#manage my google ads

[oraki01]

Are you tired of trying to navigate the complexities of online advertising campaigns? Look no further than Google DoubleClick Bid Manager, the perfect solution for boosting campaign performance. With this comprehensive guide, we'll help you optimize your campaigns and reach your target audience effectively. Say goodbye to wasted ad spend and hello to success

[ganondoodle]

im watching a (slow) streamer play thorugh elden rings DLC and have barely seen anything more but ... i have seen some vague hints on twitter that theres something up with radahns lore and now im WORRIED/FEAR TM

hes my fav and thought that the lore in the base game was all he would get and i was honestly fine with that (heyo another unpopular(?) one to add to my list of favs lol) and was just happy he was mentioned by name bc that one lady NPC at the start-- BUT NOW??? i dont even know if its true but .............

im not gonna say anything more dw, ... i dont even know more anyway, but feel free to tell me bc the not knowing and then see it get discovered on stream might be worse than any spoiler could be (i dont even care about that much anymore)

[cheeseknives]

James has one of the best hair variations on this episode, very floofy, I wonder if he went to sleep with wet hair by the way it bends up flawlessly

[drumlincountry]

[ghostsandmirrors]

just so yous know, i haven’t died, i’ve just been sucked into a new hyperfixation. i’ve also been editing a fanfic for the past week. help me.

[magentagalaxies]

listen. i don't want instagram to steal my data for the purposes of showing me ads that are so targeted they know i'll be compelled to buy them. HOWEVER. if you already have so much fucking data on me "meta" and i know you do, WHY do you keep showing me ads for AI chatbots/AI art/selfie apps when i have NEVER said anything positive about them on your platform. or on any platform for that matter. i specifically go out of my way to block the accounts making these sponsored posts bc i am NOT FUCKING SUBSCRIBING TO AN AI CHATBOT APP. no, not even if it "writes the perfect emails." no, not even if it can "show you what you'd look like as a barbie" (i have an imagination for a reason). no, not even if it can "create the perfect romantic partner and send AI generated nsfw pics" (for your information the perfect romantic partner has the ability to lead a life of their own and can disagree with me which this chatgpt-with-boobs never will and also what pics are you training this thing on). no not for any of the other four thousand goddamn reasons you're constantly telling me about. if you're invading my privacy that's already bad but you're so bad at your jobs that your "ad targeting" is getting you NOWHERE. i have seen maybe ONE (1) instagram ad that made me spend money and it was in 2018 and it was NOT related to AI in the slightest. it was for a musical adaptation of the office that was touring at a nearby theatre and i just relentlessly made fun of it on my story until i realized tickets were cheap and i wanted to see it for myself. it was mediocre quality-wise but goddamn it at least THEY had the audacity to actually make a fucking product i was intrigued by rather than repackaging the exact same AI features over and over again. if I wanted an AI chatbot partner I'd just fuck a magic 8 ball, i'm sure the sensual experience would be quite the same.

[crossbackpoke-check]

Fixed point (mathematics) // The History of Perspective // "Point of Disappearance", Dennis Held // How the Hughes hockey family stays grounded // Fixed Point Photography-- // "Portrait of A.", Tung-Hui Hu // Mic'd Up | Hughes NHL 25 cover shoot // "Burnt Norton", T.S. Eliot // "Circuitry", Janine Joseph // Bruce Bennett // Nick Wass // from obedience [maybe one day, during a point in time], kari edwards // Bill Rapai // "Errand Upon Which We Came", Stephanie Strickland // Benchmark (surveying)

art kid luke hughes

[lifehacksthatwork]

Just a bunch of Useful websites - Updated for 2023

Removed/checked all links to make sure everything is working (03/03/23). Hope they help!

Sejda - Free online PDF editor.

Supercook - Have ingredients but no idea what to make? Put them in here and it'll give you recipe ideas.

Still Tasty - Trying the above but unsure about whether that sauce in the fridge is still edible? Check here first.

Archive.ph - Paywall bypass. Like 12ft below but appears to work far better and across more sites in my testing. I'd recommend trying this one first as I had more success with it.

12ft – Hate paywalls? Try this site out.

Where Is This - Want to know where a picture was taken, this site can help.

TOS/DR - Terms of service, didn't read. Gives you a summary of terms of service plus gives each site a privacy rating.

OneLook - Reverse dictionary for when you know the description of the word but can't for the life of you remember the actual word.

My Abandonware - Brilliant site for free, legal games. Has games from 1978 up to present day across pc and console. You'll be surprised by some of the games on there, some absolute gems.

Project Gutenberg – Always ends up on these type of lists and for very good reason. All works that are copyright free in one place.

Ninite – New PC? Install all of your programs in one go with no bloat or unnecessary crap.

PatchMyPC - Alternative to ninite with over 300 app options to keep upto date. Free for home users.

Unchecky – Tired of software trying to install additional unwanted programs? This will stop it completely by unchecking the necessary boxes when you install.

Sci-Hub – Research papers galore! Check here before shelling out money. And if it’s not here, try the next link in our list.

LibGen – Lots of free PDFs relate primarily to the sciences.

Zotero – A free and easy to use program to collect, organize, cite and share research.

Car Complaints – Buying a used car? Check out what other owners of the same model have to say about it first.

CamelCamelCamel – Check the historical prices of items on Amazon and set alerts for when prices drop.

Have I Been Pawned – Still the king when it comes to checking if your online accounts have been released in a data breach. Also able to sign up for email alerts if you’ve ever a victim of a breach.

I Have No TV - A collection of documentaries for you to while away the time. Completely free.

Radio Garden – Think Google Earth but wherever you zoom, you get the radio station of that place.

Just The Recipe – Paste in the url and get just the recipe as a result. No life story or adverts.

Tineye – An Amazing reverse image search tool.

My 90s TV – Simulates 90’s TV using YouTube videos. Also has My80sTV, My70sTV, My60sTV and for the younger ones out there, My00sTV. Lose yourself in nostalgia.

Foto Forensics – Free image analysis tools.

Old Games Download – A repository of games from the 90’s and early 2000’s. Get your fix of nostalgia here.

Online OCR – Convert pictures of text into actual text and output it in the format you need.

Remove Background – An amazingly quick and accurate way to remove backgrounds from your pictures.

Twoseven – Allows you to sync videos from providers such as Netflix, Youtube, Disney+ etc and watch them with your friends. Ad free and also has the ability to do real time video and text chat.

Terms of Service, Didn’t Read – Get a quick summary of Terms of service plus a privacy rating.

Coolors – Struggling to get a good combination of colors? This site will generate color palettes for you.

This To That – Need to glue two things together? This’ll help.

Photopea – A free online alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Does everything in your browser.

BitWarden – Free open source password manager.

Just Beam It - Peer to peer file transfer. Drop the file in on one end, click create link and send to whoever. Leave your pc on that page while they download. Because of how it works there are no file limits. It's genuinely amazing. Best file transfer system I have ever used.

Atlas Obscura – Travelling to a new place? Find out the hidden treasures you should go to with Atlas Obscura.

ID Ransomware – Ever get ransomware on your computer? Use this to see if the virus infecting your pc has been cracked yet or not. Potentially saving you money. You can also sign up for email notifications if your particular problem hasn’t been cracked yet.

Way Back Machine – The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites and loads more.

Rome2Rio – Directions from anywhere to anywhere by bus, train, plane, car and ferry.

Splitter – Seperate different audio tracks audio. Allowing you to split out music from the words for example.

myNoise – Gives you beautiful noises to match your mood. Increase your productivity, calm down and need help sleeping? All here for you.

DeepL – Best language translation tool on the web.

Forvo – Alternatively, if you need to hear a local speaking a word, this is the site for you.

For even more useful sites, there is an expanded list that can be found here.

[thelonelyjew]

Pride banned Jews?!?

So it's that time of year again that I see people circulating stuff that is completely fabricated about what they imagine happened at Chicago Dyke March in 2017.

First, Dyke March is not Pride. It is not meant to be apolitical or single-issue. It is explicitly anti-imperialist, anticapitalist, and, yes, antizionist. It's not the big mainstream pride Parade that has corporate sponsors (and ads for gay tourism in Israel), it's a small radical grassroots demonstration.

Ok now that that's out of the way, they did not "ban Jews". I was there. They did not "ban Jewish symbols". They did not ask anyone to leave because of their Jewish pride flag.

What actually happened was three women who turned out to be employed by Israeli pinkwashing operation A Wider Bridge participated in the march with a rainbow flag that featured a blue star of david in the center. I remember seeing it and disliking it bc it gave me Zionist vibes but neither I nor anyone else bothered them about it.

After the march there was a cookout in the park. The women were asked to leave by a Jewish member of the Dyke March Collective after several hours of hanging out at the cookout because they were harassing other marchgoers.

Immediately publications like Forward, Tablet, JTA, as well as more mainstream publications started running stories making wild untrue claims which you can still read if you Google it because none of these were ever corrected or retracted. It's clear that these AWB agents had press releases pre-written and ready to fire as soon as they managed to provoke any reaction that they could spin into a controversy.

The photos that ran along with these headlines were also misleading. One of them showed a photo of a rainbow flag with a white star in the center. The star on the flag I saw was blue, and the shade of the star has specific political connotations. Showing a different flag with the politically significant color removed is extremely misleading. The one that was carried in the march (and which, again, wasn't banned!) looked like this:

Another banner image, this one in a New York Times article, showed a young woman with dark curly hair holding a sign that says "this is who we are". She was clearly chosen to feature because of her stereotypically Jewish features. The article implies that she is one of the supposedly banned Jews. This is false. You know how I know? Bc that was the friend I was there with that day! She does not identify as Jewish, she looks like that bc she is Italian, and she had no idea she was being photographed!

I had a hat decorated with red and black stars of David, and the following year a bunch of us wore Workers Circle sashes with Yiddish text (which uses the Hebrew alphabet) as well. No one who wasn't employed by a Zionist organization was asked to leave or even questioned about anything related to Zionism or Jewish identity.

I'm resigning myself to the fact that this is going to get dug up and passed around every year and people will believe what they want to believe, but if you hear claims that some queer group "banned Jews" or something similar, please look at the source for the information and if possible try to talk to actual Jewish people who participate in the community events being discussed. And if you hear this about Chicago Dyke March in specific, please correct people. I feel like I'm going insane when this many people are insisting that what I saw and experienced wasn't real and pointing to the barrage of misleading articles as what I should believe over my own experiences.

[frogliftcertified]

(Edit 2: Closing replies for this and muting the post, if you have issues just leave a message in my PM's, I promise you it'll be my pleasure to (try to) help.)

Good news, the ReVanced project (of YouTube ReVanced fame) has added Tumblr patches to their arsenal, so not only can you patch YouTube with it now, but also Tumblr (and more, even). This can let you remove ads from the Tumblr app, and even nuke Tumblr Live.

Grab the ReVanced Manager and give it a shot. Android only, sorry.

Edit, FAQ:

Disable Play Protect in the Google Play store, it's useless anyways.

You don't need to update your app to the newest version, pick an APK of any Tumblr version you want and patch that. Not all will work, but just keep trying different versions if so.

For the old layout and the ability to go directly to previous reblogs, patch an APK of this version: 29.7.0.110

For users without root access, you need to find an APK for the Tumblr app (a version of it of your choice), then uninstall Tumblr from your device, THEN use the patcher, and install it when prompted.

Do not download "split", "bundle", or "xapk" when given the choice.

You don't need MicroG unless you want to use non-root patched YouTube.

[aakashdeshpande23]

Listing your business on GBP is a fundamental part of establishing your online presence and should be considered vital as having a website or social media presence. Here are five reasons why Google Business Profile Listing is essential, along with a few future feature predictions for 2023.

[freakyformula]

How could I say no to such a pretty plea...

Summary: Reader and Max "wind down"

Writers comment: I've been wanting to do a Max fic for so long now and I finally got to it lmfao

Warnings: 18+, NSFW, praise kink, smut without a plot, google translated dutch, oral (both receiving), fingering, not proofread

Word count: 1,1k

"Max, please…" You whine as you look down at him between your legs.

His mouth is attached to your drenched cunt, working you up towards another orgasm.

"You're so beautiful, liefje. My good girl." He says as he dives down again, preparing you for him.

You feel him sucking on your clit, and then he adds a finger, teasing your entrance.

It slowly slips in and you both moan in unison.

"So fucking wet for me." He says in awe and curls his finger toward your sensitive spot, making you roll your eyes back and see stars.

As he adds another finger, you feel the stretch, but it's a nice and very welcome feeling.

"More…" You ask of him.

"Patience, love." He states.

He's good with his hands, there's no denying it. He knows exactly how to make you feel good. Something you hadn't experienced with any man before.

Max pumps his pointer and middle finger in and out of you at an agonizingly slow pace. You grab his wrist out of instinct to pull him and his fingers closer, deeper. Then, he pulls out of your sopping pussy, making you grunt disapprovingly.

He knows exactly how to tease you and you can confirm that his antics work.

"Only good girls get to cum." He says with a smirk on his face, leaning back.

"I am! Please, I'll be a good girl for you, Max."

"To prove it, I'll give you a task. Now, wait here."

And with that, Max gets out of the bed and undresses in record time. You take a moment to admire his naked body and Max takes notice, posing for you.

"Like what you see?" He beams at you.

You nod, biting your lip.

He crawls back into bed and grabs your face and squeezes your cheeks, making your jaw fall open.

"Open up wide for me, you want to be good for me, don't you?"

And you do as you're told and open even wider.

He brings his cock to your mouth and you close the space between his tip and your lips. Max surely enjoys the treatment as he leans back on his back.

As you bob your head up and down, you also grow bolder, going deeper. When you feel his tip at the back of your throat, you start gagging. Max's head springs up to look at you in an instant.

He smiles at you, "Just a little deeper, okay, mijn schat?" He asks of you.

You look up at him with hooded eyes, sucking on him languidly, feeling his hands at the back of your head. He isn't pressing you down, but rather guiding you further down on his length. You haven't even worked down half of his cock yet.

You take a deep breath and manage to swallow his member just a little bit further down, gagging, struggling, and desperate to make him feel good. Max pulls you off him after a couple of seconds and you gasp for air. You repeat the same procedure a couple of times.

"I-I'm close." He admits as he pulls you off him one last time.

He sits up on his knees and hovers over you, making you fall back on your back as you straddle his hips.

"Do you feel ready for me?" He checks in as he idly plays with your clit and adds a couple of fingers into your heat.

"Max, please, need you." You breathe out.

"How could I say no to such a pretty plea…" He answers as he gives his cock a couple of pumps and lines himself up with you, adding some lube to his tip.

You could swear that you'd never get used to Max's size. He wasn't just long, he was also thick. The first time you did it you thought he wouldn't fit but after a couple of attempts, it worked.

"I'm so sorry for hurting you, liefste. The pain will be worth it." He tries to comfort you.

As he works his tip into you slowly, you tense up and whimper, making it impossible for him to get in.

"Shhhh, relax." He leans down and peppers kisses all over your face. His gesture makes you relax just enough for him to slide in, if only just a couple of millimeters, but enough for you to yelp.

He watches your contorted face and holds your head in his hands.

"Deep breaths… I wish I could do something to make this easier." He looks down at you with pity in his eyes.

You focus on your breathing and on Max's face, giving him a pained smile.

When he pulls out and penetrates you a little further, you scream out in pain. Your pussy was on fire, it felt like. Sliding your hand down between your bodies and to the place you were connected, you felt him pumping his tip in and out of you carefully. You start circling your clit to feel some sort of pleasure and you quickly feel the familiar feeling of ecstacy building up. The pleasure helps you relax your body, helping him on his journey into you.

When you feel ready, you pull him a little closer with your legs.

The burning sensation wasn't as intense as before, you start to actually enjoy him pushing his way deep inside of your tight pussy.

"Mijn god..." He whispers in your ear.

As he bottoms out, you grunt loudly, enjoying the feeling of him in you.

He looks at you for approval to move and as you give him a quick nod, he starts to pump into you slowly, still taking care not to hurt you.

"You feel so good, Y/N, I won't last long." He breathes out.

"Please, please, please..." You shant.

He slides out and picks you up with his strong arms, turning you around. You end up on your hands and knees, much to Max's liking, giving him a good view of your body. This was your favourite position and you were sure he enjoyed it as much.

Before you can comprehend that you've even turned around, you feel him sheathing his cock inside of you again.

Max and you moan out in pleasure, with him pumping into you and holding you close. He slides his hands down to your lower stomach, feeling his cock deep within you through the skin.

You feel yourself getting closer again as he starts playing with your clit and picking up the pace even further.

"Cum with me, yeah?" He asks.

"I'm close!" You yell out.

And with a couple of final thrusts, you feel Max's cock twitching and you tumbling over the edge. You both scream out your orgasms and grab each other for some sort of stability.

As you come down, Max collapses on top of you, clearly tired, just like you.

"That was..."

"...Amazing." You finish with a smile.

[milliumizoomi]

do you think armando is the type to wanna pay for everything? like the man will literally not let you pay for anything while you’re with him even if you protest against it

𝐇𝐎𝐓 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄: 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐘 𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐒

☆彡SUMMARY.; His money definitely talks but he doesn’t let yours do so much as whisper.

☆彡FEATURED.; ARMANDO x READER

☆彡TROPE.; ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP

☆彡FORMAT.; HEADCANON || DRABBLE

☆彡GENRE.; TOOTH ROTTING FLUFF

☆彡WARNINGS.; Google translated Spanish, Mature language, Armando being you’re resident sugar daddy

☆彡NOTES.; this was too funny and I loved writing thisssss,, tysm for the request and I hope yall enjoy!!😋💕

REBLOGS ARE APPRECIATED🤍.

★ public service announcement

★ HE DON’T LET YOU PAY FOR SHIT

★ when you’re with him the only you gon need in that purse is ID and your phone

★ that’s it

★ if he catches you paying for anything, he’s taking the money from you and paying for it himself

★ don’t matter how much you wanna argue I promise you he not listening

★ the card in your purse? Confiscated.

★ the cash you have saved? It better stay saved.

★ I promise you this man is not playing with you at all when it comes to this

ミ★

It’s looking like the credit card you have ain’t good for nothing really.

You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times you’ve been in this type of situation with your hardheaded ass boyfriend.

The both of you have been out all day. He wanted to spend the day with you since he barely gets to, with managing the mafia and all, so he decided to take you out. The only problem is…

You can’t look at anything for too long or he’s buying it.

AND, don’t ever say you’re buying anything cause he ain’t even entertaining that.

“Babe look at thissss!!” You pointed at beautiful white diamond anklet. You wanted it so badly because you knew it’d look gorgeous on you. So, you decided to get it. As Armando walked up to you, you were already talking to one of the sellers so they can retrieve the item for you.

“¿Qué le das a mamá?” He asked as he finally got near you.

“Esta tobillera aquí mismo... ¡es tan bonita!”

You practically skipped away to the cash register and started fishing for your card to pay.

Then your purse disappeared.

Just completely vanished.

You stood there for a moment, very confused, then you look over to see your boyfriend pushing your purse into his pocket and taking out his money to pay.

In cash.

The woman at the register was as wide eyed as you were watching this man casually count hundreds like they were ones.

“How much was it?” He asked.

“O-oh..! It’s $350 sir!” He handed her the money and all you could do was stand there and stare as he took the piece of jewelry.

“Come mama.”

He guided you, by resting his hand on your lower back, and took you to a nearby seat and told you to sit. When you did, he opened up the box with the anklet inside and took it off and began putting it on you.

All you could do is look at him.

When he was done, he stretched out your leg.

“Looks good mama..”

You smiled and agreed, thanking him.

“You don’t have to pay for me all the time you know.” Getting up, he pulls you up too and says, “yeah I do.. and don’t ever let me see you trying to pay for shit again? You hear me?” You couldn’t help the shiver that ran down you’re spine at his words, but you crack a small smile and nodded. “I’m gonna keep trying anyways but fineeeee..” He rolls his eyes at you and kisses you on the forehead and you both begin to walk out the store.

“Baby?” You call to him.

“Hm?”

“Can I have my purse back?”

“No.”

[GLOSSARY]

“¿Qué le das a mamá?” —“What you want mama?”

“Esta tobillera aquí mismo... ¡es tan bonita!” — “This anklet right here... it’s so pretty!”

ミ★

{TAGLIST} :: @armandosbabymama @ghettogirly @tinys0ftie @shurisgf @radioloom @butterflyybabe @dyttomori || if you’d like to be added to the taglist just let me know in comments or dms🤗💕.

ミ★

©2024 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED — MILLIUMIZOOMI. Do not modify, repost, plagiarize, translate or claim any work posted on this blog without my permission.

[penny-anna]

email this morning from someone in a different department like:

employee in other department: hi colleague Nis it okay for me to join the celebratory meal tomorrow evening their manager: colleague N is off, Katie can you confirm?

sitting there like hm ok this is the first I've heard about any celebratory meal. N is out of the office till wednesday. i guess i can call the restaurant. can i get some more details on that please.

manager: it's a 20 year anniversary celebration with the CEO

ok but where??

get the restaurant name and google it to find their number. turns out they have 3 locations, 2 of which are on George Street and George IV Bridge respectively (this will be important later)

email manager back and ask which of the 3 restaurants it is. he says George Street.

call the restaurant. give them the time & date and say I'm not sure of the name. they suggest various names. i give them N's name and the name of the CEO. they say we'll need to pay a deposit if we want to make a booking

I'm certain that if co-worker N said she booked this before she went on leave them she did in fact book it before she went on leave

restaurant confirms that hypothetically yes adding an extra person won't be a problem

email the manager back to pass this on and also to let him know that they couldn't find the booking. ask if he's 100% certain about the time and date

he sends me a copy of the outlook invitation w the time and date. notice that the location on the invite is actually George IV Bridge

suggests that i should just make another booking (fair) and that if we've made 2 deposits which can ask for a refund

person I spoke to earlier said she'd checked all 3 locations but decide to call the George IV Bridge restaurant anyway

'oh yes I spoke to N this morning'

im pretty sure this is a different person than I spoke to earlier but can't be sure so its possible she's mixing up my name and the name i gave for the booking, esp as N isn't working today. we go back and forth on this for a while

'N called and changed the name on the booking to her name bcos she thought people might get confused'

realise N must have either been alerted to the fact that Confusion was happening or pre-empted this situation

'thank you very much now is it at George IV Bridge or George Street'

its at George Street. do we want to change it to George IV Bridge.

'i will check'

manager confirms that it 100% was supposed to be George Street.

mystery solved. this is all the fucking Georgians fault.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.

Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.

Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.

Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.

But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.

I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.

We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.

Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-google-workers-with-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-indiscriminate-28ba4c9b7ce8

Enshittification is a macroeconomic phenomenon, determined by the regulatory environment for competition, privacy, labor, consumer protection and IP. But enshittification is also a microeconomic phenomenon, the result of innumerable boardroom and product-planning fights within companies in which would-be enshittifiers try to do things that make the company's products and services shittier wrestle with rivals who want to keep things as they are, or make them better, whether out of principle or fear of the consequences.

Those microeconomic wrestling-matches are where we find enshittification's heroes and villains – the people who fight for the user or stand up for a fair deal, versus the people who want to cheat and wreck to make things better for the company and win bonuses and promotions for themselves:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

These microeconomic struggles are usually obscure, because companies are secretive institutions and our glimpses into their deliberations are normally limited to the odd leaked memo, whistleblower tell-all, or spectacular worker revolt. But when a company gets dragged into court, a new window opens into the company's internal operations. That's especially true when the plaintiff is the US government.

Which brings me back to Google, the poster-child for enshittification, a company that revolutionized the internet a quarter of a century ago with a search-engine that was so good that it felt like magic, which has decayed so badly and so rapidly that whole sections of the internet are disappearing from view for the 90% of users who rely on the search engine as their gateway to the internet.

Google is being sued by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and that means we are getting a very deep look into the company, as its internal emails and memos come to light:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Google is a tech company, and tech companies have literary cultures – they run on email and other forms of written communication, even for casual speech, which is more likely to take place in a chat program than at a water-cooler. This means that tech companies have giant databases full of confessions to every crime they've ever committed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Large pieces of Google's database-of-crimes are now on display – so much, in fact, that it's hard for anyone to parse through it all and understand what it means. But some people are trying, and coming up with gold. One of those successful prospectors is Ed Zitron, who has produced a staggering account of the precise moment at which Google search tipped over into enshittification, which names the executives at the very heart of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Zitron tells the story of a boardroom struggle over search quality, in which Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

Zitron contrasts the background of these two figures. Gomes, the hero, worked at Google for 19 years, solving fantastically hard technical scaling problems and eventually becoming the company's "search czar." Raghavan, the villain, "failed upwards" through his career, including a stint as Yahoo's head of search from 2005-12, a presiding over the collapse of Yahoo's search business. Under Raghavan's leadership, Yahoo's search market-share fell from 30.4% to 14%, and in the end, Yahoo jettisoned its search altogether and replaced it with Bing.

For Zitron, the memos show how Raghavan engineered the ouster of Gomes, with help from the company CEO, the ex-McKinseyite Sundar Pichai. It was a triumph for enshittification, a deliberate decision to make the product worse in order to make it more profitable, under the (correct) belief that the company's exclusivity deals to provide search everywhere from Iphones and Samsungs to Mozilla would mean that the business would face no consequences for doing so.

It a picture of a company that isn't just too big to fail – it's (as FTC Chair Lina Khan put it on The Daily Show) too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Zitron's done excellent sleuthing through the court exhibits here, and his writeup is incandescently brilliant. But there's one point I quibble with him on. Zitron writes that "It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it."

I think that gets it backwards. I think that there were always enshittifiers in the C-suites of these companies. When Page and Brin brought in the war criminal Eric Schmidt to run the company, he surely started every day with a ritual, ferocious tug at that enshittification lever. The difference wasn't who was in the C-suite – the difference was how freely the lever moved.

On Saturday, I wrote:

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

Someone on Hacker News called that "silly," adding that "tech bosses do in fact have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years. That's literally the business model of most startups":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114339

That's not quite right, though. The business-model of the startup is to yank on the enshittification lever every day. Tech bosses don't lie in wait for the perfect moment to claw away all the value from their employees, users, business customers, and suppliers – they're always trying to get that value. It's only when they become too big to care that they succeed. That's the definition of being too big to care.

In antitrust circles, they sometimes say that "the process is the punishment." No matter what happens to the DOJ's case against Google, its internal workers have been made visible to the public. The secrecy surrounding the Google trial when it was underway meant that a lot of this stuff flew under the radar when it first appeared. But as Zitron's work shows, there is plenty of treasure to be found in that trove of documents that is now permanently in the public domain.

When future scholars study the enshittocene, they will look to accounts like Zitron's to mark the turning points from the old, good internet to the enshitternet. Let's hope those future scholars have a new, good internet on which to publish their findings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

[i23kazu]

GENSHIN MEN & NICKNAMES THEY PREFER FOR YOU .

characters. xiao zhongli diluc kaeya childe neuvillette x gn!reader genre. romantic fluff. an. this may not be accurate, most of these (except for mandarin) are from google!!! and please be gentle when giving feedback. | please reblog!! im getting back into writing and reblogs with tags and comments will make me want to write more :D

xiao

亲亲, which means dear one, in mandarin. the words are often softly spoken — so soft, you almost always miss it. the blush on his cheeks when he murmurs it aloud is a telltale sign, though.

zhongli

亲爱的, which means dearest, in mandarin. he loves peppering his words with this sweet nickname — the meaning extends to dear, dearest, darling, and sweetheart. when you first asked him what it meant, he just smiled.

diluc

mein herz, which means my heart, in german. the words are so soft yet so sweet on his tongue, and he can’t stop himself from repeating it in his mind every single minute you and him spend apart from one another.

kaeya

vögelchen, which means little bird, in german. this isn’t kaeya’s native language, but he picked it up after spending so many years living in mondstadt. he thinks you’re like a bird — carefree, peaceful, and a sweet reminder of hope.

childe

Солнце, which means the sun, in russian. the sun, because that’s what you remind childe of — the person who makes his days brighter and happier and the bringer of so, so many good things for him.

neuvillette

ma raison de vivre, which means my reason for living, in french. why? well, you’re his reason for living, simply put. you’re the reason he gets out of bed in the mornings to work, and to enjoy the things that fontaine has to offer. and he makes sure you know it.

taglist: @tiredsleep @loptido @raincxtter @chichikoi @ladyadii @soulsanta @sheiiths @genshinparty @eowinthetraveler @moonbyunniee @legitnoi @lemontum @manager-of-the-pudding-bank @starz222 @ilyuu @cherry-colored-petals @mondaymelon @tartaglia-apologist @soleillunne @m1shapanda @aimynx @smokipoki @adeptuscharm @diorlumx (send ask to be added to taglist)

reblogs w/ tags & comments help me lots !!! if you liked this, consider dropping me a follow as well :-)