‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything::The term describes the slow decay of online platforms such as Facebook. But what if we’ve entered the ‘enshittocene’?
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‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
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Unintentionally brilliant
Best comment I’ll read today.
Dude, I was trying to deal with the fucking Fullscreen cookie popup when the subscribe to unlock bullshit popped up and I just closed it immediately
Couldn’t send that point home any harder
A link to an article about enshittification that’s just a solid paywall…
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
This would be a meme by itself:
SIXTY NINE EUROS PER MONTH HOLY FUCK
EDIT SEVENTY FLIPPIN FIVE USD
Financial times has always been always expensive AF because it’s made for rich investors.
Only 420 euros if you sign up for a whole year
Which does answer the question very succinctly.
And not just any paywall, a NINETY-NINE CANADIAN DOLLARS PER MONTH ONE. Granted the first month is a single dollar, but still, that’s a grand total of C$1090 A YEAR.
Whatthefuck
Old people pay the $1 because of course, then forget.
Yeah, it’s $75 USD a month. Who the fuck do they think they are charging that much? I get 1Gbps internet for less than that. That’s 2 weeks worth of groceries. That’s YouTube Premium, Disney+, Netflix, and Max combined.
Absolutely no way an online news outlet is providing even close to a quarter of that $75 in value.
That’s 2 weeks worth of groceries.
I would be lucky to get a week off of that. If all I ate was instant ramen and stovetop pasta for every single meal, I might be able to stretch it to two weeks.
Absolutely no way an online news outlet is providing even close to a quarter of that $75 in value.
The outlet is called Financial Times, and—if you think about it—they certainly do an excellent job in helping individuals manage their finances correctly. After seeing a $75 charge on my bank statement from a news outlet, I would never forget to cancel another promotional subscription again.
Not just a paywall, but a cookie dialog taking up more than my whole phone screen, where you have to click into it to “reject all” (and it doesn’t reject all), just to get to the paywall
Still can’t read the content without pop-up ads. Hella enshitified.
Do you not have an ad blocker?
Bruh uBlock origin is the way
I’m using Firefox focus’ adblocking and a PiHole and I still have three giant ads banners that prevent me from reading on Archive hahaha
Not on my phone, and it’s pretty shitty to need add-ons just to make content readable, so whatever
Firefox+ublock origin for android, for iPhone I have no clue
iOS: Wipr takes care of everything. Even stuff Firefox Focus and my PiHole doesn’t.
It was on purpose, now you get the point clearer.
Ohh no, it’s a real article, if you have bypasspaywall clean you can read it
I’ll give em a little credit, the article is by Cory Doctorow
But then we have this:
"The internet isn’t more important than the climate emergency, gender justice, racial justice, genocide or inequality. But the internet is the terrain we’ll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it’s joined."it costs a dollar to read the article.
Nothing wrong with paying for content? Enshittification is about something different than just being expensive or bad.
Paying for content: fair enough
Paying almost A THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR for content: barely worth it
When your only claim to fame is jamming the word “shit” into other words…
You need to milk all that ad money out of it you can.
Let’s skip for a moment the fact that, as other posters highlighted, Cory Doctorow was already famous before coining the word. Let’s pretend that his only achievement was indeed the concept of enshittification.
Even then, it’s a big fucking deal. He noticed a rather nasty pattern in a system used by 2/3 of the world population, described it, labelled it, identified potential causes and solutions. It wasn’t just “lol lmao he jammed the word «shit» into another X-D”.
FWIW Cory Doctorow was famous before coining that word. He’s done a lot of great work. You should research before saying things.
So many accomplishments you couldn’t even name a single one if you tried!
So hard to lift a finger to do the work yourself while you’re shitposting. Follow your own handle’s advice.
he basically was all of EFF europe when i found him mid-2000s. he also worked boingboing for a very long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow
Awards 2000 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer[91] 2004 Locus Award for Best First Novel for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom 2004 Sunburst Award for A Place So Foreign and Eight More 2006 Locus Award for Best Novelette for "I, Robot" 2007 Locus Award for Best Novelette for "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" 2007 The Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award[92] For Little Brother 2009 John W. Campbell Memorial Award[93] 2009 Prometheus Award[45] 2009 Sunburst Award[46] 2009 White Pine Award[94] 2018 Inkpot Award[95] For Pirate Cinema 2013 Prometheus Award[45] For Homeland 2014 Prometheus Award[45]Yeah, I saw those on Wikipedia…
Honestly the only impressive bit was an xkcd character is based on him.
Like, you know it’s not amount the amount of awards, it’s the quality?
Like those Prometheus awards, those are just for libertarians and they have like five winners a year.
And most people have zero.
I don’t think you understand how many awards there are for writing…
Do you know about any of those or do you assume any award is prestigious?
CD is a beast. One hell of a great guy. I have actually donated money to some of his more worthy causes before.
Ft It’s kind of a s*** hole though. And for the paywall to abruptly block you outright not a single word not a hook, which is kind of weird because it’s a little bit against what he stands for I know it’s not apples to apples…
I read the article. It’s kind of disappointing, somewhat of a Nothing Burger.
I’m fine with whatever term we decide means “capitalism fucking sucks”. If we need some new term to escape the current terms that bind folk’s minds all up against their best interests then enshittisication is better than many
Enshitification was coined by Cory Doctrow specifically for the tech space, because the tech space is uniquely poised to constantly shift and tweak a service-based product to manipulate users, creators, and the paying customers.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
This is on top of the normal problem of greed. Now I didn’t read the article because it is pay walled (go figure). Is this article actually drawing a correct comparison to the definition of enshitification above, or is it just lazily ascribing the phenomenon of greed to that word?
Without capitalism there wouldn’t be anything to enshitify…
Yes, because the first guy who lit a fire on purpose was like: “you want warm? You give food! Else fuck off!”
/s
To be fair, he may well have been like that. Humans have been selfish bastards since the dawn of time. And maybe this is why we need good government regulations - because human nature is greed. Any company in a position of power will just leech as much money as they can, if nobody is going to stop them.
If you think human nature is greed and selfishness, you’re falling for capitalist indoctrination. Humans have the capacity for greed or selfishness but it has not always been the dominant principle of human societies. But capitalists want us to believe it’s just “human nature” to be an asshole so there’s no viable alternative to a greed-based society.
I’m not trying to justify unlimited greed, nor do I mean that we should permit unlimited greed. I’m saying the opposite of that - I think we should have laws to curtail unlimited greed.
But I do still think greed and selfishness are human nature, because when I look at humans, I consistently see selfishness and greed. Maybe this means I’m a pessimist but I think it’s just realistic. If humans weren’t inherently greedy and selfish then there would be no need for laws that punish theft.
As for whether greed and selfishness have been dominant in human societies… it looks like the rich and powerful in society, throughout history, never gave up their power and wealth unless they were made to do so.
I wonder what arguments people have to justify a downvote. Polarized either/or views. Capitalism is a great idea if regulated. Look to history and find good examples of societies that aren’t based on capitalism. They don’t exist.
I agree and value the Marxist analysis of capitalism. I’m a socialist. However, I don’t think that a Marxist economy would work. Social responsible capitalism works. Capitalism run amok doesn’t. Unfortunately, it is getting out of control, especially in the USA.
What we have here is a capitalism that is devoid of the creation of goods and services; today’s capitalism is just neofeudalism in which the capitalist just collects rent without creating anything. This thread is confusing capitalism woth commerce.
If you were a socialist you’d know what dialectical materialism is and not say something like “Marxist economy”.
I often wonder: can we start over? Like, can we just do MySpace again?..or have another YouTube that’s like before Google bought it? If we hate how tech bros have destroyed the fun, is there a way to redux the pre-tech bro wonder years?
I mean, you’re on Lemmy right. That’s what we’re doing.
Peertube exists
while peertube is a solution, and I really hope it succeeds, the content and creators arent there, anyways we can always use piped.
I often wonder: can we start over?
No. All services that don’t enshittify will be outcompeted by services that do.
The love of money is the root of many evils.
Upvote for username
Even if a great new service or product comes along it alway just gets bought out by somme billionaire
Not necessarily. The Free and Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement is a thing. Most of the Fediverse is FLOSS, and I doubt there’s anyone who can take Lemmy or Mastodon closed source and buy every instance and then stop pop-up instances. It does require quite a bit of work, though, so it is difficult.
I think the real challenging thing is that a great FLOSS service needs to attract attention and care. When I bring up Fediverse/FLOSS alternatives to software my friends complain about, I’m met with lukewarm-at-best reactions, generally due to networking effects (I think).
I think the Fediverse is not doomed any time soon. In other areas XMPP is an example of an open source software based protocol since long and still being around, with active projects, and attempts to make things easier, like Snikket : https://snikket.org
Communism is bad. Lenin was a murderer and Stalin was worse.
The irony of clicking on this link and getting hit with “accept cookies” “Subscribe to unlock this article”.
Annoying for sure, but “Enshittification” refers to a specific method in which platforms flex monopoly power to squeeze not just users, but business customers too. It does not just mean “things getting shittier”
And before anyone goes “language loses meaning over time” consider that if you change the meaning of “enshittification” then you need to also invent a new word to mean what “enshittification” used to mean.
Well blogs and new sites used to just show you the content. Now they show you this.
It may not be what the article was referring to (though, I’d have to pay to know for sure), but it’s definitely a trend making services shittier so I feel like it counts
Enshittification = Corporate Greed
It’s one of many expressions of corporate greed.
Until governments get serious about trust busting, it will keep happening. Companies that don’t have to compete enshittify.
Monopolies don’t matter in this case. The market has been saturated. Nearly everyone pays for a streaming service; probably 2 or 3. There are no “new customers” so all that’s left is to squeeze existing customers even more.
Same things happened with Peloton. Pretty much everyone that would buy their products have and they’re not buying a second bike or treadmill, so they introduced tiers of service. Pay more or you get fewer features.
This is what capitalism demands. Ever increasing profits by any means necessary.
Now, the enshittifiers aren’t taking this lying down. Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has run more than 80 pieces trashing Khan, insisting that she’s an ineffectual ideologue who can’t get anything done. Sure, that’s why you ran 80 editorials about her. Because she can’t get anything done.
I love when other people realize the value of Lina Khan. I’ll vote for Biden for the sole reason to let Lina Khan do good work!
If a service becomes shitty it is almost always due to corporate greed. It usually starts with data-mining your subscribers without their knowledge or consent. Then it moves on to making the service itself worse by introducing advertising and making changes to the interface that forces them to VIEW those ads instead of the content they came for.
The tech world is going downhill fast. Anything that isn’t currently obtainable through only foss means isn’t going to be attainable by the average person for much longer.
The tech things most people currently enjoy will soon become entirely unaffordable to anyone not made of money. Anything that you aren’t willing to switch to an open source alternative for, prepare to learn to live without it.
I even self host my own music streaming. I never had a streaming service, not even in 2012 when Netflix was all the rage. I don’t even own a windows compatible pc. I don’t even know what modern ms office looks like. I use my home network more than I use the actual internet just about.
What can’t I do with FOSS though?
Whatever you’re about to say, let’s crowd fund it. I’m not even kidding.
Use industry software standards. Adobe, Autodesk etc etc. I know, these solutions sucks, but it is the world people live it. Most Lemmy people are into tech for the sake of tech. You are technological literate to the highest degree. Understand and critique developments in tech. Very important work! However, a graphical designer probably isn’t that literate and wouldn’t be able to do work in a Foss environment. Yes, 1 in a 1000 might use Gimp but good luck colabbing with other people in the industry.
The artist who makes Pepper and Carot comic uses the open source Krita and shares videos about using Krita on a tablet. https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/106596993208066262
Yeah I know Gimp doesn’t use(or didn’t last time I checked) CMYK and as someone who does QA for flexographic printing, I know how that’s important.
You’d think the world would put some effort into getting away from Adobe. All my homies hate Adobe.
So. Why don’t we crowd fund our way to better solutions for these things?
Krita is actually a very professional choice for some things people think they need Adobe products for. And it looks like Krita has CMYK support. Giving Krita more attention that it deserves would be welcome.
Heck yeah!
ChatGPT4
You mean like personally hosting it or something?
There are open models that one can download on HuggingFace and run locally, but they are not as good as ChatGPT4 which has had insane® amounts of resources thrown at.
https://i.imgur.com/Al6GCMW.png
HAHAHAHAHA
They really meant it!
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“See? Look!”
This article brought to you by the ultimate enshittifier of news, the Financial Times. The reason’s in the name!
The phenomenon is due to pressures to be profitable instead of hemorrhaging money which is no longer free. For stuff like Uber, it just means it’s more expensive because they are done paying for a portion of our rides from their VC money. That means it’s pricing accurately instead of inaccurately, that’s good. If you don’t want to spend that much on a taxi, take the bus.
For stuff like reddit, it’s harder. They don’t charge, so they need to squeeze every little penny from advertising (hence forcing their app instead of 3rd parties), and try to find new funding streams like the AI API. On that you just have to hope that the new funding streams get big enough that they pay for the removal of some of the ads in the hope of encouraging more user growth. Or at least some app development.
And for TikTok, it’s the same, they’re hoping the e-commerce funding stream pays for the app so they can avoid going HAM on true ads.
Profitability is coming for everything, ZIRP is over. But there is the hope that enshittification can be reversed by new funding streams.
That means it’s pricing accurately instead of inaccurately, that’s good. If you don’t want to spend that much on a taxi, take the bus.
They did that on the backs of poor working people who had, often expensive, taxi licenses. Those people are now out of business for the most part and Uber can charge what ever they want. If this was international trade they would be accused of dumping, and it’s fucking gross. Disgusting you would excuse such behaviour.
Why’d you type all that if you just wanted to tell everyone you didn’t know what you were talking about?
Why’d you comment with no substance instead of actually disagreeing with what I said? If I’m wrong, spell out where or you’re just being a troll.
If you want people to help, use smaller comments
I’ll give you the first one but I’m not spending an hour helping you understand 10 things when you’re acting like that and will likely reply with “nuh uh”.
The phenomenon is due to pressures to be profitable instead of hemorrhaging money which is no longer free
You act like they want to burn investor money indefinitely.
They dont, not a single company.
They “invest” investor capital operating at a loss and eliminating competitors. The plan is always once the competition is out of business, to raise your prices higher.
This has been a thing as long as capitalism has been a thing.
And it’s incredibly basic.
How has healthcare software like MyChart been enshittified? It’s probably the tech I care the most about and the tech no one seems to talk about.
I would love to see someone discuss any enshitification trends with EHR software, as well as any initiatives to bolster FOSS stuff like OSCAR for hospital use cases (far as I know, it’s pretty much just used at the clinic level, with more and more uptake of proprietary solutions for that use case as well here in Canada [obligatory Fuck Telus]).
