Enshittification

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/technology/p/1175761/amazon-inform-prime-members-that-its-bundled-music-benefit-will-introduce-ads-and-drop-o

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1175760/amazon-inform-prime-members-that-its-bundled-music-benefit-will-introduce-ads-and-drop-o

I know it's quite an insignificant bit of enshittification but I still feel a bit miffed that every logo these days looks the same.

The internet didn't use to have so many ads and the commercials from the past used to actually entertain us. Today, brands just flash their products and expect us to buy it. And as if we didn't have enough ads here on planet Earth, tech bros are now attempting to deploy ads into space.

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Matterport_May_2025_subscription_pricing_restructure

So, just a heads up for anyone who hasn't had red vines in a while, I have some bad news. I haven't had red vines in maybe 2-3 years. I bought some last night, and.....enshitification.

They are sooooooo thin now! They used to be girthy tubes. Like the size of straws. Now it's less of a vine, and more of a hollow slightly wobbly stick. Still tastes how I remember. But there's like half of what it used to be.

Would not have bought it if I knew how bad it got. Figured I'd save you guys some money for anyone who cares about this sort of thing. Which, given the community, I would assume would be the vast majority of you.

Blog post, if you'd rather read text than watch video: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/bambu-lab-abusing-open-source-social-contract/

Nice to hear Roman Mars saying a naughty word repeatedly as his anger level rises. Also, great episode number.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46052675

Hugely terrible DRM has now been rolled out to all PS4 and PS5 digital games. Every digital game you buy now requires an online check-in every 30 days. If you buy a digital game and don't connect your console to the internet for 30 days, your license will be removed.

Source [2026-04-25; +image]

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You wouldn't "lose" it, the licence would be restored after connecting to internet... provided Sony's servers are still functioning when you do...

Source [2026-04-25]

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...Trophies on PS4 require the internal system clock (the one you can’t see / alter) to be correct, so people cant change their PS4 date/time to make it look like they got trophies earlier than they really did. If your PS4 clock battery dies, all your games die

Source [2021-03-23]

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Newly purchased PS4 games now have 30 day valid license timer.
Most likely introduced in March 2026 firmware.
Could be a bug similar to an incident from 2022.
PS5 is affected too, but only shows an error when starting a game.

Source [2026-04-25]

[Image] "Don't Starve Together" (PlayStation)

Newer pair of glasses nose pad keeps falling off because the newer screws are shorter than the old ones. Paid about the same price for them to cut corners off a few MM in the screws.

I brought a pair from Zenni Jan 2023, and no issues with the nose pad ever coming off. Because of new eye prescription and I had to get new glasses, so I went with the same pair. Got that pair in July 2025, didn’t have any problems til recently, the nose pad screw have completely unscrewed off. The first time it happened I didn’t think much of it. The second time it happened I realized the screws from the old and new are not the same.

Old screws

A. 2.3241 mm = .0915 in

B. 2.3241 mm = .0915 in

New screws

A. 2.2225 mm = .0875 in

B. 2.2479 mm = .0885 in

Difference

A. .1016 mm = .0004in

B. .0762 mm = .0003in

I wanted to save some money so that why I went with Zenni, but after this experience I don’t want to deal with them anymore. Got any recommend for a brand that doesn’t cut corner? If I have to pay more to avoid enshitification so be it.

ChatGPT head Nick Turley said he’s “humble enough not to rule it out categorically,” but hedged that OpenAI would need to “be very thoughtful and tasteful” about how ads could be integrated into ChatGPT.

You can tastefully go fuck yourself.

In fairness, I don't know that any AI service that starts barfing ads can be said to enshittify, since it was already shitty to begin with. I guess the ads are par for the course...

What a perfectly garbage feature.

Latest update is that he’s retained a law firm to sue Volvo into providing a refund.

Issues include: complete loss of throttle on the freeway, unable to lock the car, and infotainment screen blackouts (the screen which controls nearly every feature of the car). All in a car that cost over $150,000 CAD 😵

Remember the "I want a white one" video? That's the first video I clearly remember having a text-to-speech voice-over. It was really bad TTS, and it was awesome. Lately, though, I find myself wishing video hosting services like Youtube and Peertube (to a lesser degree) had a filter so that I could filter out any videos with TTS voice overs. Does this bother anyone else?

I'm a little torn about it. There are legitimate reasons for people to use them; I've seen commentary from posters about social anxiety that makes even recording audio difficult, and TTS must be fantastic for ~~mute~~ non-verbal(?) folks. Non-native English speakers may be more comfortable with it. I'm sure the platform doesn't help... how many videos do you have to post where the peanut gallery mocks your verbal mistakes before you give up and just have an engine read your written text? I've also noticed that the use of TTS is far, far worse on Youtube -- I have yet to come across a single video on any Peertub site that uses it, although it must exist.

Like a lot of technology, generated speech is getting abused, and since TTS has valid uses, I put it in the "enshittification" category. It's used on every bulk, low-effort "N greatest/funniest/random-adjective" videos; I hear it in increasingly in those suspiciously AI-smelling, ad-ish "reviews" that just read specs and make an odd comment about how cool it is; and there's so much more low-quality, low-information content that feels AI generated uses it -- or maybe it feels AI generated because it uses it. It's almost always on just awful content.

TTS on video content is a perfect example of "this is why we can't have nice things." I am starting to hate it so much, I abort whatever I'm starting to watch as soon as I hear the absurd cadence and mispronunciations -- I'd rather hear an honest non-native speaker making mistakes than that terrible TTS crap.

Whatever the reason, the use of TTS is a trend I'm putting firmly in the "enshittification" category, but am I overreacting here? Do you have a way of dodging or identifying content that uses TTS, in advance?