Memes

Remember when ads were just those animated gif boxes on either side of the content you actually consumed? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

Then they became annoying popups, to the point that EVERY browser ships with popups blocked by default. Now it's all javascript occupying your screen everywhere. Plus all those invasive "Notifications"

Greed isn't the problem, per se -- it's that outside of the biggest sites, which could hoover up ad targeting data of hundreds of millions to billions and sell that data through their own internal ad platform -- the model was never viable to begin with. Notice that the enshittification really took off all soon as interest rates jumped? Tech startups have all been floating along on easy money, but now that loans aren't basically free, VC dollars are drying up. Companies that could previously offset their capital burn with yet another round of investment now suddenly need to make money on their own merit, and are finding that they have to cut service to the bone and monetize the bejeezus out of what's left if they have any chance of survival.