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.

The article is talking about “health problem” in its last paragraph. But Narcissism isn’t a mental disorder or a mental illness; it is a personality disorder. (The narcissist is not suffering from the disorder; it’s the surrounding people who are.) The whole text is based on the author’s wrong understanding of the fundamentals of the subject, which renders the whole article useless.

I appreciate your detailed description of the probable benefits of telemetry. While I acknowledge there are benefits, however, before accepting a given set of telemetry, I would like to know with sources and in exact terms (not just ‘improved UI’) what enhancements were made to Firefox that couldn’t be achieved without telemetry. I want to decide for myself if those features are truly important enough to justify sending my personal data to the developers. Only then can I make an informed decision, and it still wouldn’t necessarily mean agreement. It’s not paranoia; it’s simply refusing telemetry for any reason given.

Privacy always comes at a cost. We are all different and have varying preferences based on our experiences and perspectives. Deciding how much privacy one wants to give up for convenience or other benefits is a personal choice. There’s no need to judge others for that decision. To each their own.

There’s certainly a trade-off by not having Telemetry, and I prefer privacy over some “slightly better development”. It is not necessary for good development.

Websites collect information, but I expect that in a public space, and also aggregating information across websites isn’t so easy. However, I have higher expectations for my web browser. When something is installed on my laptop, it’s like my house, and I don’t want anything to access my private space without permission.

Even worse, Firefox has it implemented as Opt-Out. Telemetry by default and without asking the user isn’t good practice. At the very least, they should give users a choice before enabling it. Yet, they collect everyone’s IP address and other information at least once when you start up Firefox for the first time. This doesn’t deserve my trust.

I don’t want to play a game of ‘what do I need to opt-out for privacy’ with an entity that I need to trust. Why would I use Firefox if Icecat gives me the level of trust that I need. It’s a personal choice.

By default Firefox collects data and sends it to their server, which Icecat doesn’t. I don’t want having to use another service like NextDNS to protect me against the application that I want to be able to trust because I’m using it for a lot of personal data.

From the mozilla website itself:

Identification:

When Firefox sends data to us, your IP address is temporarily collected as part of our server logs.

And then the data that I don’t want to share with other entities:

Interaction data includes information about your interactions with Firefox such as number of open tabs and windows, number of webpages visited, number and type of installed Firefox Add-ons and session length, as well as Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners such as interaction with Firefox search features and search partner referrals.

Technical data includes information about your Firefox version and language, device operating system and hardware configuration, memory, basic information about crashes and errors, outcome of automated processes like updates and safebrowsing.

Icecat, a Firefox fork without Firefox’s privacy issues (telemetry).

Many actions against another country are not based on the race of people living in it, but for political, economic, or military reasons.