The internet is really bad now, isn't it?

[noblegiraffe]

If I go on Facebook instead of seeing what my friends are up to it just presents me with a load of AI generated dross. At the moment it seems to be 'cosy reading nooks' and 'look at this amazing house' and then a photo of something that absolutely isn't real, with thousands of comments, presumably also from bots going 'omg I want this 😍'. If I do see something a friend has posted, it then disappears and I can't find it again.

On twitter if you see an interesting video or photo then in the comments instead of a discussion of the video/photo you just get a load of bots posting more videos, or AI accounts posting bland comments describing the thing like 'this photo shows a wonderful interaction between a father and child highlighting the importance of family ❤️' sometimes appropriate, sometimes completely missing the point. And then you know it's a bot because a load of other random accounts post the exact same comment.

You go to your local news site and you can barely read any stories because there are tonnes of ads, and not useful ads, junk ones like 'Doctors hate this woman's amazing health hack' or 'You won't believe what Davina McCall looks like now 💔'

Google now if you search just presents you with shopping ads and paid for promoted links. And if you try to google something like 'M5 closure this weekend' it will give you loads of news stories about a time the M5 was closed in 2018. Absolutely useless.

I read that there was a program that used to search the internet each year for the most common words in use and highlight new trends and they've had to stop using it because the internet is now just full of AI slop rather than human-generated content.

How did we have this amazing resource and instead of getting better and more useful, we've just made it terrible? It's pretty depressing.

MN has always had trolls, fantasists, people trying their hand at writing fiction, and people trying to sway political opinion or get you to buy something, but compared to twitter or facebook I at least get the impression that there are real people behind most of it. Probably because accounts can't gain public likes or follows and you can't monetise it?

Is there anything that has got better??

I just went on Facebook and saw this fake picture. 153k likes and 6.4k shares. A pile of crap being shared by fake accounts. But presumably some people also think it's real?

If something is free, you are the product!

I dunno, on twitter there are a lot of AI photos being circulated pretending to be of things happening in Gaza. Dads rescuing kids from rubble who had more than the usual amount of arms, sort of thing. If people can't tell that the really obvious stuff is fake, then how the hell are they going to spot good ones?

It has got to the point where I'm doubting genuine stuff and no doubt being fooled by fake stuff as well.

It's a thing and the name for it is 'enshittification'.

Can I also draw your attention to ebay. Every other description of second hand clothes reads like this now:

Elevate your style with this stunning fit and flare dress from Shein, available in a creamy black colour scheme. Designed for plus-sized women, this knee-length dress features short sleeves and is perfect for both casual and travel occasions during the spring and summer seasons. Made from a blend of polyester and viscose, this dress is both comfortable and breathable, ensuring you stay cool and stylish all day long. The dress is available in size 3XL and is a must-have addition to any woman's wardrobe. Its timeless style and flattering fit and flare cut will make you feel confident and beautiful, no matter where you go. Add this dress to your collection today and experience the perfect blend of comfort, style, and functionality.

Is de-enshittification a thing? Is there any coming back from it?

Should we just quietly leave this internet to the bots talking to each other and start a new one where bots aren't allowed?

I've already left twitter as it became impossible to keep it free of racist right wing bollocks. I used to be able to curate my feed to keep it to just what I was interested in but it became harder to do after the changes made when Elon Musk took over. It was making me miserable so I deleted it.

Facebook stopped being a way to keep in touch with friends some time ago. Most people seem to have stopped posting about their daily lives and only seem to post on birthdays or special events.

I use it for keeping up with local events and local residents groups and also for a support group for my daughter's illness ( this is so valuable to me)

I always enjoyed local history and old photographs of London but these pages have been hijacked by AI posts and racist bots talking about how everything was better before " the invasion"

So much is fake and then I see people like my mother in law who believe everything they see and no matter how many times we tell her this stuff is fake she still shares it and tags us in.

I think…. Good. Stop shopping online, get off social media, buy a newspaper.
Maybe town centres will revive and we will once more be able to buy real
things, rather than just coffee.
God, libraries might make a comeback!
Happy days.
Now if I could only convince my teen that everything on TikTok isn’t fact….

Agree with you all so much. I work in marketing and social media was really interesting for a good while but the last year it is pretty useless.

Tiktok used to be full of really interesting genuine content creators but now its all tiktok shop, livestreams of strange people selling plastic dresses with loud voices and bizarre people talking right wing nonsense.

Facebook died some time ago, agree with pp about the yesteryear, history pages. Used to be old photos with historical context, now it's 'so much better before those brown people came' which as a brown person makes me miserable.

Twitter is vile now Trump supporting musk has removed all the mods.

Reddit still has a few useful and interesting subs though and mumsent is still, mostly I think, real people.

The guy who coined the term enshittification, Cory Doctorow, has written about getting to a new good internet (not possible to go back to the old good internet) but the article is long https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/]

I think it will reach a point where we are all so bored of AI generated nonsense we may go off and make our own entertainment again, but we're apparently not quite there yet.

I totally agree.
This is very trivial but the sort of thing that REALLY gets my goat (on facebook) is some made-up drivel purporting to be a quote from Winnie the Pooh, in the style of it, with illustrations probably lifted from the original - but it's so obviously fake, with language and concepts that weren't around when WTP was written. And then thousands of comments, 'very true' , 'so moving'...
I think it annoys me so much because the original books are close to my heart - the Disney abominations are bad enough!

If people can't tell that the really obvious stuff is fake, then how the hell are they going to spot good ones?
It has got to the point where I'm doubting genuine stuff and no doubt being fooled by fake stuff as well.

As others have said, it’s going to make itself obsolete. Faked photos and information has the potential to be dangerous but when the deliberate propaganda is drowned out by another 1,000 fake stories people no longer trust it as a source.

Yes literally every piece of content is commercialised. The worse element is everything you search for- even really boring domestic level things such as a new mop- will then be served at you across a number of platforms.

I don’t regard social media as the internet though, it’s completely different and if I was one of the original influencers, I’d be worried right now about how I can sustain my ‘career’ on the various socials, as social media is definitely in a downward turn due to lack of trust, authentic content and quite frankly, anything that isn’t just utter nonsense or AI generated - my pet hate is a random 20yo telling you the five things you need to do now to improve your life, or filming lots of spoilers about places to travel with every filter on, as I want to discover those myself and nor do I want to be stood next to them filming on their phones when I get there.

Been thinking this for a while, but I think the thing that made me switch off was when people started referring to ’content’ and calling themselves ‘content creators’ and suchlike. ‘Content’ just sounds like meaningless drivel optimised for SEO, consumed by people who have lost their critical thinking capabilities as they scroll through SM. Is it any wonder that nobody has any attention span any more (I include myself in this btw, am just as guilty of mindless scrolling).

I think the internet in its current form is doomed. I’ve stopped using Google for searching since they introduced the AI results with no way to get rid of it. Awful. Don’t want it, don’t need it.

I do think it tends to be those of us say 35/40+ that are rejecting this nonsene, but it’s the norm for a whole generation and it’s deeply concerning that they’ve put ‘unqualified to say so people’ on a pedestal and in many ways lost the ability to have any critical thinking. We ‘the enlightened’😆 have the ability to see it’s all bit shit now because we have a whole lifetime behind us of reading books, four tv channels that finished by midnight, regulation around what we watched after 9pm, newspapers with in depth reports, the list goes on. If I think too much about it, I feel sad for my dc about how it’s evolved, they missed the good times, so to speak.

I switched to DuckDuckGo to avoid the empty and pointless AI bollocks on Google, but I'll have to find something else because not only does DuckDuckGo spam you with two big ads before any search results, the results themselves are then shit.

Within the last year I have noticed it is getting increasingly difficult to access useful information between AI, rubbish searches engines, paywalls, ridiculous cookie management etc.

I think the social media platforms are in a weird place.

Facebook doesn’t have enough people adding content to it - so it has to fill your feed with nonsense. Mine is all sponsored hello magazine content (??) and AI generated pictures (you can tell as they all have eight fingers).

Twitter… god knows, but mine is mainly conspiracy theories and people with terminal illnesses.

I actually find the constant content about illness and death overwhelming - I had to take a break fro
social media when pregnant as everything was about pregnancy loss.

For me it’s a bunch of junk from Temu that shows up. Impossible to use a search engine to shop now.

This is the first time I've ever agreed with an OP from you OP.

My bugbear is the "pay for our content or let us add a disgustingly large amount of intrusive cookies to your devices" trend on news sites.

FB would have enough to show me if it actually let me see the pages and people I follow. I “favorite” pages and they still very rarely show up in my feed. It might be because they related to feminism.

Well also with AI summaries of search results, why would anyone put new stuff online - they won't get click through, so what's in it for them? AI will cause its own enshittification.

I still post on the forum I was on in 1996. Same people on there too.. although of course we're all dying these days due to being boomers and Xs.

Yes, I also get this. Lots of stuff from people with terminal illness or with autism/are neurodiversity activists (for want of a better description). I mean, I do know people with terminal illness, and I work in SEND, so I'm guessing that the algorithm has sussed this out, but that's not my whole life. Same for me on Insta - I've stopped using the 'Explore' tab because it's not what I want to explore frankly - just loads of pictures of people on their literal deathbeds.

And twitter is essentially dead unless you are interested in right wing shouting or conspiracy. Best just to leave that to die in my opinion.