But in both Amazon's and Google's case you can see a particular McKinsey-pilled brain at work.
In Google's case, you left the site when you clicked on a result. So they went ahead and made your search worse so that you would keep going back and searching over and over again and clicking more ads in the process till you found what you wanted. What were you going to do? Find a different search engine?
Back then mesothelioma lawyers were willing to bid a lot of money on any keyword, they didn't only want people searching for asbestos to see their ads, they literally wanted a billboard on the internet. But Google didn't want that, they wanted that when you searched for a thing you saw ads for that thing. But, of course, back then Google had competition, so being a good useful search engine was very much their goal.
@pluralistic has a great essay on the Amazon news today. https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/04/cheating-at-fraud/ Some thoughts of my own in this thread.
I worked in the industry back when Google etc were pioneering search engine advertising. Google's insight back then was that if you used relevancy and not just the bid on the ad as an input, you ended up with a better user experience and higher total revenues even if you made a bit less on each individual click.
Rereading Small Gods and encountered this description of Lu-Tze, immediately reminded of @pluralistic thread from a couple days ago.
For your enshittification files @pluralistic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IegF5gcmBWE
Of interest to @pluralistic
This is an insane result. Reverse centaurs no better than plain humans. Two humans better than a centaur: straight or reverse. And this in radiology that was believed a slam-dunk for AI. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959804908001287#:~:text=CAD%20does%20not%20have%20a,in%20both%20sets%20of%20studies.
Reading @pluralistic's latest Picks and Shovels. Midway through, there's a description of a Dead Kennedys show in mid-80s SF. Sounded like a great time so I had to look for a yt link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYfSt0xcQIk My goodness, so much fun. Also, Biafra starting with a dedication to Dianne Banker Buttlicker Margaret Thatcher Feinstein...he had her pegged from the start!
This is incredible. https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithms-software-health-care/view/republish/ Unsurprisingly it turns out what @pluralistic calls reverse centaurs are a terrible idea in medicine. After many paragraphs of calling out what a bad idea they are, the last 2 paragraphs say that the solution to failing "AI" can only be more "AI".
@pluralistic hitting every note in this: https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/09/radicalized/
I've written before how UHC's behavior taught me to throw away every bill I got from my healthcare provider. In many of those cases UHC was sticking the provider and the collector with the bill. But also, UHC refused to pay for the COVID vaccines we got! In that case, they stuck the government with the bill. What a model! Take 10s of 1000s of dollars in premia and just sit on it! No service whatsoever provided in return.
@pluralistic Turns out there's a followup to this.
"So you said he's a science fiction writer, right? How is he so perfectly describing my current school experience? The spyware that they install to track everything we do. But the students can all get around it so easily. The other day IT comes and installs new spyware on my laptop because the teacher said they can't remotely see what I'm doing on my laptop."
Cue discussion on the shitty-technology adoption curve.
@pluralistic So long as I'm recommending @pluralistic I should also talk about his latest book? Not sure how he does it, but all of the things in the book are things I've read about: the 998 gangs in the sheriff's department, the ponzi schemes, the incarceration industry, California's overcrowded prisons etc etc. But how he manages to put them all together into a story is incredible. Also, he said to recommend the book, so this is it.
Today's bridge disaster on the heels of @pluralistic 's brilliant essay yesterday on the epistemological crisis https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/ and right on cue, the amateur bridge engineers have logged on: https://www.404media.co/baltimore-amateur-bridge-engineers-have-logged-on/
Go to check if my copy of @pluralistic 's Bezzle is at our library yet, and find that the teenager has been setting holds of his own.
Not 2 days after @pluralistic wrote about auditors: https://www.ft.com/content/a3bdf4fc-151c-436f-aeb9-b5e9b4d60d23
This is a hell of a story. https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/11/30/he-wanted-privacy-his-college-gave-him-none
I thought I knew how far we were gone on what @pluralistic calls the shitty technology adoption curve. But seeing it all in one place. *shiver*
@brianmerchant apparently owns a "The Luddites Were Right" shirt according to the New Yorker. I wonder if he has a merch store. Where does one get such a shirt that makes him some money?
Personally rather pleased that @pluralistic 's "enshittification" has made it into the mainstream. Now let's do the same with the phrase "FBI informant Peter Thiel".
Is it me or did @pluralistic return from vacation breathing fire and brimstone and completely out of fucks to give?
@pluralistic is serializing the first chapter of his new book and the descriptions of the valley personalities are all :chef's kiss:
The only weird note is the 8-storey Palo Alto residential development. That's impossible.
Can't wait for the book.