What's the worst invention of the 21st century?

Separate apps for various retail stores. I don't want a home depot app. I don't want a kroger app. We have a generic app for this category called a web browser. If you want me to download a specialized app for your store, I assume that means that my browser does not sufficiently breach my privacy for your "business purposes."

I also second social media, but I need to make another suggestion it'd be Keurigs k-cups. So much plastic waste for the barest level of convenience.

corporate personhood.

proof-of-work blockchains. instead of a utopian decentralized currency we have a utopia for scammers and day traders, and uses a ton of energy at a time when we need to conserve to combat global warming.

Facial recognition technology. Not only is it not as perfect as people claim in identifying people, but some countries are using it to attack the LGBT since it was discovered the LGBT have different variances in facial features. And yet that's not even 100% perfect, so now you have a bad technology for a negative purpose repurposed into another negative purpose that it's causing collateral damage with because it's as awful at that as the first thing.

Influencers

Emissions controller modifiers designed to "roll coal"

Modern social media

Billionaire celebrities with millions of fans enabling their narcissism.

Social Media 100%.

Clickbait.

Internet advertising.

Corporations are people?

Trickle down economics?

Nuclear weapons?

Anything cooking related. It all the same shit you already had but this time it's plastic, harder to clean and only does 1 specific thing.

Microtransactions in video games. Hell, I'd say that modern video games in general are pretty bad, ESPECIALLY modern mobile games.

SUVs have to be high on the list.

Node Package Manager

Cryptocoins

Smartphones without keyboards

Roblox

Too soon to tell, but I guess unregulated app-as-an-employer model is pretty bad.

The generative AI's that "creates" content. Just dumb black boxes remixing what you give them, overconfident and inaccurate, yet seen as the ultimate tools by people.

subscriptions

Generative AI

Consumer grade AI, Social Media is a close second.

Plastic and PFAS

Comment sections

There's a lot of people who don't know when the 21st century began.

Quantum computers a real candidate once they get off the ground. They might help solve a few problems in chemistry and condensed matter physics, but on the other hand they definitely will make a lot of encryption we heavily rely on obsolete, and the replacements are noticeably inferior. And that's about it, because quantum algorithms are hard to design. So, that seems like a net negative to me.

Deep neural nets are powerful, but the fact we fundamentally don't understand how they work is a bit nerve-wracking.

Generative AI or facial recognition tech.

SPAM. Not the food variety, but the other. Inventend by a lawyer.

Twitter

Although initially good, the internet. From malware to corporate tracking, it’s become a cesspool. And yet, here I am.

Full scale mass surveillance capitalism. Governments used to have to hire agents, dress them up, and have them bug peoples phones. Now they can just buy it in bulk. No warrent, no black site op, just cashing checks.