You are right. I’ve updated the naming. Thanks for your feedback, very much appreciated.

I changed the naming to “engagement poisening”, after you and several other commenters correctly noted that while over-optimization for engagement metrics is a component of “enshittification,” it is not sufficient on its own to be called as “enshittification”. I have updated the naming accordingly.

You are making a good point here with the strict definition of “Enshittification”. But in your opinion, what is it then? OpenAI is diluting the quality of its answers with unnecessary clutter, prioritizing feel-good style over clarity to cater to user’s ego. What would you call the stage where usefulness is sacrificed for ease of consumption, like when Reddit’s layout started favoring meme-style content to boost engagement?

So, just to be clear, you modified the system instructions with the mentioned “Absolute Mode” prompt, and ChatGPT was still so wordy on your account?

Can you tell one or two of those questions to counter-check?

Just to give an impression of how the tone will change after applying the above mentioned custom instructions:

OpenAI aims to let users feel better, catering the user’s ego, on the costs of reducing the usefulness of the service, rather than getting the message across directly. Their objective is to keep more users on the cost of reducing the utility for the user. It is enshittification in a way, from my point of view.

I agree that the change in tone is only a slight improvement. The content is mostly the same. The way information is presented does affect how it is perceived though. If the content is buried under a pile of praise and nice-worded sentences, even though the content is negative, it is more likely I’ll misunderstand or take some advice less serious, so not to the degree as it was meant to be, just to let me as a user feel comfortable. If an AI is too positive in its expression just to make me as a user prefer it over another AI, even though it would be better to tell me the facts straight forward, it’s only for the benefit of OpenAI (as in this case), and not for the user. I gotta say that is what Grok is better at, it feels more direct and not talking around the facts, it gives clearer statements despite its wordiness. It’s the old story of “letting feel somenone good” versus “being good, even when it hurts”, by being more direct when it needs to be to get the message across. The content might be the same, but how it is taken by the listener and what he will do with it also depends on how it is presented.

I appreciate your comment that corrects the impression of the tone being the only or most important part, highlighting the content will mostly be the same. Just adding to it that the tone of the message also has an influence that is not to be underestimated.

It turns ChatGPT to an emotionless yet very on-point AI, so be aware it won’t pet your feelings in any way no matter what you write. I added the instructions to the original post above.

Sure, I added it to the original post above.

I stopped buying their phones when they started trying to get control over the hardware I paid for.

It’s a show of power to their own population in China, a drill of invading Taiwan, and an opportunity to push the line a bit further every time they do this, until a Chinese soldier sets a foot on Taiwanese land. They don’t care how it looks internationally, as “how it looks” doesn’t have any real consequences or at least they are worth the benefits.

AI training to suggest emoji reactions? Really? 😂

I think this has an effect most people don’t think of: Media will just lose it’s value as a trusted source for information. We’ll just lose the ability of broadcasting media as anything could be faked. Humanity is back to “word of mouth”, I guess.

I don’t get how a software can be in alpha or beta version and by the developers be called ready for production environments. It doesn’t make sense by itself. In some way it’s not an honest way of communication, telling us two contrary things at the same time.

Alpha versions are actually quite severe. It means that features can be removed or added breaking the whole system. It means not providing an upgrade path for database changes. It means new bugs will be introduced by new features. Beta normally means a feature freeze but still not considered stable enough for production, due to bugs and security issues. RC, a “release candidate” is almost ready but you give it a bit more of testing time to make sure no critical bugs are left. And after that you get the version that is safe for productive use.

They are far away from a productive version, but telling us to use their development version as such.

Keyboards for typing Chinese can work completely without Internet connection. There’s one in the F-Droid store: Guileless Bopomofo.

Beta and moreso Alpha are tags that indicate a software is not ready for use in production environment, because it is either not secure or stable enough. Otherwise it wouldn’t need to be tagged as Alpha or Beta.

I can only advice to try out a color E ink eReader in person. Their screen is usually low contrast and dark, to a degree that you need to use it with backlight by default, which kinda defeats the purpose of an E ink eReader. For E ink, monochrome displays are still the way to go, and if you really need color, a device without E ink.

I guess even QubesOS would have been affected by this?

Time to find interests that don’t depend on a company taking advantage of my consumption habits.