The author of Worse on Purpose sure looks like an upstanding, All-American, AI-loving Palantir goon.
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2026
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Surely it'd be easier to document the companies NOT enshittifying their stuff.
indeed. my first thought.
After knowing about microplastics a company designed a plastic coffee pod and sold them by the billions.
Is that company Swiss and uses child labor amongst other things?
We have refillable pods, but I never got the hate. Every single-use drink at the gas station uses far more plastic. And no one ever said a word.
Funny enough, Keurig is advertising heavily on Spotify for their pods. I figured that would be a losing game. 🤷🏼♂️
Get down.. get down.. drag your butt all around.. get down.. get down.. drag your butt all aaraaauund
I like how it doesn't just list the brand and a rating (approved, watchlist, former great, and Avoid), but also justifies that rating. It even includes what it would take to change their minds.
The list of brands is still short, but it includes a lot of heavy-hitters and their reasoning. But, not all of their reasons are good. They really take a negative view of contract manufacturing and rebranding, even if it's not a secret and doesn't meaningfully affect quality.
For instance, their primary reason to avoid Kenmore is that it (mostly) rebadges other brands, especially Whirlpool and LG. This is the biggest open secret in appliances, and has been common knowledge for 50 years. While it's true the Kenmore name doesn't really mean anything, it doesn't change the fact that it's mostly a standard Whirlpool/LG/etc underneath. It has the same benefits and risks as the first party label, and it's trivial to identify who made it.
The current ownership is a much bigger sign of enshittification, but is not their focus.
Friend of mine used to make around $600 a week as a side hustle fixing washers and driers. Went to his house to get a part and he showed and explained that only two sorts of a given part will cover every American manufacturer.
But, not all of their reasons are good. They really take a negative view of contract manufacturing and rebranding, even if it's not a secret and doesn't meaningfully affect quality.
Their reasoning is actually pretty solid but you have to read the thoroughly researched write-ups they do to understand it in full.
Hey, that's pretty cool. Good job, whoever did this.
Who makes none stretchy jeans...all I want is pants that dont feel like they have rubber in them...GOD DAMN!!!!!
Costco’s house brand Kirkland has 100% cotton jeans for ~$17 a pair.
Mostly functional without JavaScript, nice.
The website style looks AI-generated.
Your red flags are correct. This website is made by an AI-using, AI-loving, Palantir employee.
Unfortunate so many people will actually read (or pretend to read) this post and say "yeah I loved ingesting that content actually", but welcome to Lemmy where all you need is a snappy title and a couple bullet points separated by commas!
You are exaggerating a bit too much. Sure, sometimes AI can write good stuff, my 2 problems with it are ethics and slop.
it is unethical, trained from stolen data, and sloppy(stupid), needs human editing/intervention.
This website seems like slop.
Unfortunate so many people will actually read (or pretend to read) this post and say “yeah I loved ingesting that content actually”, but welcome to Lemmy where all you need is a snappy title and a couple bullet points separated by commas!
I do that sometimes, but I dont claim to read the article then. Bullet points help me know what I should expect from the article, to deduce how interesting it is, and if its worth my time or not.
Idk. Just looks like a template was used.
Most web software comes with templates.
The website content is overlong, tedious, and sure looks AI-generated.
The website content fails AI generation tests...
The website content is overlong, tedious, and sure looks AI-generated.
The website content is thoroughly researched and well documented from public information and corporate filings.
The website content fails AI generation tests...
Mary Shelley failed an AI generation test too.
If you could be convinced that the website is filled with paragraphs of needless AI-generated text, how would you be convinced?
If the answer is "nothing" then I guess it'd be impossible to convince you anything online is AI, and that's worthless for discourse...
Nothing from you will convince me of anything.
I don’t generally listen to people who make a determination and then work backwards to try and prove it. Or people who dismiss the content of things for some arbitrary reason like “they used AI tools, hurr durr, AI bad”.
Maybe you could be less lazy and link to the ongoing discussion (since you want discourse) in Hacker News, or better yet go participate there yourself.
Or you could point out that Keyana Sapp works in an AI field at Palantir instead of outright dismissing the content which is both accurate and directly relevant to a Lemmy community called enshittification.
If nothing can convince you of the truth, then that's pathetic. I'm sorry you're so unreasonable
It's even worse that you knowingly would come out swinging in defense of AI slop written by a Palantir thug, out of apparently nothing more than a bruised ego. Surely the person who pasted that text can be held responsible for making a worse site on purpose.