this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 36 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I just had a funny thought.

So on one hand you have the accelerated pace of enshitification brought to you by AI on top of the existing enshitification.

On the other hand you have these website companies whose entire goal is to get big and sell to the giants, bringing with them their hot new user base and data.

Together that means that by the time a website is “big enough” to do a buyout a portion of the user base is already bots and AI content and that will only increase.

Eventually meta or whoever will buy some site that is already functionally worthless. Trading ghost towns. Racing to catch the thin film of actual human users and content that is on the margins, itself racing to escape the grey goo of AI bullshit consuming everything in their wake like the Langoliers

[–] Red_October@hexbear.net 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And all the real humans will migrate sites you can’t run ads on like this.

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s the only logical solution for the user at this point. The other “services” are so deteriorated with ads you can’t even call them that without denying your lying eyes.

If I buy a box of 100 pens and it has 1 pen and 99 bananas I didn’t buy a box of fucking pens no matter what happened during the exchange ritual. Eventually people will have that same moment for all these websites where they realize whatever they were there to find isn’t there.

[–] Red_October@hexbear.net 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hmm. All this talk of pens and bananas is giving me an idea. I’m trying to be a UX/UI designer right now. Maybe we could make alternate, secure versions of every popular social media app but change them just enough to not get sued.

We could even bring back myspace… if we wanted…

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Launching MyBook and FaceSpace

[–] Red_October@hexbear.net 5 points 7 months ago

How about My Little Red Book and Facedu Bois?

It would be fuckin hilariously ironic to be sued by Redbook for that.

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 7 points 7 months ago

Ah, but a company like Meta doesn't care whether a site is all bots so long as advertisers still pay for ad buys. Crashing this particular market requires advertisers to be aware of how worthless Meta ads are (they are already pretty worthless but companies keep buying them!).

[–] DogThatWentGorp@hexbear.net 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Bit idea: company that promises social media firms more convincingly human bot users for the express purposes of making advertisment and data selling seem more valuable...

...shit that's what this whole thing has been for like the last decade or so huh? I'm sure that's not a bubble waiting to burst. There certainly won't be some kind of controversy about social media data being totally fucking useless in the next few years because it turns out like 80% of the user base wasn't real for who knows how long.

Watch it pop off because of the coming AI bust that will suspiciously lower social media engagement by double decimal percents overnight, thus triggering an fcc investigation because it would be an issue that effects primarily investors.

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

...shit that's what this whole thing has been for like the last decade or so huh?

yea

I was a young man when Steve Jobs came out looking sickly and apple stock immediately took a hit and it was then I realized this is all a stupid hype game for lanyarded dipshits