Asklemmy

43932 readers

637 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

208

Beyond enshittification, why does tech oftentimes suck? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Hammocks4All@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

95 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sometimes I’ll run into a baffling issue with a tech product — be it headphones, Google apps like maps or its search features, Apple products, Spotify, other apps, and so on — and when I look for solutions online I sometimes discover this has been an issue for years. Sometimes for many many years.

These tech companies are sometimes ENORMOUS. How is it that these issues persist? Why do some things end up being so inefficient, unintuitive, or clunky? Why do I catch myself saying “oh my dear fucking lord” under my breath so often when I use tech?

Are there no employees who check forums? Does the architecture become so huge and messy that something seemingly simple is actually super hard to fix? Do these companies not have teams that test this stuff?

Why is it so pervasive? And why does some of it seem to be ignored for literal years? Sometimes even a decade!

Is it all due to enshittification? Do they trap us in as users and then stop giving a shit? Or is there more to it than that?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Reputational damage isn’t something they understand

Is this really the case? I feel like they might, but are deciding that its "worth the cost of business"

[–] AdNecrias@lemmy.pt 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd think since companies get big enough they can just buy the promising competition before it becomes a problem, I'd say it's a worthwhile cost to them

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, lack of competition is driving a lot of this. Fixing bugs doesn’t increase their stock value. It doesn’t make the line go up.

Launching products and bragging about profits makes the line go up (especially just before a quarter or monthly report is due).

AT&T/Bell Telephone was like this for years until they were finally broken up (nominally). When cellphones came out and provided nationwide competition, long distance suddenly became free.

We need to bust up google, Facebook, etc. They have nothing to push them to be better, just CEO egos and investors to please.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Facebook as a product is over. It's like 90% ads. I almost never see my friends posts anymore.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Its marketplace has been really popular in my area. Craigslist has all but dried up for may item types.

But they own Instagram as well don’t forget, and they have bought out many other competitors that we won’t ever get to experience.