this post was submitted on 25 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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During the company’s Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta AI can now process image inputs, allowing it to answer questions about photos and edit them. Want to know what kind of flower you took a picture of or how to make a multi-colored cake? Just ask Meta AI. See a picture of a goat on your Instagram feed and want to repost it as a picture of a goat on a surfboard? Just ask Meta AI. Not sure what to say about the goat on a surfboard? Don’t worry, Meta AI will also suggest captions for your stories on Facebook and Instagram.

And if chatting with Meta AI yourself sounds like too much work, the company will be testing a new feature on Facebook and Instagram that injects unsolicited AI-generated images “based on your interests or current trends” directly into your feeds, allowing you to “tap a suggested prompt to take that content in a new direction or swipe to imagine new content in real-time,” according to pre-event briefing materials.

Not to be outdone by OpenAI’s release of a voice assistant for ChatGPT earlier this week, Zuckerberg announced that users can begin talking to Meta AI and it will talk back in the voices of celebrities like Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key, and Kristen Bell.

The company is also beginning “small tests” in the U.S. and Latin America of a deepfake feature that will translate video content on Instagram and Facebook from Spanish to English, or vice versa. The Meta AI translation tool will automatically “simulate the speaker’s voice in another language and sync their lips to match,” according to the company’s briefing material.

Meta did not immediately respond to questions about whether creators on Facebook and Instagram will be asked for their consent before their images and voices are manipulated.

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[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 57 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Halfway through, I was certain this was The Onion.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago
[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

Welcome to Sacred Timeline Ennui...

[–] RandomStickman@fedia.io 51 points 2 months ago

Dead internet ~~theory~~ product

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 17 points 2 months ago

This is meta AI, you can ask it anything.

Ask it to fuck off.

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

At this point I think I’m ready to remove the rest of my content that remains on Facebook and Instagram.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

What if they resurrect you for your followers or whatever based on your prior activity, so nobody even notices you are gone? It’s all ai now anyway.

Bleak af, but entirely possible now. There’s that platform that should be called echochamberAI but instead is called socialAI, and mimics a whole social network for… whatever reason.

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Very bleak. Would probably be best to keep the account active, but empty.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah, that totally worked for the reddit0rs that got out early on... /s 🤷🏽‍♂️

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Guess it's time to get rid of Facebook again.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 10 points 2 months ago

Always has been

[–] thallamabond@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Tin foil hat time: Are tech companies trying to corner the world energy market?

We know one company that's buying a nuclear facility, apparently the child that owns twitters corpse is running multiple generators to power his AI.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Has no one ever read just about anything cyberpunk? Actually? FFS.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

People like Zuckerberg use dystopian sci-fi as a manual.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago

And yet, everyone seems so fucking surprised? 🤷🏼‍♂️

[–] match@pawb.social 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Cornering the energy market at the same time that solar panels become cheap enough to use as fencing. yeah sounds like the correct amount of stupid

[–] thallamabond@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Okay so you put a little dent in my conspiracy. I thank you for that.

What you said is opened up a new idea to me, perhaps these tech companies are using all this energy to keep the stock price up while the solar panels take the power from them.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Pretty sure the latter is meant to be temporary. You can build a data center in as little as a year, but it can take multiple years for utilities to bring more power

[–] Tenthrow@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know why Meta is so eager to finish destroying itself. How long do you think people will be interested in ready AI-generated mush? Not that the quality has ever been high on Meta's platforms; this will most likely accelerate the disillusionment with their offerings. I can't say that is a bad thing, really.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

It's the same thing with Reddit- investors believe that as long as you are adding users, you have value. And now of course you can have bots create hundreds of accounts every day...

[–] Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Oh come off it.

[–] Technofrood@feddit.uk 6 points 2 months ago

I mean my feed already seems to be full of slop, what happened to being able to scroll through my friends posts.

[–] sheridan@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Joke's on them. I don't check my Facebook feed.