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.

If someone plans to move to my neighborhood and that one has a record of burning down houses, it’s not a good idea to give it a chance.

It’s not about the users, but Facebook as a company that has its own agenda against its users in order to make as much money as possible.

It’s also about Facebook seeing other networks not as friendly co-spaces, but as competitors that it tries to crush.

If you talk about users though, the “worse servers than Facebook” are by far less powerful than Facebook, and they impose no danger to the Fediverse.

Let’s start with Facebook first, the platform that made a walled garden out of

• messengers (went from XMPP to walled garden)
• websites (businesses having facebook pages rather than freely accessible websites)
• used product markets
• online communities
• email (sending email to a Facebook user is converted into a private message on Facebook rather than sending out the email, at least that was a thing in the past)
• … (insert any Facebook service here)

You can’t trust Facebook, it’s about turning its users into a product for marketers, and that’s it.

“healthy” here means “healthy for the Fediverse”, which means “being nice to each other” and supporting diversity, both values being contrary to the Facebook network, which is predatory to other networks, as having proven in the past.

The need is to prevent the predatory network from accessing the weaker one that promotes diversity and freedom of choice.

There is a downside: Because many people don’t see the negative long-term effects, Facebook will have enough time to influence and dominate the Fediverse in a negative way. The masses don’t see what Facebook is doing in the long run.

There’s also not much reason to federate with Facebook. Sign up there if you like that network.

It’s not only about ignoring Facebook users. Imagine in real life a bully comes to your group and you could block him, so you don’t see him, but he still influences the people around you in a negative way, changing the environment you used to love. You better make sure he stays out of your circle. Facebook has a long record of destroying other social networks.

Because the long-term influence of such a powerful yet detrimental network like Facebook is bad, and when the negative effects for the Fediverse show up, or even later, when enough people realize it, the Fediverse will have been influenced in a way that it can’t go back to a healthy state.