Enshittification of Online Media

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 17, 2025

Now more than ever we must fight for independent press

Yesterday I wrote a lengthy post about enshittification of the media in relation to the enshittification of tech as a whole. Hours later (dr) molly tov (pseudonym, same in the Gemini capsule and Gemlog) moaned about tech (in general) getting worse and said:

Maybe I'm just paying more attention now, but it feels like the pace of tech enshittification is speeding up recently.

For example: Google started (admitting to) device fingerprinting in February 2025. Meta announced it's getting rid of its fact-checkers in favor of "community notes," despite the fact that they don't exactly work in the first place: Twitter apparently does axe those on some posts. Amazon recently announced it will start recording your Alexa conversations to its cloud, even if you told your device not to do that, so that it can train its AI - something Twitter already changed its terms of service to do.

That's GAFAM. These companies are so arrogant and so full of Hubris that they now tell you that some screenlogger (keeping screenshots of your usage all the time) is "AI" and that it's somehow meant to serve you, not the police or the state or Microsoft ("Microsoft defends its right to read your email" for over a decade already!).

As noted last night, one must not surrender to this. Alternatives exist, authorities will try to ban/marginalise these, but we can promote them loudly and clearly.

The media?

Nope, the media won't promote these, will it? It's already owned by GAFAM or its access is managed by GAFAM (Facebook bans people for "Linux", Apple has its own "news" 'app', and Google is a gateway to many sites; delisting sites can doom them).

To make matters worse, the Kremlin equivalent of the United States is ramping up its attack on media formerly funded by the government. "The cuts to VOA, REFRL, NPR, etc will hurt, as will the censorship committee imposed onto NPR," an associate explained this morning. "I presume that worse will be imposed on the remains of VOA and REFRL".

All we can do here is do our best to inform. Some people will call it "journalism" (that's just a label anyway), others will belittle it by labeling it "activism".

At the end of the day, we must keep reliable information flowing in the face of challenge (and SLAPP). █