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??

Yes, I won't buy if the description reads like this, as it tells me absolutely nothing about the condition of the item, and I don't have the time to be emailing the seller to ask them.

I agree OP, it's depressingly bad. Yesterday on BBC News it was reported that CSA on the internet - created by AI - has increased by 6000% (yes, six THOUSAND percent) over the last year i.e. people using AI to take images of children being abused and recreating the abuse in new scenarios - "sick" doesn't even begin to cover it! 😭 And even worse, apparently this stuff isn't even contained on the dark web, but has made its way on to the light web too (great organisations like Internet Watch Foundation - that the public can report to - are doing their best to get this vile content removed).

However, you also asked "Is there anything that has got better??" so in the light of this: Just as I was ruminating over the AI-generated CSA and thinking the decency of the human race is totally doomed, my DH, knowing I'm an owl lover sent me this:

😳😂

I've handled and flown owls, but I NEVER knew this and doubt I ever would without the internet. I know - it's really small consolation for all the bad stuff. 😩

How could I get Facebook back to showing actual status updates from actual people I know? Is that possible, or will I be doomed to see pictures of dogs and endless clips of the Big Bang Theory on my timeline for ever?

My FB, my MN and even the games I play are currently being spammed with promotional material for the Kemi Badenoch campaign. I am not a member of the Conservative party. I have never voted for them. The A is not I.

Thank you op, I just learnt a new word. Enshittification.

Had to happen at some point!

The owl thing has reminded me that on twitter I do often get shown funny videos that I then save and show to my kids later and I'd miss that if I stopped using it.

There's a thing in settings in Twitter which lists a whole bunch of topics that twitter thinks you are interested in from what you've interacted with so you can sometimes sort your feed out a bit by going through that. I've just checked mine and for some reason it thinks I'm interested in egg recipes and the new Wicked film so I've deselected those.

But despite that, for some reason, like a pp with terminal illness, I keep being shown posts by parents announcing that their young child has just died. I keep clicking and saying 'not interested in this post' but I keep seeing them. It's very distressing.

I presumed the owl thing was fake so just whizzed past it as it looked too freaky. See how the hell do you know what or who to believe? Twit twoo even