Modern social media
Microtransactions in video games. Hell, I'd say that modern video games in general are pretty bad, ESPECIALLY modern mobile games.
Look, I agree they suck, but video games being slightly worse isn’t the worst thing about the 21st century.
Eh, I couldn't really think of anything that isn't already pointed out by somebody else in the comments, so this is the thing that came to mind.
Full scale mass surveillance capitalism. Governments used to have to hire agents, dress them up, and have them bug peoples phones. Now they can just buy it in bulk. No warrent, no black site op, just cashing checks.
Social Media. Cancerous all of it. Psyops and psychological manipulation. If you studied psychology and sociology you would know there is a huge stage 4 cancer in society and it is social media.
Does Lemmy count as social media?
Yes - by most definitions. It's powered by user-generated content and is based on interaction between users through engagement with that content, which is voted and scored.
There is a difference which I personally feel makes reddit less harmful than other social media, however, which is the algorithm - or lack of it.
In most social media, the algorithm exists to continually serve people the exact content they engage with in a constant feed, which is IMO the most socially damaging part of social media because it creates endless doomscrolling, toxic echo chambers, promotion of sponsored content, and a whole raft of psychological problems in users.
The Lemmy homefeed is more organic, and scrolling through 'all' you see content genuinely from everywhere, in a less curated way based on upvotes, not individual algorithmic tailoring. And that's maybe not as "engaging" but it's far less damaging.
Separate apps for various retail stores. I don't want a home depot app. I don't want a kroger app. We have a generic app for this category called a web browser. If you want me to download a specialized app for your store, I assume that means that my browser does not sufficiently breach my privacy for your "business purposes."
Dude the phone "app" is 100% on the list for me too.
As a stop gap between good web design including PWAs it made sense at a time, but 99% of apps are just bloated websites that data and power for no noticeable gains...
I really hope this goes out of style eventually, and one day gets remembered alongside proprietary hardware connectors.
"We're glad to see you successfully advanced the state of the art in human tissue culturing. However, instead of renewing your grant, we've decided to immediately execute the entire research team. May god have mercy on your souls"
I also second social media, but I need to make another suggestion it'd be Keurigs k-cups. So much plastic waste for the barest level of convenience.
There's a lot of people who don't know when the 21st century began.
proof-of-work blockchains. instead of a utopian decentralized currency we have a utopia for scammers and day traders, and uses a ton of energy at a time when we need to conserve to combat global warming.
All while aiming to be cash you can e-mail, and failing at that because its high volatility and low speed make it a completely artificial commodities market with nearly zero real-world applications. It's a technology that took off because Paypal is the devil and it is arguably worse.
Quantum computers a real candidate once they get off the ground. They might help solve a few problems in chemistry and condensed matter physics, but on the other hand they definitely will make a lot of encryption we heavily rely on obsolete, and the replacements are noticeably inferior. And that's about it, because quantum algorithms are hard to design. So, that seems like a net negative to me.
Deep neural nets are powerful, but the fact we fundamentally don't understand how they work is a bit nerve-wracking.
Anything cooking related. It all the same shit you already had but this time it's plastic, harder to clean and only does 1 specific thing.
Not to mention the shit that's completely fucking useless, like Juicero - a "juice squeezing machine" that only works with plastic bags you get from their subscription service.
Facial recognition technology. Not only is it not as perfect as people claim in identifying people, but some countries are using it to attack the LGBT since it was discovered the LGBT have different variances in facial features. And yet that's not even 100% perfect, so now you have a bad technology for a negative purpose repurposed into another negative purpose that it's causing collateral damage with because it's as awful at that as the first thing.
By the same token gait recognition.
The generative AI's that "creates" content. Just dumb black boxes remixing what you give them, overconfident and inaccurate, yet seen as the ultimate tools by people.
They do create content, though, regardless of it you personally think they're smart in the process of doing so. Like, there's actual papers that are devoted to making sure.
Generative AI
Corporations are people?
Trickle down economics?
Nuclear weapons?
Node Package Manager
Cryptocoins
Smartphones without keyboards
Roblox
Eh. The nice thing about a soft keyboard is that it can be anything you want, including more display real estate. It's not as nice to type on but it seems like an advance overall to me.
Also, why the Roblox hate? I never actually played.
Roblox is what zuckerfuck wish his metaverse could become. Millions of kids playing, another thousands working effectively for free to create content, and the very few that actually find success see that getting any money out of Roblox and into their bank accounts is hard as hell and comes with exorbitant taxes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ -> Video is almost 3 years old, but I doubt Roblox got better for developers in any capacity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6PYj93SGxc -> Essentially the same thing as above, but from September 2023, with some numbers updated, like the CEO saying they made "over 100 million dollars of cash in Q1" (2023), the place having over 50 million games, and more.
I see. Thanks.
Edit: Holy crap, yeah that's scummy. Literally manipulating children - openly, specifically children - into being whales without even knowing.
Somehow, none of the "think of the children people" care or talk about this.
I can type faster on my keyboard free phone then I could with my old phone with a qwertz keyboard.
Plus when I’m not typing I get more screen real estate. It’s a total win win for me. Not bad at all.
Billionaire celebrities with millions of fans enabling their narcissism.
Clickbait.
Internet advertising.
Although initially good, the internet. From malware to corporate tracking, it’s become a cesspool. And yet, here I am.
I think despite the downsides of the internet that it's clearly overwhelming good for society.
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