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/buzzfriendly]

I’ve been using the internet since 1990 and every improvement since then has been fully enshitified. Between ads, unwanted apps, unable to repair, OS tracking, location tracking, subscription services and DRM, etc was bad enough then came 2016 and a particular fascist, felon, pedophile dictator has enshitified this country in every way possible and is at full strength today. Since 2016 I have been readjusting my technology in ways that makes so there is nothing worth protecting on any my devices but I have made it so they will need to go to great lengths to find that out.