The internet is getting worse

In Gerald Weiner’s book The Secrets of Consulting, there is a case study in which a bright MBA graduate tells a giant multinational burger chain to eliminate just three sesame seeds from each bun to save the company $126,000 a year, under the assumption that none of the customers will notice. This works, so the next year they remove five sesame seeds, and, each year or two, they remove some more, until the bun is barely recognisable. Suddenly, nobody buys their burgers anymore.

I would suggest that the same thing has happened to the internet. Except instead of removing sesame seeds, we have added them – in the form of adverts, and sponsored posts, and pop-ups, and cookie requests, and tracking notifications, and compulsory registrations, and two-factor authentication, and content farming, and a dozen other digital jack-in-a-boxes.