Don Bones: They made websites unusable so they could cram in more ads. Then they laid off the writers who made the content you would endure the ads to read. So now websites are just a dead mall serving ads to nobody, if I am understanding this correctly.

They made websites unusable so they could cram in more ads. Then they laid off the writers who made the content you would endure the ads to read. So now websites are just a dead mall serving ads to nobody, if I am understanding this correctly.

Tbh the shift of referring to different kinds of media as "content" highlights how the stuff people make is viewed These Days™. It has the connotations of being something to fill a space, rather than something that has a reason to exist.

Or maybe that's just a stupid little linguistic peeve I have.

Nope, you're right

No, I agree. I noticed when it started happening and it immediately felt gross. It was the beginning of the fast tracking of creativity as a commodity.

Yeah. I keep going back to the analogy that it's like referring to your pets as "meat;" it's not strictly incorrect, but it's lurid to think of them that way.

Not the point but I (a vegetarian) am totally going to start referring to my cats as meat.

Really, you're just returning the favor.

Ah, true.

I have that same peeve with 'human resources' like people are just commodities to be used up.

I once worked for a company that offered “human capital solutions” which has always struck me as a horrifying phrase.

That sounds like Soylent Green.

EXACTLY

I hear a LOT of creatives say they have a problem with it, and I do too. It's a pretty gross term

Hey, not stupid at all! This shift to "content" is right in line with the shift from "citizen" to "consumer" that happened somewhere along the line--a shift, btw, that I am *still* not over. 🤨

Nah, I think that one's been around for a while. I can almost hear the 1950's nuclear family narrator talking about "discerning consumers" in relation to whatever asbestos laden shit they were up to then.

I agree--it's been around forrrrrever but was there not a shift at some point? The '50s would have been THE perfect time to make that shift actually.

You’re absolutely right. It’s like houses being called “properties”

Yeah, it is. The use of 'Content' to describe, well, actual content, dates back to the war between web creators who wanted to use the web to share info people would want, and those who were interested in filling sites with technical tricks & ad copy.

No, no. Keep going. You're right on the mark. ty

Yeah, we're in the future we were warning against when we were railing about everything being reduced to "content" a decade ago.

An afterthought to fill that space after money is made and data is harvested and ads are displayed. Agreed.

That's been the case for forever, or why else do newspapers have the same number of pages every day? (Not my observation, but not sure where I stole it?)

I'd say you were right on the money. I'd add Customer to Consumer. It reflects the attitude shift of companies. They don't want our custom, they see us as locusts just devouring everything and explains why support is such an afterthought now.

This is the winter of dyscontent

We might be entering the endgame of the ad-funded tech cycle. A lot of advertising seems to be for other ad-dependent products. Best example is podcasting. Seems like lately about 75% of ads are for other podcasts. It's like if the NYTimes was 75% ads for the WaPo. But somehow tech is "different".

When Brendan Shaub Podcasts TM started having commercials on Pluto TV commercial breaks I knew it was over.

All I get is cat food ads, gambling and discplate. I don't have a cat, don't gamble and have no interest in discplate. I'm not especially careful with what I give away so idk what the algorithm thinks it's selling, I'm not convinced it's making back much of its money at this point tho.

Free apps are largely like this as well - full of ads for ad-supported games

Its always been 75% ads for podcasts for me but a lot appears to be sister show type promotion which may not be from paid slots. I do see a lot of Amazon and gambling ads among nominally third party ads.

and thanks to pushes in AI absolutely no humans are left in the process!

The perfect system!

There's a Philip K. Dick story for this Because of course there is Adapted, in a supreme bit of irony, by Amazon www.imdb.com/title/tt6902...

"Electric Dreams" Autofac (TV Episode 2018) ⭐ 7.8 | Drama, Sci-Fiwww.imdb.com 51m | TV-MA

Haha. "Because of course there is"

I mean the ideal MBA brain capitalism endgame business would be one that makes nothing and sells nothing and just adds zeroes to a spreadsheet in a vacuum, and it feels like we're this 🤏 close to that

Infinite money glitch.

The Dobler Gambit

Adam Conover broke it all down a couple of days ago www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7NH...

How Google RUINED the Internetwww.youtube.com Google sucks now. Here's why. Get 20% off DeleteMe US consumer plans when you go to http://joindeleteme.com/Adam and use promo code ADAM at checkout. DeleteMe International Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com/ You may have noticed that Google isn't what it used to be. Search results are buried under ads and sponsored links, and when you do find a result, it's overflowing with SEO garbage. You aren't imagining things: the internet is getting quantifiably worse. In this video, Adam explains how the same Google that once helped make the internet more accessible to countless people has doomed the internet itself for the foreseeable future. SOURCES: Is Google Getting Worse? https://rb.gy/r42i0p How Does Google's Monopoly Hurt You https://rb.gy/dlo5qo How We Handle Ads, Funding, and Data Security https://rb.gy/xd90d1 Google Advertising Revenue 2023 https://rb.gy/2f03ql The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine https://rb.gy/s8g1k2 Google To Cut Thousands of Search Quality Rater Jobs https://rb.gy/c2tbfj Google Promotes Prabhakar Raghavan to Lead Search https://rb.gy/427k4w Google Is Spared a Search-Engine Switch by a Major Partner https://rb.gy/s0ftl2 Search Engines Should be Able to Guide Consumers https://t.ly/iMTC3 How to Build a Better Search Engine Than Google https://t.ly/5YQKu SEO Starter Guide https://t.ly/3LQ-l How Google is Killing Independent Sites Like Ours https://t.ly/BWzh5 Vice is Abandoning Vice.com and Laying Off Hundreds https://t.ly/5KgGG Pitchfork Faces Layoffs and Restructuring Under Condé Nast https://t.ly/8y5l8 Jezebel to Shut Down After 16 Years https://t.ly/EUA7y Mass Layoff Appears to be the End of Sports Illustrated https://t.ly/mSDri Where'd My Results Go? Google Search's Chatbot is No Longer Opt-In https://t.ly/Iwp-A Google Search Starts Rolling out ChatGPT-style Generative AI Results https://t.ly/bI4oO Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct https://t.ly/P-6r7 The Case Against Google https://t.ly/6CtGC United States v. Microsoft Corp. https://t.ly/CYBi6 Justice Dept. Sues Google Over Digital Advertising Dominance https://t.ly/cttv9 US Wraps Up Antitrust Case Against Google in Historic Trial https://t.ly/swo4E SUPPORT ADAM ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/adamconover SEE ADAM LIVE: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates SUBSCRIBE TO FACTUALLY PODCAST: https://link.chtbl.com/factually

robot sites for other robots

Hell yeah!

We need AI to generate ads and also AI to click on the ads: infinite revenue

It's so simple

I tried to read something on allmusic yesterday on my phone and couldn't because of the full-screen McDonald's ads that popped up to cover up the article every TWENTY feckin' seconds.

bsky.app/profile/donb...

Websites are just like this now.

Jeezus.

I feel like I'm watching it die, the entire internet flatlining, if that makes sense

A03 deliver us (The fanfiction site Archive of our Own is ad-free and non-profit, paid for by donation drives & free to use. It exists because fans wanted a place that our silly stories wouldn't be messed up with corporate censorship or pay to view. It's the best place on the Internet now)

I block ads, as any responsible citizen should. Which means the internet I browse is terrible for...seemingly no reason at all.

this fuckery might just bring back physical newspapers and magazines

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