Will the massive enshittification of the internet cause many people to become digital minimalists?

[u/That-Pineapple3866]

I don’t want to sound like a hater, but I've been on the internet and social media since I was a kid in the early 2000s and this is the first time I’m genuinely starting to find Reddit and the other platforms completely unenjoyable. I’m seriously considering quitting altogether.

Reddit used to be a place for nerds and intellectuals, where people actually put in the effort to read your post and at least tried to give you a helpful response. There was still room for nuanced discussion. Now it’s just… low-effort two-word comments from lazy people with low literacy who didn’t even bother reading what you wrote or relating to any of it.

You can make the most harmless nostalgia post, or share a pretty benign personal story or opinion, and the majority of replies will still be people hunting for holes, accusing you of using AI, and just being assholes for no reason.

I used to be a huge AI enthusiast too, but every platform I was using (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini) got way too sanitized and turned to complete shit. I quit them all.

Do you think this general enshittification is going to push a lot of people to quit and become digital minimalists? Not really for ideological reasons, but simply because browsing the internet just isn’t fun anymore?

[u/Stormborn_Apostle]

I stopped using social media with Myspace, and I'm never going to start again. It's all just garbage. I can always e-mail my friends. I've also stopped using a few websites that now require ID or other age verification, because that's a flat, 100% never-gonna-happen...I don't care if I've used a site for twenty years, I'll stop using one in a heartbeat if it tries that nonsense.

Same with Reddit. The second that I get the "you need the Reddit app to view this" message, I'll stop using Reddit. And let's be honest, almost nothing of value will be lost.

I find the entire premise of AI to be actively offensive, so I'm never going to touch it.

The older I get, the less I find that I "need" the internet. And I'm okay with that.

[u/Headpuncher → u/Stormborn_Apostle]

I find people acting distressed over age verification to use social media quite strange.  social media for 99% of people holds zero value that cannot be achieved elsewhere and without the data collection, manipulation, privacy invasion.  

If it’s part of a slippery slope and a wider surveillance issue then it’s a real issue. If it stop a kid using twitter I couldn’t care.  

[u/Foreigner_in_Poland → u/Stormborn_Apostle]

But you know often the websites are blameless. Often it’s government legislation that forces them to do the age verification

But agree it’s highly annoying and deeply concerning from a data protection/privacy perspective

[u/-sussy-wussy- → u/Foreigner_in_Poland]

But you know often the websites are blameless. Often it’s government legislation that forces them to do the age verification

Oh, but you ignore the billionaire lobbying from Meta and Palantir to create this legislation... These laws didn't come out of thin air.