Subject: "Media Disillusionment"
Between search engines and social media platforms, it has become very evident that marketing has played a crucial role in the development of the modern web. Providing digital billboards has become a highly lucrative market and companies like Google and Meta have been earning skyrocketing profits, turning the internet into an advertising hellscape.
Engagement is the new currency and your eyeballs are a valuable asset. The quality of services and content online has slowly degraded over the years through enshittification and other anti-consumer practices. There are 3 main factors that I want to focus on that lead right to the crux of the issue.
Click Hunger
If you've noticed over the years, content published by big news firms have been increasingly polarizing, taking divisive stances on topics. This is no accident. Sensationalist media has had a stark rise in popularity, especially regarding political content. This problem is not relegated to any one side, but in fact a bipartisan problem.
This tactic has been adopted by other forms of media like YouTube videos as well. Clickbait content is one such example. The main content ends up either being misleading or an over exaggeration of what the title may have lead you to believe. Companies have found the perfect formula to exploit your natural curiosity.
The worst part? Children are also affected by this. If you've even endured the torture of having to open the YouTube Kids app, you would notice how bright and flashy the thumbnails are as well as the non-stop music. Companies like CocoMelon are known for testing their videos on children to ensure they are glued to the screen and don't dare try to turn away.
There is also an entire rabbit hole of deceptive web design practices known as 'dark patterns.' The entire goal is to force you to spend as much money as possible on any given service. Psychological tricks and other such practices are employed to ensure maximum profits. The EU has passed laws against such practices but this hasn't gained nearly enough traction worldwide.
Death Of Selection
If you've been even remotely close to the realm of web development or adjacent technologies, you would have heard of the term, "search engine optimisation" floating around once in a while. It is the algorithm that search engines use to rank websites based on relevancy and accessibility.
SEO's aren't an inherently bad thing. They help improve visibility for genuinely engaging content and were built with good intentions in mind. However, companies have employed the use of various strategies to ensure their websites end up at the top of the rankings. This makes the playing field unfair and could force high-quality content to rank lower.
Being at the top of the rankings gives you a huge boost in views over your competition, especially in browsers. Whether you are a YouTuber, an artist on Spotify or a Content Creator on TikTok, having users scroll a couple times to view your content is the worst thing that can happen to you. It means less ad-supported streams leading to less revenue.
Self curation has been slowly tucked away in place of automated algorithms. They trace your entire history to supply you with content that you enjoy watching and nothing more. Short-form content placed the final nail in the coffin by stripping away the act of searching and automatically serving content with a swipe of the finger.
AI Slop Acceleration
The rise of AI image and video generation tools has made it very easy for people to mass produce content at a blistering pace. These videos or images generated by AI are extremely low quality and very unpleasant to watch. They are typically mass produced in bulk and offer zero value to anyone watching them.
Facebook especially has a terrible issue with AI posts flooding the main page and a lot of people are falling for it. This is common especially amongst older people who may not be well-versed in recent AI developments. These channels are generating record revenues all by typing prompts on a text box. Our current algorithms are rewarding these videos that are produced in a factory line.
These channels alone have generated 63 billion in views along with 117 million dollars in revenue altogether. This is no small money. When it only costs roughly 250 dollars a year to get access to Google's Omni video generation tools, it's a pretty good return on investment for many of these channels.
These videos flood the front-page of many apps and effectively take over spots that could have been used to display actual content. It hurts smaller content creators the most because they might have to face steeper competition from these AI slop creators.
A Way Out?
This is a release of pent up frustrations I've had with websites nowadays. I want to share it with everybody so more people can be enlightened on the current 'enshittification' of the web. Reminiscing about the times when such practices didn't exist almost feels like a fantasy but here we are, spiralling downwards into an abyss.
It's really difficult to undo the damage that has already been done. Everybody is trying to gamify the algorithm and you can't fault the creators nor the publishers for it. The problem is that all these individual issues have compounded to form a complex knot that is simply too difficult to untangle. The current system *is* the best trade off for all parties.
The only ideal solution is to bring self-curation back into our lives. While this may not be the system-breaking solution you might have been expecting, it can change the very way you interact with media and help you be more satisfied with the content you engage with. The small choices and friction in choosing something makes the media have a greater emotional attachment. Personalisation has stripped away emotions but this is the best way to reclaim it back.
Subscribe to the YouTubers you enjoy. Explore forums about interesting topics. Add your favourite blog to your RSS Feeds. Go join the mailing list of your favourite news organisation. Move away from short-form content (this has a whole lot of other benefits too!) and help reward your favourite authors directly for the high-effort content they publish. All the frameworks are still in place - It's your choice to take it.