Most of my readers are probably familiar with the neologism “enshittification”, coined by writer Cory Doctorow in 2022; Wikipedia describes it thus:
Enshittification is a re-prioritization pattern where online product and service providers experience a decline in quality over time. It is observed as platforms transition through several stages: initially offering high-quality services to attract users, then shifting to favor business customers to increase profitability, and finally focusing on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of both users and business customers. This…results in a significant deterioration of the user experience…
Doctorow has also referred to the phenomenon by the less-colorful term “platform decay”, similar to the term “link rot” (which refers to a different, but not unrelated, form of internet decline). There’s little point in my discussing enshittification in a broad sense, because there’s already plenty on it online (especially by Doctorow himself); this is just a gripe stemming from one specific example, described by Wikipedia thus:
…Google Search…became dominant through relevant search results and minimal ads, then later degraded through increased advertising, search engine optimization, and outright fraud, benefiting its advertising customers…Doctorow…cites Google’s firing of 12,000 employees in January 2023, which coincided with a stock buyback scheme which “would have paid all their salaries for the next 27 years”, as well as Google’s rush to research an [ML] search chatbot, “a tool that won’t show you what you ask for, but rather, what it thinks you should see”...
When my blog was young (2010-14) it grew by leaps and bounds via Google, largely because I was writing about things virtually nobody else was, and my blog therefore stood out in search results. But once Google became the dominant search engine, it began to “downrank” results that led to my blog because I talk about bad, dirty, nasty sex, and Google had to protect its puritanical advertisers from having icky adult discussions of such topics show up near their precious ads. As a result, traffic reaching this site via Google dropped off to a shadow of its former volume. My personal use of Google, though, didn’t change all that much because I tend to use very specific searches and scroll down past the ads without even looking at them. In the past few years, however, it’s become harder to find any decent results from the engine, especially since the aforementioned machine learning systems were rudely inserted between my keyboard and the actual information I’m trying to find. If there’s a way to turn this irritant off, I certainly don’t know about it; the concept of “consent” seems foreign to the company whose slogan was once “Don’t be evil”.
But Google doesn’t limit itself to nonconsensual search interference, oh no; now it’s also fucking with my actual writing process. As I write, Google repeatedly “corrects” words that aren’t incorrect in the first place, thus changing the meanings of phrases and sentences (often from sense into nonsense). In one recent and especially-annoying example, I was typing the verb “trumps” (in the sense of one factor overriding a less important one, a metaphorical reference to the card game mechanism), only to have Google change it automatically and without my permission to “Trump’s” (it did it just now, but I left it this time). It’s not the first time I’ve seen this; my phone similarly capitalizes common nouns which happen to also be the names of tech corporations, as though normal people used those names more often than the common noun. But in the past, it only annoyed me while using voice to text on my phone, rather than slowing me down and requiring an extra proofreading stage in my post or tweet writing. I’ve searched online and there are no real solutions to the problem that I can find; every post claiming to have the solution is either ineffective or tells me to go to menus which don’t actually exist in the version of Chrome that appears on my computer. So this is, as I said above, mostly a gripe; it is, however, also a warning that should you see some idiotic phrase that makes absolutely no semantic sense in one of my essays, it isn’t that I’m growing senile; it’s just that I failed to catch one of Google’s “improvements” before the essay posted.
The question, of course, arises, why you’d still be using Google for your searches? It’s rare that I use it any more since its biases and abuses are so well documented. I’ll still use it to look up myself just to see what’s being shown to searchers, but for years now I’ve switched to Duckduckgo and Brave, which don’t track you, for searches. Between the two I usually can find what I’m looking for and don’t have to put up with Google’s ugliness and biases.
That is truly shocking, what you describe about Google changing words you’ve written. How far will they go, and how much will people accept?
It’s rare that I do random searches; I generally know what I’m looking for and know it when I see it. So it’s only recently that Google has become so bad I can’t find what I want within the first few results.
I really. really want to ask a Google AI system to conjure up for me a picture of 2 Google executives mugging an elderly woman.
Or to write an essay about how Google Inc. has become an anti-human terrorist organization/force for evil in-the-world.
I mean, without losing access to my bank card/cell phone, or Uber accounts.
This is one reason why, except for tweets on my phone, I compose online writing in a non-web tool (vim or emacs depending on mood and machine) and copy into the browser form for WP, Substack, etc
Android phone has a setting to turn off autocorrect as i have it that way. It still provides suggestions at the top band which is useful.
Have you considered obtaining a cheap, used MacBook Air. I use cheap, used PC laptops, however some do not wish to deal with Windows issues which i can understand.
The MacBook would have much more control over these things along with not requiring much in terms of maintenance.
I always turn off auto”correct”, but that doesn’t affect voice-to-text.
As for Apple products, I have no interest in overpriced closed ecosystem products that can be bricked at the touch of a button in California. I haven’t used Windows products in years; my computer is an under-$140 Chromebook, which does all I need.
Since i do not use voice to text, that’s a blind spot for me. As for Apple, i do not even allow them in my house.
Have submitted your issue to a few friends who know better, perhaps they will have an answer regarding the CBook.
Update: from a friend, please try this:
If these steps can be used to turn it on…
“Autocorrect is on by default for on-screen keyboards and Latin languages. It can be used with both physical and on-screen keyboards.
If your autocorrect is not turned on:
If you haven’t already, sign in to your Chromebook.
At the bottom right, select the time.
Or, press Alt + Shift + s.
Select Settings .
Under “Device,” select Keyboard and then Input settings.
Select Input method.
Next to your enabled keyboard, select Right Arrow .
To turn on Auto-correction:
For Physical keyboard: Under “Physical keyboard,” turn on Auto-correction.
For On-screen keyboard: Under “On-screen keyboard,” turn on Auto-correction.
Tip: If you have more than one keyboard language, you’ll need to turn on autocorrect for each one. Some keyboards don’t have autocorrect.”
from the following link:
https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1047364?hl=en#zippy=%2Ccorrect-words-automatically
Do you believe I can’t look things up? Not only doesn’t that work, there are a number of other people online complaining that it doesn’t. Which is unsurprising, because I’ve noticed the majority of “How to turn off x annoying feature” either don’t work, or include menus & selections that don’t exist.
Regrets Maggie, and it is a story which i have gone through with Google regarding other things. They do not seem to update their tech instructions, in a manner consistent with an unaccountable company. Monopolies do this… They are also fond of something else: hiding things. It is not that the function changed or something improved. They just seem to hide the exact same menu in a new place and often not under any window or noted advanced option listing. Windows is not better, and one spends time merely finding the same thing elsewhere. Windows 10 did this big time. I have heard it said that this is how the programmers justify their jobs, changing things for the hell of it. Forbid that they admit that something is just fine as it is. People like us who actually work find this frustrating as we have better things to do.
Since i do not have such a unit, i cannot go further unless my friends have some other suggestions.
Best of luck.