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Inside: How twiddling enshittifies your brain; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twi…

#Pluralistic

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A terrified, screaming man with wild hair wearing a greatcoat with his hand inserted beneath the lapel, covering his heart. He stands before a knob-festooned control desk and a background of hundreds of gridded knobs and dials. A grinning poop emoji peers over the control desk. Image: Stephen Drake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Analog_Test_Array_modular_synth_by_sduck409.jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Pluralistic: How twiddling enshittifies your brain (28 Jul 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Cory Doctorow
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Hey, German-speakers! Through a very weird set of circumstances, I ended up owning the rights to the German audiobook of my bestselling 2022 cryptocurrency heist technothriller *Red Team Blues* and now I'm selling DRM-free audio and ebooks, along with the paperback (all in German and English) on a Kickstarter that runs until August 11:

kickstarter.com/projects/docto…

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Co-op Congress 2025 – Friday 4 July

Co-op Congress brings together those working to build a fairer economy to share ideas, get inspiration and take action. See the full programme of Day One at ...
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Rory D.
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"But Google Search was so goddamned magic – before they cynically destroyed it [...] The collapse of Google into a giant pile of shit is like giving every web user a traumatic brain injury."

I sometimes wonder if the reason many people are so amazed by AI is because they forgot how drop-dead good Google search used to be. And it's only been a few years since it was well and truly enshittified.

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ferricoxide
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ferricoxide
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TI feel like the first 15-20 years of my career were made possible by Usenet and then Google. Dunno if I'd be able to get to where I am now if I'd have started my career has I started in the back half of the 2010s.
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Frank Skornia
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Frank Skornia
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@ferricoxide @rory Google in the short age before enshittification /and/ the rabid pursuit of SEO was so good.
As a librarian, there were reasons why we ran entire classes on getting people hooked on Google. And now there are reasons why we run entire classes on how to separate from Google.
@ferricoxide @Rory D.

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C. Scott Ananian (he/him)
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C. Scott Ananian (he/him)
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@fskornia @ferricoxide @rory I remember when AltaVista was the "so much better than anything else" search product.

Losing Boolean operators when using Google search felt like a big step back at the time.

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Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
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Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
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@cscott @fskornia @ferricoxide @rory for years I continued using Alta Vista as a backup until I learned some more of the Google advanced operators (some of which they has since broken).
@ferricoxide @C. Scott Ananian (he/him) @Frank Skornia @Rory D.
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vandenberglegs
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vandenberglegs
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@fskornia @ferricoxide @rory I work in a corporate library and we used to run Google Better sessions. People were often amazed at how well you could refine searches, and at all the secret tools (Boolean operators!!?!?) at your disposal. Now? GTFO, it's horrible.
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Allpoints
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Allpoints
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@vandenberglegs @fskornia @ferricoxide @rory I wonder if that's part of the reason people put up with the AI slop. They never experienced how good it could be so they don't appreciate what's been lost. Now, they're just handed an answer/summary right at the top of the page. And sure, it's wrong or at least not quite correct but they don't care.
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This entry was edited (3 days ago)
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Stephan Schulz
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Stephan Schulz
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@allpoints @vandenberglegs @fskornia @ferricoxide @rory ...but remember "The Diamond Age". The AI version of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" was quite inferior to the real version, but it was good enough and available to everyone.
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ferricoxide
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ferricoxide
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At some point, the AI companies are going to have to figure out how to profitably monetize the current, garbage "solution" (restarting nuclear power plants isn't exactly free). While they are able to charge heavy users tiered-fees, they're also trying to wring more money out of the (comparatively) few paying-users: just last week, there was a news story about paid LLM (Claude?) users unexpectedly having jobs fail because they were exceeding the usage-limits …even though they'd purchased the highest-available usage-plans. Clearly, even where they are getting paid users, they aren't making enough money. Until/unless they solve the power-consumption issues of LLMs, it seems unlikely that the money that comes from ad-supported use is going to net-out. If paywalls do come up, the whole "good enough" value-prop shifts radically.
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Allpoints
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Allpoints
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@ferricoxide @fskornia @StephanSchulz @vandenberglegs @rory I still don't get the value proposition here. They're cannibalizing their base. Using Google as an example, if they're no longer driving traffic to websites 1) those websites will wither and stop generating content for them to steal 2) those sites will stop participating in the ad Network, further reducing revenue for Google.

Not a perfect analogy but "eating the seed corn" is close. Public companies don't think long-term

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Charlie Stross
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Charlie Stross
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@rory With age comes perspective and the perspective 60 years has given me—of which 35 years on the internet—says that the average internet user has rolling amnesia on a 6-9 month time scale.

Remember the COVID19 pandemic? Gosh, that sure was a long time ag—IT'S STILL ONGOING!

Remember how vicious Trump's first term was? No? IS THAT WHY YOU VOTED HIM IN AGAIN?

Remember when web search wasn't actively trying to gaslight you?

And so on.

@Rory D.

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Henryk Plötz
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Henryk Plötz
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@cstross You can observe the ongoing effect with people forgetting that Elon did DOGE. He's mostly back to being just a regular old billionaire, working hard to expand his self-earned empire, appeasing anxiety about his trademark brands, and railing against the bad fiscal policy of the current administration.
@Charlie Stross
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Luci Callous Thumb
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Luci Callous Thumb
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@henryk @cstross these are the advantages of lead poisoning, high levels of CO2, brain microplastics and covid induced microbloodclots for the billionaire class
@Charlie Stross @Henryk Plötz
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Tero Hänninen
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Tero Hänninen
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@cstross @rory the Internet Time is strange thing. It runs exponentially faster than real time.
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Tony Fisk
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Tony Fisk
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@cstross

Stress does a number on short term memory.
And Covid has been nothing if not stressful

@Charlie Stross
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Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)
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Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)
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@rory
... and I say this a lot: The two founders of Google still have 51% of the voting stock. This wasn't enshittified in the passive voice, this wasn't "nothing we can do": Two people. One decision.
@Rory D.
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ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘
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ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘
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@rory Someone (or was it the entire software industry?) forgot the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
@Rory D.
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𝚝𝚓𝚠
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𝚝𝚓𝚠
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@anne_twain @rory I'm having to remind myself that after talking to someone who's still using software I wrote ages ago and am in the process of updating. This isn't time to change every last thing about it but fix just the things that had issues.
@ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘 @Rory D.
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B Kahn
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B Kahn
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@rory
Not a day goes by when I don't complain about how useless search has become. It's as if all links to anything potentially helpful have been diligently erased and replaced with pig manure. But less wholesome.
@Rory D.
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Hamish Buchanan
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Hamish Buchanan
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It’s amazing how much of our economy is dedicated to convincing us that we aren’t happy enough, while simultaneously distracting us from the real causes of unhappiness.
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