Link tags: enshittification

First Impressions of the Pixel 9 Pro | Whatever

At this point, it really does seem like “AI” is “bullshit you don’t need or is done better in other ways, but we’ve just spent literally billions on this so we really need you to use it, even though it’s nowhere as good as what we were already doing,” and everything else is just unsexy functionality that makes what you do marginally easier or better. I’m sorry we live in a world where enshittification is being marketed as The Hot And Sexy Thing, but just because we’re in that world, doesn’t mean you have to accept it.

Slop is Good • furbo.org

Trust.

Google Now Defaults to Not Indexing Your Content - Vincent Schmalbach

Google search is no friend to the indie web:

Well-known brands often see most of their content indexed, while small or unknown bloggers face much stricter selectivity.

There was life before Google search. There will be life after Google search.

Information that you might search for may never appear in Google’s results. Not because it doesn’t exist, but because Google has chosen not to include it.

Should I remove this blog from Google Search?・The Jolly Teapot

There was life before Google search. There will be life after Google search.

Google is not a huge source of traffic and visibility. I get most of my visits from RSS readers, other people’s links including fellow bloggers, or websites like Hacker News. It’s hard to tell at this point since I don’t track anything, but that’s an educated guess.

Removing my website from Google would have very little impact, so I was wondering if I should just do it.

&udm=14 | the disenshittification Konami code

Another way to get Google results without the slop.

My own little patch

Co-signed!

If the web is now a metaphorical barren wasteland, pillaged by commercial interests and growth-at-all-costs management consultants, then I’m all the more motivated to keep my little patch of land lush, and green, and filled with rainbow flowers.

So, feel free to stop by any time and stay as long as you like. I won’t track you, make you look at ads, ask you to download my app, harass you with popups, suggest you sign up for my newsletter or push you through a sales funnel. Enjoy the garden, and the peace 💐.

How to Turn Off AI Overview in Google and Set “Web” as Default

I don’t use Google Search myself—I use Duck Duck Go—but if you do, here’s how to avoid the slop.

Deplatforming Myself: A Tech Manifesto – Haste Makes Waste

The modern web is constantly, endlessly hoovering up massive amounts of data about you, only some of which is correct, and then feeding you its best guess of what will glue your eyeballs to the screen just a little bit longer, no matter what that is, whether it’s actually good for you or not.

Pluralistic: Tech workers and gig workers need each other (13 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Ever wondered why you’re always being encouraged to download the app?

But zero percent of app users have installed an ad-blocker, because they don’t exist, because you’d go to prison if you made one. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.

Pluralistic: The (open) web is good, actually (13 Nov 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

The web wasn’t inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee’s decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as “branded communities.” The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn’t even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since.

A great round-up from Cory, featuring heavy dollops of Anil and Aaron.

How to fix the internet | MIT Technology Review

We’re in a rare moment when a shift just may be possible; the previously intractable and permanent-­seeming systems and platforms are showing that they can be changed and moved, and something new could actually grow.

The fix for the internet isn’t to shut down Facebook or log off or go outside and touch grass. The solution to the internet is more internet: more apps, more spaces to go, more money sloshing around to fund more good things in more variety, more people engaging thoughtfully in places they like. More utility, more voices, more joy.

DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow - YouTube

A great rousing—practical—speech from Cory.

How Google made the world go viral - The Verge

On the sad state of Google search today:

How did a site that captured the imagination of the internet and fundamentally changed the way we communicate turn into a burned-out Walmart at the edge of town?

Pulling my site from Google over AI training – Tracy Durnell

I’m not down with Google swallowing everything posted on the internet to train their generative AI models.

A principled approach to evolving choice and control for web content

This would mean a lot more if it happened before the wholesale harvesting of everyone’s work.

But I’m sure Google will put a mighty fine lock on that stable door that the horse bolted from.

Tech Companies Are Ruining Their Apps, Websites, Internet

This is enshittification.