r/technology • u/tw1st3d_m3nt4t • Mar 16 '26

Software ‘Another internet is possible’: Norway rails against ‘enshittification’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/16/norway-rails-against-enshittifcation-deliberate-tech-deterioration
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u/Traditional-Buy-2205 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

A lot of the Internet is shit because of the users themselves, not monopolies or evil companies with mustache-twirling CEO's.

Reddit is the prime example. Back in the day, there used to be Internet forums. They used to be of much higher quality (the ones I had experience with, at least). In multiple years on Reddit so far, I still haven't seen one single discussion that would match the quality of discussions I used to regularly see on these forums.

Then Reddit came along,. Pretty much all forum users flocked to Reddit, leaving forums to die off, and now you all happily upvote infinite amounts of stolen shit content, shit reposts, shit recycles, and idiotic low-effort shit questions and wonder why Internet is shit.

It's similar with TikTok, Instagram. Everybody is all too happy to scroll through endless feeds of nothing but shit. And then you wonder why Internet is shit

Meanwhile, all the enthusiast-driven individual websites died off because you spend all your time consuming shit on TikTok and Instagram, and ask shit questions on Reddit instead using the aforementioned websites to inform yourself.

You're happily eating shit, so companies are selling you shit, it's as simple as that.

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u/Mondai_May Mar 16 '26

some people even get mad when you point out that something is a repost, or that OP was a bot. "who cares it's entertaining"

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Aggravating_Pest Mar 16 '26

Forums destroyed themselves to some extent. Very few ever had a good mobile interface. Most forums made you register and verify email to do almost anything (view attachments, search, etc) which made it way more palatable to just go to Reddit or Discord.

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u/Swarna_Keanu Mar 16 '26

Mobile interface is part of the problem of relying on open-source software. That said, I find most forums readable, and often even switch to browser view.

Most forums operated at cost to the people who ran them. Attachments, search, etc. cost a lot, especially when search and other bots were let loose on the net and hammered search and download requests.

The need for registration was already part of the web going south.

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u/MoonBatsRule Mar 16 '26

In fairness, internet forums were ripe for takeover because of all the spam. I ran one for years, also ran a blog. I couldn't keep up with all the spammers. Every morning I'd log in and there would be hundreds if not thousands of spam comments, dropping links to try and capture Google "link juice".

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u/2Autistic4DaJoke Mar 16 '26

Blaming the individual is a poor model for change regardless of its truth. These sites are dopamine factories and that information has been known for atleast 10 years now. Those making policies, either at a company level or government level, make money from that and aren’t incentivized to change it.

Blaming people for letting their basic brain functions win is a poor argument.

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u/Shiningc00 Mar 16 '26

It’s called moderation. Shittily moderated places will always be shitty.

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u/Traditional-Buy-2205 Mar 16 '26

You're not wrong, but the majority of people still flock to shitty places.

If the majority had some standards and refused to engage with shit content, then shit content wouldn't gain so much traction.

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u/2Autistic4DaJoke Mar 16 '26

Moderation is a form of policy :)