#twiddling — Public Fediverse posts

@Printdevil There is a chapter about it in the #Enshittification book by @pluralistic

He calls it #twiddling

@Printdevil There is a chapter about it in the #Enshittification book by @pluralistic

He calls it #twiddling

@Printdevil There is a chapter about it in the #Enshittification book by @pluralistic

He calls it #twiddling

@Printdevil There is a chapter about it in the #Enshittification book by @pluralistic

He calls it #twiddling

@Printdevil There is a chapter about it in the #Enshittification book by @pluralistic

He calls it #twiddling

Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/

Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/

Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/

Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/

Pluralistic: Become unoptimizable (20 Aug 2025)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/20/billionaireism/

Pluralistic: Delta's AI-based price-gouging (30 Jul 2025)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/30/efficiency-washing/

"Twiddling represents the big cognitive hazard from enshittification during the AI bubble: the parts of your UI that matter most to you are the parts that you use as vital cognitive prostheses. A product team whose KPI is "get users to tap on an AI button" is going to use the fine-grained data they have on your technological activities to preferentially target these UI elements that you rely on with AI boobytraps. You are too happy, so they are leaving money on the table, and they're coming for it.

This is a form of "attention rent": the companies are taxing your muscle-memory, forcing you to produce deceptive usage statistics at the price of either diverting your cognition from completing a task to hunt around for the button that banishes the AI and lets you get back to what you were doing; or to simply abandon that cognitive prosthesis:
(...)
It's true "engagement-hacking": not performing acts of dopamine manipulation; but rather, spying on your habitual usage of a digital tool in order to swap buttons around in order to get you to make a number go up. It's exploiting the fact that you engage with something useful and good to make it less useful and worse, because if you're too happy, some enshittifier is leaving money on the table."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/#outboard-brains-considered-harmful

#Twiddling #Enshittification #AI #GenerativeAI #AttentionRent #EngagementHacking #Capitalism

"Twiddling represents the big cognitive hazard from enshittification during the AI bubble: the parts of your UI that matter most to you are the parts that you use as vital cognitive prostheses. A product team whose KPI is "get users to tap on an AI button" is going to use the fine-grained data they have on your technological activities to preferentially target these UI elements that you rely on with AI boobytraps. You are too happy, so they are leaving money on the table, and they're coming for it.

This is a form of "attention rent": the companies are taxing your muscle-memory, forcing you to produce deceptive usage statistics at the price of either diverting your cognition from completing a task to hunt around for the button that banishes the AI and lets you get back to what you were doing; or to simply abandon that cognitive prosthesis:
(...)
It's true "engagement-hacking": not performing acts of dopamine manipulation; but rather, spying on your habitual usage of a digital tool in order to swap buttons around in order to get you to make a number go up. It's exploiting the fact that you engage with something useful and good to make it less useful and worse, because if you're too happy, some enshittifier is leaving money on the table."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/#outboard-brains-considered-harmful

#Twiddling #Enshittification #AI #GenerativeAI #AttentionRent #EngagementHacking #Capitalism

"Twiddling represents the big cognitive hazard from enshittification during the AI bubble: the parts of your UI that matter most to you are the parts that you use as vital cognitive prostheses. A product team whose KPI is "get users to tap on an AI button" is going to use the fine-grained data they have on your technological activities to preferentially target these UI elements that you rely on with AI boobytraps. You are too happy, so they are leaving money on the table, and they're coming for it.

This is a form of "attention rent": the companies are taxing your muscle-memory, forcing you to produce deceptive usage statistics at the price of either diverting your cognition from completing a task to hunt around for the button that banishes the AI and lets you get back to what you were doing; or to simply abandon that cognitive prosthesis:
(...)
It's true "engagement-hacking": not performing acts of dopamine manipulation; but rather, spying on your habitual usage of a digital tool in order to swap buttons around in order to get you to make a number go up. It's exploiting the fact that you engage with something useful and good to make it less useful and worse, because if you're too happy, some enshittifier is leaving money on the table."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/#outboard-brains-considered-harmful

#Twiddling #Enshittification #AI #GenerativeAI #AttentionRent #EngagementHacking #Capitalism

"Twiddling represents the big cognitive hazard from enshittification during the AI bubble: the parts of your UI that matter most to you are the parts that you use as vital cognitive prostheses. A product team whose KPI is "get users to tap on an AI button" is going to use the fine-grained data they have on your technological activities to preferentially target these UI elements that you rely on with AI boobytraps. You are too happy, so they are leaving money on the table, and they're coming for it.

This is a form of "attention rent": the companies are taxing your muscle-memory, forcing you to produce deceptive usage statistics at the price of either diverting your cognition from completing a task to hunt around for the button that banishes the AI and lets you get back to what you were doing; or to simply abandon that cognitive prosthesis:
(...)
It's true "engagement-hacking": not performing acts of dopamine manipulation; but rather, spying on your habitual usage of a digital tool in order to swap buttons around in order to get you to make a number go up. It's exploiting the fact that you engage with something useful and good to make it less useful and worse, because if you're too happy, some enshittifier is leaving money on the table."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/#outboard-brains-considered-harmful

#Twiddling #Enshittification #AI #GenerativeAI #AttentionRent #EngagementHacking #Capitalism

"Twiddling represents the big cognitive hazard from enshittification during the AI bubble: the parts of your UI that matter most to you are the parts that you use as vital cognitive prostheses. A product team whose KPI is "get users to tap on an AI button" is going to use the fine-grained data they have on your technological activities to preferentially target these UI elements that you rely on with AI boobytraps. You are too happy, so they are leaving money on the table, and they're coming for it.

This is a form of "attention rent": the companies are taxing your muscle-memory, forcing you to produce deceptive usage statistics at the price of either diverting your cognition from completing a task to hunt around for the button that banishes the AI and lets you get back to what you were doing; or to simply abandon that cognitive prosthesis:
(...)
It's true "engagement-hacking": not performing acts of dopamine manipulation; but rather, spying on your habitual usage of a digital tool in order to swap buttons around in order to get you to make a number go up. It's exploiting the fact that you engage with something useful and good to make it less useful and worse, because if you're too happy, some enshittifier is leaving money on the table."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/#outboard-brains-considered-harmful

#Twiddling #Enshittification #AI #GenerativeAI #AttentionRent #EngagementHacking #Capitalism

https://www.evshift.com/326480/you-had-me-at-twiddling-all-thanks-to-bmw-highway-assistance-shorts/ You had me at twiddling, all thanks to BMW Highway Assistance*. #shorts #Assistance #bmw #ElectricCars #ElectricVehicles #EV #Highway #shorts #twiddling

The effect of #twiddling puts us up-and-coming writers in a dilemma that we didn't ask to be put in. We would like that qualitative feedback that Doctorow talks about, but our audience is a zygote that only divides based on a chain of arbitrary whims.

12/

The effect of #twiddling puts us up-and-coming writers in a dilemma that we didn't ask to be put in. We would like that qualitative feedback that Doctorow talks about, but our audience is a zygote that only divides based on a chain of arbitrary whims.

12/

The effect of #twiddling puts us up-and-coming writers in a dilemma that we didn't ask to be put in. We would like that qualitative feedback that Doctorow talks about, but our audience is a zygote that only divides based on a chain of arbitrary whims.

12/

The effect of #twiddling puts us up-and-coming writers in a dilemma that we didn't ask to be put in. We would like that qualitative feedback that Doctorow talks about, but our audience is a zygote that only divides based on a chain of arbitrary whims.

12/

The effect of #twiddling puts us up-and-coming writers in a dilemma that we didn't ask to be put in. We would like that qualitative feedback that Doctorow talks about, but our audience is a zygote that only divides based on a chain of arbitrary whims.

12/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

My modular patching philosophy (continued):
Okay... it all starts with this part here... and I can run wires to these other parts and back using these headphone looking jack sockets..?

BrrWhapWhapWhoooo..!!
#modular #synth #twiddling

My modular patching philosophy:
What does that knob do..? Turn it. Nothing..? Does it have some kind of CV thing close to it..? Plug something into it and turn to again.

Ooooooh..!!

#modular #synth #twiddling

Reviving 2010s-era *twiddling*, here's the NYT and Masnick: "An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/technology/mike-masnick-techdirt-internet-future.html ".Mr. Masnick exhorted the music industry to accept the internet and the opportunity it offered to connect with more fans. ...The digitization of music didn’t go exactly the way Mr. Masnick had hoped. Creators weren’t the primary winners; subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music were..." #twiddling #Tech #Art #Artists #AIEthics

Reviving 2010s-era *twiddling*, here's the NYT and Masnick: "An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/technology/mike-masnick-techdirt-internet-future.html ".Mr. Masnick exhorted the music industry to accept the internet and the opportunity it offered to connect with more fans. ...The digitization of music didn’t go exactly the way Mr. Masnick had hoped. Creators weren’t the primary winners; subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music were..." #twiddling #Tech #Art #Artists #AIEthics

Reviving 2010s-era *twiddling*, here's the NYT and Masnick: "An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/technology/mike-masnick-techdirt-internet-future.html ".Mr. Masnick exhorted the music industry to accept the internet and the opportunity it offered to connect with more fans. ...The digitization of music didn’t go exactly the way Mr. Masnick had hoped. Creators weren’t the primary winners; subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music were..." #twiddling #Tech #Art #Artists #AIEthics

Platformism is the same as conservativism: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

#FrankWilhoit #Twiddling #SelectiveDisruption #RIPPowerVentures

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

Platformism is the same as conservativism: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

#FrankWilhoit #Twiddling #SelectiveDisruption #RIPPowerVentures

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

Platformism is the same as conservativism: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

#FrankWilhoit #Twiddling #SelectiveDisruption #RIPPowerVentures

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

Platformism is the same as conservativism: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

#FrankWilhoit #Twiddling #SelectiveDisruption #RIPPowerVentures

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

Platformism is the same as conservativism: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

#FrankWilhoit #Twiddling #SelectiveDisruption #RIPPowerVentures

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980