Post giving a scientific hypothesis about the potential of tech enshitification to alter personality (and calling for research) was suppressed by mods of !cogsci@mander.xyz and !psy@mander.xyz (evaaniu@mander.xyz & Pro@mander.xyz respectively) within minutes of each other using the same rhetoric in the modlog on the basis that the research being called for was not already undertaken. Likely the same user controls both accounts. Also interesting to see that there has been no activity for 2 years in !cogsci@mander.xyz, so nothing is apparently better than some hypothesis to discuss. The post follows:
The long-term effects of tech enshitification are becoming apparent in how people perceive software bug reports. A software defect that would have been easily regarded as a bug in the 1990s is now seen as software functioning normally and as expected. The rise of enshitification and fall of software quality has conditioned consumers to unwittingly lower their standards of quality.
In the case of millennials and gen-z, they are starting off with a baseline of low standards as they were immersed in enshitified tech from the beginning.
Observation ①: Software ignores user’s instructions. The enshitification-era perception→ “not a bug”
The Lemmy web client enables users to generally block whole instances in their settings. Users can also subscribe to specific communities. The web client supports user input to block a whole instance while simultaneously subscribing to a community on that blocked instance.
People with a history of exposure to well engineered software naturally expect treatment that simultaneously accommodates all user instructions. The only way to honor both of the user’s instructions in this scenario is to prioritise the specific instruction to subscribe to a particular Lemmy community above the general instruction to block the node that hosts it.
To invert that priority necessarily entails disregarding the user’s specific instruction to subscribe to the community. This is what Lemmy does today. A machine that silently disregards user instructions without even so much as any sort of notice to the user can only be regarded as a poorly designed application that disservices the user if your exposure to technology pre-dates the era of enshitification (pre-2000s).
Reaction to this bug report shows the result of a devolution in perceptions of software quality. To be clear, Lemmy is not enshitified because enshitification is more of a consequence of conflicts of interest. Lemmy devs most likely simply failed to be adequately meticulous, yielding an honest bug. However, enshitification has downgraded users’ standard of quality so cannot they identify a defect when they see it.
Google demonstrated a parallel analogue to this. I used to search using dejanews before Google bought it. The search engine honored my queries. In particular, negations were respected. That is, searching “foo -bar” would yield results that do not contain the token “bar”. Likewise in Google early on. Today Google generally scraps the negation. You negate a word and Google nannies you by not only showing results that the include the negated word but in fact Google internally rewrites the query to suit its business interest.
The population accepts it. Google is still the top search engine. People have become conditioned to accept machines that ignore their instructions.
Observation ②: Lemmy deceives senders on status of msg delivery. The enshitification-era perception→ “not a bug”
Gen-Xers have an expectation that non-defective software is truthful. When a machine lies to the human user, it’s a defect. It is a most obnoxious kind of defect in the context of communication from human to human because of the importance of knowing whether a message is delivered. A false message about delivery can cause embarrassment, outrage, or loss of respect toward another human – when in fact the machine is to blame.
Example: Bob blocks the Lemmy.World instance. Alice@Lemmy.World DMs Bob. To Alice, the message appears to be delivered. Nothing signals to Alice to indicate non-delivery. And nothing signals Bob that an attempt was made. Alice is deceived about the delivery and Bob is deceived about what to expect because blocking an instance does not block everything from the instance (e.g. public comments from LW users are still presented to Bob). Bob would not naturally expect a DM directed specifically to him to be blocked when public comments from the same person are shown to him.
Yet in this enshitification era, a significant number of people regard the deception to Alice and the astonishingly baffling contradiction of behaviour as software functioning as expected.
People born before the 90s tended to be disgusted with the idea of email servers that silently blackhole email, which accepts an email for delivery but then throws it away without anyone knowing. Then Reddit comes along with their rampant practice of shadow banning, which is even more abusive than blackholing because the deception of false delivery is bolstered by showing the user their own msg where it was sent to proactively maintain the deception.
I believe Reddit did a lot of damage there by conditioning the younger generation to accept being lied to about the comms status of message delivery.
Just as smoking changes personalities, so does enshitification
A study found that cigarette smoking actually modifies the personality of the user to become more accepting of filth. This is because the filth of cigarettes is unavoidable. Ashes are very lightweight and get carried everywhere. Ashtrays catch a majority but there are always some ashes in sight as well as cigarette butts. A smoker would have to have an unlikely high level of OCD cleanliness to counter it. So their personality gives. Smokers just become accepting of filth.
Enshitification of technology has the same propensity to modify people’s personality to accept the burdens it brings. Those who solve CAPTCHA become increasingly more willing to solve them. The industry of all things enshitified is banking on this effect. The more willing people become, the better enablers they become which supports current and future manifestations of enshitification.
As an enshitification resister, I have the burden of writing paper letters instead of email or web. It’s comparable to resisting cigarettes to not be conditioned to accept a filthly environment, but with more effort.
The fix
I don’t see the onslaught of enshitification being fixed. Software quality is worse as Ada loses popularity. But I believe if more people would read Tim Wu’s Tyranny of Convenience essay it would perhaps get more people to loosen their grip on convenience and the addiction thereof. The grip on convenience is a death-like grip as enshitification enablers refuse their own role in it.
In any case, this needs to be studied. Enshitification will proliferate non-stop if we don’t gain understanding on why consumers accept it.
They seem to be the person same, probably
With that said, I still agree with the removal reason. I don’t think removing is the right move however, downvoting would have been better.
I don’t believe it has anything to do with enshittification, it’s also not its definition. I believe it’s a design decision or design flaw that is completely separate from enshittification, and I agree Lemmy should either not allow to subscribe to a community from a blocked instance, or make an exception for this instance. The problem is that blocking an instance blocks everything related to it.
Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)
I believe it’s an interesting subject, but it is completely unrelated to enshittification, and focusing on enshittification only shows you’re making this personal.
With that said, I still agree with the removal reason. I don’t think removing is the right move however, downvoting would have been better.
Down voting and removal are both acts of suppression. Anyone can downvote so the suppressive effect is limited. A downvote is only appropriate when a user believes the post should be concealed as the purpose and effect is to reduce readership.
I don’t believe it has anything to do with enshittification, it’s also not its definition.
First of all, the post does not define enshitification. 2nd, even Cory Doctorow’s narrow definition of enshitification is compatible with the thesis of the post. That is, even in the strict context of shitty online services, people’s expectations of technology are transformed. And that transformation can affect how they perceive a defect in any product or service (incl. offline software, washers, refrigerators, etc). Users are being conditioned to accept that tools they use need not serve their best interests.
I believe it’s a design decision or design flaw that is completely separate from enshittification, and I agree Lemmy should either not allow to subscribe to a community from a blocked instance, or make an exception for this instance.
You’ve deeply misunderstood what you read. The post does not say Lemmy is enshitified. It’s clear from this why you thought I was working from a different definition of enshitification. In fact, the post explicitly states that Lemmy is not enshitified. The thesis is that enshitification has altered people’s perception of what a bug is. People no longer believe that software they execute needs to serve the person running it. The collective standards of quality have dropped because of the effect of enshitification on perceptions. Now when people look at a software defect where the software ignores user’s instructions, they do not readily regard it as a bug. They say it’s “not a bug”. When software gives them a false message about whether their DM was sent to a recipient, they say it’s “not a bug”.
That said, I will state that I actually find Doctorow’s enshitification definition too narrow to capture the problem. This overly narrow language does not serve us as well as it could. Countless offline appliances are suffering from a fall in quality, for example. It’s anti-consumer to reject the term to express (e.g.) the fact that washing machines have gone to shit /by design/. So indeed I do roll with a different definition than what was initially coined. But that difference does not make a meaningful difference in the post at hand. Or to the extent that it doesn’t, I don’t give a shit anyway because I’m not trying to push Doctorow’s dictionary.
The problem is that blocking an instance blocks everything related to it.
That’s not true. We are talking about the instance block option in the user settings, not an admin control. When a user blocks Lemmy.World, it blocks /some/ content but not all. It does not block public comments from LW users, but it blocks DMs from LW users. That much is the opposite of sensible. If it did block everything, it would at least be consistent; but that’s not the case. It fails the rule of least astonishment in a variety of contexts.
I believe it’s an interesting subject, but it is completely unrelated to enshittification, and focusing on enshittification only shows you’re making this personal.
It is not in the slightest unrelated to enshitification. It’s my hypothesis. You can form your own hypothesis, but my hypothesis is that enshitification has altered consumers perceptions about what it means to have a defect. In this hypothesis, enshitification is indispensible.
and focusing on enshittification only shows you’re making this personal.
It is my personal observation and conjecture that enshitification has altered people’s perceptions. The hypothesis is not “made personal”, but it’s of course personally conjectured because it’s an observation by a person. You cannot make it non-personal by taking enshitification out of it because that changes the hypothesis.