Lemmy is like that to some extent. The fact that users have to pick an instance is, for a lot of people, too much overload and drives them away. But I see it as a filter. You have to have some absolute minimum baseline level of understanding and proficiency of the platform you’re using. That’s why the massive number of people on Facebook, etc. are oblivious to how they’re being exploited by the platform, because they don’t understand what it is or how it works.

s/gift/bribe/

Smartphones ruined the internet.

When you needed to sit at a computer, use a keyboard, and spend a bit of time to write out thoughtful content, the quality of the discussion and community on the internet was so much higher. With smartphones, they had to dumb down the UI, consolidate content and reactions into likes and emojis, and generally just had to deal with smaller, more unsubstantive and rage-baity comments.

Plus, there’s just the undeniable fact that computer users are more tech-savvy than people who only know how to use a smartphone. Making the internet smartphone friendly opened the floodgates up to a sea of low-quality engagement.

Before smartphones, we would go outside, live our lives, then come home and see what happened on the internet that day. When the internet started following us around in our pockets on crippled devices that are designed for consumption and cheap-ass engagement, that’s really when the internet went to shit.

Internet tech companies have perfected the art of enshittifying a service. Internet services these days practically follow a playbook of, 1.) hook users, 2.) build a walled garden, 3.) exploit users. Basically the EEE of the user-driven web. Pretty much every company at this point, both old and new (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Reddit, TikTok, Discord, Twitter, Netflix) follow this exact pattern.

Modern UI design, dark patterns, deprecating services while raising prices, “install our app!”, etc. We didn’t have this in the days of IRC, Usenet, all that other good stuff before corporate web came around.

Fair, he was due to retire.

But at the very least, there’s a good chance that Apple will start trying to shoehorn integrate AI in a lot of places. How much and where remains to be seen. Especially as a new CEO, there will be a lot of pressure to respond to all the criticism they’ve been receiving about their approach to AI.

That’s probably about to change with their new CEO too:

“It’s becoming clear that AI is not a fad, is not something that will go away in the next two or three years,” said Jeronimo. “It’s something that will dictate the future of most tech companies and indeed all companies.”

He reckons AI could be “the most consequential technology” for Apple because it could either help it maintain its lofty position or create a set of daunting challenges.

https://www.dw.com/en/can-new-apple-ceo-john-ternus-fix-the-tech-giants-ai-woes/a-78575898

It’s pretty likely that AI was the reason why Apple is changing CEOs in the first place, because they have been getting criticized for not being as hopelessly stupid about it as other tech companies are.