Enshittification

Latest update is that he’s retained a law firm to sue Volvo into providing a refund.

Issues include: complete loss of throttle on the freeway, unable to lock the car, and infotainment screen blackouts (the screen which controls nearly every feature of the car). All in a car that cost over $150,000 CAD 😵

Remember the "I want a white one" video? That's the first video I clearly remember having a text-to-speech voice-over. It was really bad TTS, and it was awesome. Lately, though, I find myself wishing video hosting services like Youtube and Peertube (to a lesser degree) had a filter so that I could filter out any videos with TTS voice overs. Does this bother anyone else?

I'm a little torn about it. There are legitimate reasons for people to use them; I've seen commentary from posters about social anxiety that makes even recording audio difficult, and TTS must be fantastic for ~~mute~~ non-verbal(?) folks. Non-native English speakers may be more comfortable with it. I'm sure the platform doesn't help... how many videos do you have to post where the peanut gallery mocks your verbal mistakes before you give up and just have an engine read your written text? I've also noticed that the use of TTS is far, far worse on Youtube -- I have yet to come across a single video on any Peertub site that uses it, although it must exist.

Like a lot of technology, generated speech is getting abused, and since TTS has valid uses, I put it in the "enshittification" category. It's used on every bulk, low-effort "N greatest/funniest/random-adjective" videos; I hear it in increasingly in those suspiciously AI-smelling, ad-ish "reviews" that just read specs and make an odd comment about how cool it is; and there's so much more low-quality, low-information content that feels AI generated uses it -- or maybe it feels AI generated because it uses it. It's almost always on just awful content.

TTS on video content is a perfect example of "this is why we can't have nice things." I am starting to hate it so much, I abort whatever I'm starting to watch as soon as I hear the absurd cadence and mispronunciations -- I'd rather hear an honest non-native speaker making mistakes than that terrible TTS crap.

Whatever the reason, the use of TTS is a trend I'm putting firmly in the "enshittification" category, but am I overreacting here? Do you have a way of dodging or identifying content that uses TTS, in advance?

I recently attended the Teardown 2025 conference in Portland, OR where Cory spoke about enshittification among related topics. A documentary film crew were present, filming some of the talks, so there should be a documentary forthcoming at some point about his perspective on the topic.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31478575

Takeaways

• We’re introducing channel subscriptions, promoted channels and ads in Status in the WhatsApp Updates tab to help you find channels and products you’re interested in.
• The growing popularity of the Updates tab makes this the right place for these experiences, in a way that doesn’t interrupt your chats.
• Nothing changes about people’s personal chats, which remain end-to-end encrypted and are not used for ads.

Just have to share this here because of how unbelievably tone-deaf it is.

I have an upcoming flight with Lufthansa, booked cheapest economy class. Now I get a mail that says I am eligible for an upgrade.

Correction, I am eligible to make an offer to maybe maybe get an upgrade. When I click that link I get to the page above in the screenshot where I can now choose an amount between 90 and 300-ish EUR per passenger, per flight, to maybe upgrade to business class.

Just look at the slider, it is almost hilarious that it says poor when you leave it at the low amounts. Is any other airline doing that?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7204240

A few days ago I sent a GDPR request to some company to delete my personal data. They said to install their app and send a ticket from the app. The email was sent from the email address to which the account is registered. Is this even legal?

"Good day,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the deletion of your account.

Please contact us in the application to delete your account and verify your information.

If you have any further questions, we are at your disposal."

Catherynne M. Valente

https://substack.com/@catvalente

Get ready for "enhancements" and look out for alternatives.

Nothing quite says “high-performance muscle car” like a popup ad for a Mopar Extended Warranty covering your whole center console. That’s right, Dodge Charger owners are now experiencing an exciting new feature: pop-up ads that appear every time the vehicle stops at a light. This garbage feature was spotted in the wild, take a look at how it looks.

I remember it used to be fun, but they keep changing for worse.

So my internet went out on Friday at 6am. Trying to navigate the Verizon website and app has been a pure hellscape, with repeated requests to revalidate using a PIN which is denied arbitrarally, causing call to drop. If you do manage to get a warm body, they put you on hold or transfer the call will inevitably drops causing one to start the whole process again. Finally, they said it was a router problem, which was only 6 months old and no longer compatible with their service. Finally got bounced back to Sales at 5PM, who ordered a new router for me and waived the recurring fee (either $400 for a new router or $18/month for something paid for many times over). Anyway, I went to pick up said new router at the location indicated only to find that they don't stock equipment and I have to drive another 4 miles to a nondescript store in a strip mall. I finally get home and try to self-install which bombs out, necessitating another aventure into their website/app hellscape. About 18 hours after the initial outage, I'm back in service. I've never run into a company who is so blantant in their desire to piss off their customers. If only there were viable alternatives in my area.