19455]

[David Dennison 19538]

2 hours ago, Incredulity said:

Cognitive dissonance level 1000

Now tell us about supply side economics.

[Incredulity 11876]

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Now tell us about supply side economics.

I see you’re not a fan of Field of Dreams 

[David Dennison 19538]

It insists upon itself.

[Hagbard Celine 11247]

the probably belongs in some other thread but i'm watching our capitulation to aggy and i just feel like shitting on the enshittening

https://viewfromthewing.com/fee-fury-at-sfo-green-haired-passenger-ignites-spit-fueled-standoff-with-police/

[Homercles 10206]

Ahh good ole View From The Wing.  I slot them one above SimpleFlying and for quality of points/flyer news.  Comments there are always…interesting 

[Guest]

The phone maze to talk to someone. Even if you start saying "Representative" they try to squeeze in more automated language to try to get you to just go online. 

Believe me, if I could do what I want online, I would be doing it instead of dealing with this stupid automated phone system.

[Parliament 14597]

Or how websites hide their support number REAL deep so you can’t even call it.

[NeverMarryAStripper 22297]

Don't be fooled.  It's just an old phone answering machine that uses a cassette tape and sits in a closet in an office building.  Nobody ever checks it, and you will never get a callback.

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

One thing I do like though is the service where you can call, record your name and they have your phone number, and they call you when it's your turn to talk to someone rather than wait on hold listening to the same bars of music or the same customer service refrain over and over for an hour.

Yes, that is an improvement. Nothing worse than sitting on the phone, the loop of music ends, giving you hope that it was turned off because someone is picking up and then it starts over again.

[Incredulity 11876]

4 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Nothing worse than sitting on the phone, the loop of music ends, giving you hope that it was turned off because someone is picking up and then it starts over again.

Its way worse when you are randomly disconnected after waiting for an hour on hold.

Or even worse than that is getting through, explaining the issue, getting put back on hold, then getting transferred, then explaining the issue all over from the start, then getting placed on hold, having someone else pick up, having to provide all the information again, getting told you are being transferred, then getting disconnected.   That's the worst.

[F250 29201]

1 minute ago, Incredulity said:

Its way worse when you are randomly disconnected after waiting for an hour on hold.

Or even worse than that is getting through, explaining the issue, getting put back on hold, then getting transferred, then explaining the issue all over from the start, then getting placed on hold, having someone else pick up, having to provide all the information again, getting told you are being transferred, then getting disconnected.   That's the worst.

It sounds like you were listening in on my recent call to AT&T.

[Braff Zacklin 13676]

 

38 minutes ago, F250 said:

40 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Its way worse when you are randomly disconnected after waiting for an hour on hold.

Or even worse than that is getting through, explaining the issue, getting put back on hold, then getting transferred, then explaining the issue all over from the start, then getting placed on hold, having someone else pick up, having to provide all the information again, getting told you are being transferred, then getting disconnected.   That's the worst.

It sounds like you were listening in on my recent call to AT&T.

I was on smoko.

[rpspeed 1495]

 Because a $23 coke isnt enough

[Buzzrock 15136]

I haven’t read the whole thread so this has likely been covered, but it’s fucking annoying how all the streaming video services try to entice you to use their service when you’re already watching their service. YouTube is probably the worst, with the tiles that appear on screen before you’ve even finished the current video, but I’ve noticed that Apple TV+ shows me trailers for other Apple shows before the show I chose to watch. And you can’t get 5 seconds into the credits before they are thing to get you to click on the next thing. Enough already.

That general vibe seems to be pervasive across the internet experience now, just constantly being marketed and sold to.

[Bevo 13890]

7 minutes ago, rpspeed said:

 Because a $23 coke isnt enough

Ha, I was just flying out of Spokane on American. We missed a flight at the same airport a few years ago because a snow storm caused us to have less than an hour before our flight which they said wasn't enough time for our luggage to make it. So this time, we didn't hit any traffic and got to the airport 3:00hrs early. You apparently can't check in your luggage on American at that airport until 2hrs before your flight. So apparently, you have to check in between 2hrs and 1hr for your flight otherwise you are fucked.

 

Anyway, we were stuck with our luggage and had already returned the rental car and there was nothing to eat or do except wait an hour in the unpadded chairs in front of ticketing. Finally, we check in and go upstairs to wait the additional 2hrs and in the American terminal there was a Starbucks and a sports bar. We went to the sports bar and had a club sandwich and water - $25 each. So with tax and tip, we spent $60 for 2 crappy sandwiches. And after we had finished our meals and since we were not drinking, we were asked to pay and leave to get other patrons in the door. I looked at my phone. We still had an hour and a half to kill.

Then, our flight was delayed, we missed our connection and ended up getting home at midnight last night just to go back to work this morning. I guess I should be happy that our Boeing didn't fall apart mid-air. I loathe flying.

[Guest]

Nice search results Google. Be a shame if I saw anything that wasn't "Sponsored"

[immamac 44346]

42 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Nice search results Google. Be a shame if I saw anything that wasn't "Sponsored"

Google is struggling big time. They are seriously in danger of going completely out of business within the next 5 years if they don't find a way to make real revenue outside of search advertisement and plastering ads all over the place. Display advertisement doesn't work and everyone is catching wise to it. 

[Incredulity 11876]

56 minutes ago, immamac said:

They are seriously in danger of going completely out of business within the next 5 years

I have no counter argument, nor an argument in favor of this theory.  That would be a huge HOLY SHIT moment.  Really hard to overstate the impact that would have on the economy and financial markets.

[immamac 44346]

Just now, Incredulity said:

I have no counter argument, nor an argument in favor of this theory.  That would be a huge HOLY SHIT moment.  Really hard to overstate the impact that would have on the economy and financial markets.

It's all circular spend. it wouldn't have much of an impact, marketing budgets aren't going away, spending those budgets on display advertisement is. Google isn't good at anything else besides display ads, I haven't used google for search in months, it's the same or worse than bing, duckduckgo, pick your search engine. All that is left is their monopolistic and anti-competitive ad moat which is dwindling.

Gemini and google's whole pushing subscriptions down peoples throats to keep using the shit that used to be free isn't backfiring just yet, but as soon as people realize that centralized services are way more expensive and not really any easier to use they will bail on that as well.

Do you know how easy it is to have a near feature parity version of google photos? Home | Immich it's pretty damned easy. It is getting easier with companies like this putting out hardware to make it one push. Umbrel - Personal home cloud and OS for self-hosting

[Incredulity 11876]

14 hours ago, Bevo said:

I loathe flying.

 

Airports are one of the worst places on earth.  Lounge access makes marginal difference to the experience at best.  Fucking hate it with a passion.

[Fudge Nuggets 19455]

I’m always amused by the people that complain about how expensive food is in airports.  Did you not know you were going to the airport, can you not go a few hours without shoveling food into your mouth?  Plan ahead ffs.

[Captainant 28538]

5 hours ago, immamac said:

It's all circular spend. it wouldn't have much of an impact, marketing budgets aren't going away, spending those budgets on display advertisement is. Google isn't good at anything else besides display ads, I haven't used google for search in months, it's the same or worse than bing, duckduckgo, pick your search engine. All that is left is their monopolistic and anti-competitive ad moat which is dwindling.

Gemini and google's whole pushing subscriptions down peoples throats to keep using the shit that used to be free isn't backfiring just yet, but as soon as people realize that centralized services are way more expensive and not really any easier to use they will bail on that as well.

Whenever google bites the dust, it's going to seriously fuck up the web engineering and online advertising space. It's basically google driving much of that ecosystem and BILLIONS in advertising spending every year.

I don't think it's a bad thing for that to happen, but I also kind of think it already would have happened if we had any sort of decent data privacy laws in the US. Google's (and FB/Meta's) entire business strategy has been unravelling since the EU started enforcing GDPR, and we are seeing the subjective quality of ads and services dropping because the platform providers can't do (as effectively) what they were doing before in terms of microtargeting.

Quote

Do you know how easy it is to have a near feature parity version of google photos? Home | Immich it's pretty damned easy. It is getting easier with companies like this putting out hardware to make it one push. Umbrel - Personal home cloud and OS for self-hosting

And while I 100% agree that you're usually better off rolling your own version of a thing.... Bruh. Most people can't even work a damn Chromecast, much less set up and maintain an in-home server. Even with that Umbrel product (which does look really nice, gonna have to look into one of those....) it's still on the end user to actually install, configure, and administer those application on their box. Hell if it were between buying a family member one of those, or just paying for a google photos subscription for literally the rest of their life, I would go with the subscription lol.

Fuck being family tech support

edit: it does seem like the Umbrel is pretty overpriced for what you get though, I found similarly specced boxes on Amazon and AliExpress for like $200

Edited March 12 by Captainant

[Buzzrock 15136]

Is Google not making any money with YT/YTTV/GCP?

[Bevo 13890]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Whenever google bites the dust, it's going to seriously fuck up the web engineering and online advertising space. It's basically google driving much of that ecosystem and BILLIONS in advertising spending every year.

I don't think it's a bad thing for that to happen, but I also kind of think it already would have happened if we had any sort of decent data privacy laws in the US. Google's (and FB/Meta's) entire business strategy has been unravelling since the EU started enforcing GDPR, and we are seeing the subjective quality of ads and services dropping because the platform providers can't do (as effectively) what they were doing before in terms of microtargeting.

And while I 100% agree that you're usually better off rolling your own version of a thing.... Bruh. Most people can't even work a damn Chromecast, much less set up and maintain an in-home server. Even with that Umbrel product (which does look really nice, gonna have to look into one of those....) it's still on the end user to actually install, configure, and administer those application on their box. Hell if it were between buying a family member one of those, or just paying for a google photos subscription for literally the rest of their life, I would go with the subscription lol.

Fuck being family tech support

edit: it does seem like the Umbrel is pretty overpriced for what you get though, I found similarly specced boxes on Amazon and AliExpress for like $200

Why would you buy from AliExpress? Oh, yeah, this is the great enshittening thread.

[52-80 19377]

12 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Why would you buy from AliExpress? Oh, yeah, this is the great enshittening thread.

When you want to subvert late-stage capitalism because you’re poor, but you’re still greedy and consumerist…

[Captainant 28538]

48 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Why would you buy from AliExpress? Oh, yeah, this is the great enshittening thread.

I don't buy stuff from Ali Express, I more meant to make the point of the ubiquity of devices at a price point less than half of the Umbrel with the same specs

34 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

When you want to subvert late-stage capitalism because you’re poor, but you’re still greedy and consumerist…

1) I'm not poor lol, ask Phil and Thad if you don't believe me

2) There is no ethical capitalism, so sure you got me on that one I guess?

3) It's possible to give a shit about wealth inequality and enshittification without being poor. I understand that this is a foreign concept to you, and that's ok. 

Edited March 12 by Captainant

[52-80 19377]

49 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Is Google not making any money with YT/YTTV/GCP?

the theory of google going away soon….sounds good; doesnt work. 

from 2019 to 2023, search ad revenue went from 100B to 205B. yt ads 20B to 31B. yttv (and other subs and businesses) 21B to 33B. cloud 13B to 35B.  

search was the biggest gainer (2x) after cloud (3x).  but in profitability, search has an insane 50% operating profit.  all the other businesses, including cloud, run at a loss!

cost per impression — or how much they charge for ads — remain constant, ie its been as effective for advertisers over time.  so search continues to print cash and its not going to change anytime soon.

 

7 hours ago, Incredulity said:

 

Airports are one of the worst places on earth.  Lounge access makes marginal difference to the experience at best.  Fucking hate it with a passion.

imo the flying experience has gotten better. 10-15 years ago, you can pay for the best seat on the plane and half the time it was a recliner. now, flat beds everywhere, some even ensconced in secluded pods. on united xcont “premium service”…they still had to bring you a personal media player device! i instead brought along ipod and laptop full of movies. nowadays i get by with gigantic IFE selection available on every carrier. 

[immamac 44346]

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

Whenever google bites the dust, it's going to seriously fuck up the web engineering and online advertising space. It's basically google driving much of that ecosystem and BILLIONS in advertising spending every year.

I don't think it's a bad thing for that to happen, but I also kind of think it already would have happened if we had any sort of decent data privacy laws in the US. Google's (and FB/Meta's) entire business strategy has been unravelling since the EU started enforcing GDPR, and we are seeing the subjective quality of ads and services dropping because the platform providers can't do (as effectively) what they were doing before in terms of microtargeting.

And while I 100% agree that you're usually better off rolling your own version of a thing.... Bruh. Most people can't even work a damn Chromecast, much less set up and maintain an in-home server. Even with that Umbrel product (which does look really nice, gonna have to look into one of those....) it's still on the end user to actually install, configure, and administer those application on their box. Hell if it were between buying a family member one of those, or just paying for a google photos subscription for literally the rest of their life, I would go with the subscription lol.

Fuck being family tech support

edit: it does seem like the Umbrel is pretty overpriced for what you get though, I found similarly specced boxes on Amazon and AliExpress for like $200

Umbrel is overpriced if you know what you are doing. It’s the perfect price for buying for the non savvy. It’s also plug and play, the app installs are plug and play too. It also supports upnp and traefik out of the box. They also have tech support which means you are off the hook. 

you can get an N100 with 8GB of RAM for sub 150 all day on Amazon and not even have to do Ali express. The ssd that comes in the umbrel isn’t a bullshit Chinese piece of shit qlc drive though. 

[52-80 19377]

…but the 747 has ended its production and is less and less in service. for that i has a sad 🥲

[immamac 44346]

7 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

the theory of google going away soon….sounds good; doesnt work. 

from 2019 to 2023, search ad revenue went from 100B to 205B. yt ads 20B to 31B. yttv (and other subs and businesses) 21B to 33B. cloud 13B to 35B.  

search was the biggest gainer (2x) after cloud (3x).  but in profitability, search has an insane 50% operating profit.  all the other businesses, including cloud, run at a loss!

cost per impression — or how much they charge for ads — remain constant, ie its been as effective for advertisers over time.  so search continues to print cash and its not going to change anytime soon.

 

imo the flying experience has gotten better. 10-15 years ago, you can pay for the best seat on the plane and half the time it was a recliner. now, flat beds everywhere, some even ensconced in secluded pods. on united xcont “premium service”…they still had to bring you a personal media player device! i instead brought along ipod and laptop full of movies. nowadays i get by with gigantic IFE selection available on every carrier. 

Googles search business is a behemoth and it’s ready to implode because it does in fact not work. Also their margins are because they own literally all the inventory and CPM payouts are in the absolute shitter and content providers are just too stupid to say nah fuck you have your dead inventory. 

google also routinely sells trash inventory and has been caught running ads nowhere and burning their customers money, yet people still buy from them. It’s actually crazy. 

[Fudge Nuggets 19455]

1 hour ago, Buzzrock said:

Is Google not making any money with YT/YTTV/GCP?

Google had net income of nearly $74bln last year.  Broke ass bitches.

[chainsaw 10291]

1 minute ago, immamac said:

Googles search business is a behemoth and it’s ready to implode because it does in fact not work. Also their margins are because they own literally all the inventory and CPM payouts are in the absolute shitter and content providers are just too stupid to say nah fuck you have your dead inventory. 

google also routinely sells trash inventory and has been caught running ads nowhere and burning their customers money, yet people still buy from them. It’s actually crazy. 

if it was your job to save Google how would you do it

[Captainant 28538]

1 minute ago, immamac said:

Googles search business is a behemoth and it’s ready to implode because it does in fact not work. Also their margins are because they own literally all the inventory and CPM payouts are in the absolute shitter and content providers are just too stupid to say nah fuck you have your dead inventory. 

google also routinely sells trash inventory and has been caught running ads nowhere and burning their customers money, yet people still buy from them. It’s actually crazy. 

There's an online advertising reckoning coming, it's hit pretty much all the writing outlets and is propagating out from there. Once folks start actually interrogating the CPM they're getting or paying, things don't seem on the up and up

[Deej 77821]

AliExpress? It's all Temu now. 

[immamac 44346]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2024/03/11/genz-dumping-google-for-tiktok-instagram-as-social-search-wins

i see big trouble on the horizon. 

[immamac 44346]

34 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

if it was your job to save Google how would you do it

I would stop pretending to be what I wasn’t. I would have kept heavily investing in personalized search and data discovery and usefulness. Instead they got distracted and have arguably wasted hundreds of billions on a bunch of side bets that are actually just not good businesses. It’s actually incredible how they are 0 for on any of their moonshots. 

when you look at their product portfolio and all the shit they do it’s impossible to even make sense of their overall business strategy other than “suck money out of tech in any way possible” 

the problem with all these companies is they have all gotten too big to make any sense anymore. They exist to make money from having money and market share that is impenetrable because of the enormous money moat they have. 

innovation is largely dead in big tech. All these companies do hundreds of releases to production a week or month, but yet the experience is just the fucking same. 

a great example is Uber. The UX is the same as 3-4 years ago. It’s still fucking impossible to reach out to your driver after a ride right after you forgot something in the car. It’s impossible to get an accurate picture of your car or driver. It’s impossible to get accurate routes or directions in the app. It’s impossible to track a lot of things, it’s impossible to indicate if you have ridden with a driver or if you liked that driver. It’s not possible to have a set of preferred drivers or riders. Etc etc etc. all things that you would think having a god damned army of 1k+ engineers would help you do. 

[Guest]

Anyone else never update apps on their phone? If I have something that is glitchy, I'm going to delete it, not update it.

If it works, I don't want to update and find that it's been "updated" with a user experience that now sucks. Used to use a podcast app that I liked. Updated it and it started showing ads all the time. Nooooope.

[Nicole44 22315]

Are high rats part of the enshittening?

 

[Brisketexan 106897]

Are high rats part of the enshittening?
 

Stoned rats is no more than a 2 on the NOLA weird-shit-o-meter.

[Braff Zacklin 13676]

Or, and sadly just as likely, a cover story for confiscated drugs that went missing.

[Nicole44 22315]

1 minute ago, Braff Zacklin said:

Or, and sadly just as likely, a cover story for confiscated drugs that went missing.

 

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Stoned rats is no more than a 2 on the NOLA weird-shit-o-meter.

I figure the least they could do if the rats are high is order them some pizza and Girl Scout cookies! FYI, Trader Joe’s has Kringles again. Hot damn. 

[Kennythetiger 9623]

On 3/12/2024 at 6:48 PM, chainsaw said:

if it was your job to save Google how would you do it

Bring back pornhub. 

[Guest]

Went to the Texas baseball game last night. 

Not enshittening: Tickets were $5 for GA. No extra fees, add-ons, etc. That's great to see.

Enshittening: Only delivered via mobile with a link that didn't work when I clicked it. No print option. Just went to the gate, showed the ticket homepage and the usher just waved me through.

[atomheartbevo 90646]

Deadspin is being turned into a gambling site, not surprising given the owners.  Deadspin has been shit for a while though.

Kotaku’s editor-in-chief bailed or was fired after being told that instead of gaming news, Kotaku has to pump out 50 gaming guide articles a week, even though Kotaku was making a profit and had plenty of traffic.  And Kotaku had their comments disabled in the process because long time users were not happy.

Edited March 24 by atomheartbevo

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Everything Everywhere All At Once Turning To Shit. That's going to be the mantra of the 2020's.

[futureman 22699]

On 3/13/2024 at 6:12 PM, Nicole44 said:

Are high rats part of the enshittening?

 

were the rats eating edibles?  you don't get high from eating raw flower.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Calling dibs on 420-BEER* for the band name.

*Big Easy Eating Rats

[immamac 44346]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Deadspin is being turned into a gambling site, not surprising given the owners.  Deadspin has been shit for a while though.

Kotaku’s editor-in-chief bailed or was fired after being told that instead of gaming news, Kotaku has to pump out 50 gaming guide articles a week, even though Kotaku was making a profit and had plenty of traffic.  And Kotaku had their comments disabled in the process because long time users were not happy.

The kotaku thing is so weird. Not sure what to think of it tbh I feel like it’s going the right way vs the wrong way with focusing on game guides instead of clickbait bullshit culture. 

[Captainant 28538]

28 minutes ago, immamac said:

The kotaku thing is so weird. Not sure what to think of it tbh I feel like it’s going the right way vs the wrong way with focusing on game guides instead of clickbait bullshit culture. 

Kotaku for all it's warts actually does some decent reporting every now and then. But I think the bigger thing is realizing that much of that industry doesn't exist in it's current "normal" without extremely low interest rates. It's hard to have a big staff of writers and editors and SMEs when there's no advertising dollars for their content anymore