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(Edited title, see details for original) Here's why you're getting enshittified...

Technology
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  • The irony of posting this on Lemmy and not Reddit. lmao

    The irony

    How so?

  • This is not only very similar to my experience and entirely possible, but it's also extremely healthy mentally and, date I say, physically.

    Getting rid of social media will improve your mood dramatically.

    I also like doing homelab stuff, and it's even more satisfying to know I'm having a better experience than, say, someone subscribing to every streaming service but still having to watch ads.

  • EDITED TO MAKE THE TITLE MORE APPROPRIATE. The previous title of this post was "I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life" which was the slug line as it appeared in my mailing-list-to-RSS reader. Although this is the first paragraph of the linked essay, it does not do a good job of explaining the thrust of the essay, and some people (not you though) seem to be arguing with the title instead of the essay.

    (Thanks to ski11erboi@lemmy.world for the heads up.)

    END OF EDITED SECTION

    Here's why you're getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don't have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don't compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they've amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about "fighting for the user." Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

    I’m still going to buy the French and German glass jars with rubber seals I am eyeing for food storage, instead of anything involving plastic and silicone. Suck it.

  • I’m still going to buy the French and German glass jars with rubber seals I am eyeing for food storage, instead of anything involving plastic and silicone. Suck it.

    Great!

    Is... is someone trying to stop you from doing that?

  • EDITED TO MAKE THE TITLE MORE APPROPRIATE. The previous title of this post was "I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life" which was the slug line as it appeared in my mailing-list-to-RSS reader. Although this is the first paragraph of the linked essay, it does not do a good job of explaining the thrust of the essay, and some people (not you though) seem to be arguing with the title instead of the essay.

    (Thanks to ski11erboi@lemmy.world for the heads up.)

    END OF EDITED SECTION

    Here's why you're getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don't have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don't compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they've amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about "fighting for the user." Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

    Nah, fuck off with all this.

  • I disagree. Boycott works. These days, you vote with your money in a more efficient way than any election.
    You seem to say the problem is politic. You know politics won't change things. So you're just saying it's not your problem anymore.
    But the problem still exists.
    The enshittification stays there.

    Boycotts work because boycotts are collective . That's his point. If you get enough of society together to boycott X, or to call their government out on Y, or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter. What doesn't matter is a bunch of people buying an item, while you are making your own private 'boycott'. Personally, I 'boycott' youtube. Guess what? They don't care. They have enough eyeballs that they don't miss me at all.

    P.S. I was happy that Paramount+ asks "why?" you cancel your subscription because I got to explain it was due to the 60 minutes settlement and firing Colbert... but I doubt they care that 1 person stopped giving them money over that.

  • It would better if that came off paragraph after but instead they dipped into simultaneously dunking on individual efforts to build up poorly detailed communal efforts. Spends more time complaining about peoples individual efforts than explaining the how to's and benefits of communal efforts

    When all your friends are going to a festival, are you really going to opt out because the event requires you to use the Ticketmaster app (because Ticketmaster has a monopoly over event ticketing)? If so, you're not gonna have a lot of friends, which is a pretty shitty way to live.

    If you turn your personal campaign to live an enshittification-free life into a set of rigid practices that isolate you from your community, you will be miserable – and you will undermine your ability to address the systemic roots of enshittification.

    He should focus better on making his argument more tight and focused with minimal collateral damage. How does using Linux, Signal, Mastodon isolate people. People can have all that installed and more. Terrible examples.

    Yes recycling is mostly green washing as it gets dumped/burned elsewhere. Why try make people feel like they were fools for sending things to recycling. They tried.

    Not effective writing, not effective communication, not effective persuasion and so far in this thread he's not even hitting with leftist let alone centrist and conservatives. People are focusing on the hot take because the writer thought it'd be smart to frame his wants with a hot take about the individual actions people take as weak. Frame with click bait so get lambasted for being a click bait artist

    If I may chime in, like Sundray, I am used to the author's style, which preempts critics by acknowledging the difficulty before getting to the positive. He's had enough people tell him 'recycling plastic is a joke!' to now start by saying, yes, I know, BUT you should still do it and then he'll get to the positive. He's not suggesting people are foolish for doing it, he's simply letting the reader know that it ought to work better than it does and the failure is NOT on the citizenry, but on the deep pockets trying to escape blame. He wants you to know how they profit off the backs of the working class and he wants us to fight back together (and to keep recycling).

  • EDITED TO MAKE THE TITLE MORE APPROPRIATE. The previous title of this post was "I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life" which was the slug line as it appeared in my mailing-list-to-RSS reader. Although this is the first paragraph of the linked essay, it does not do a good job of explaining the thrust of the essay, and some people (not you though) seem to be arguing with the title instead of the essay.

    (Thanks to ski11erboi@lemmy.world for the heads up.)

    END OF EDITED SECTION

    Here's why you're getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don't have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don't compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they've amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about "fighting for the user." Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

    While this article has some good points, it really is sad, and kind of ironic, that the first paragraph of it is bullshit clickbait that completely undermines the rest of the text.

  • The irony

    How so?

    Most of us are here on Lemmy having individually made the decision to evade the enshitification of other sites.
    ...And it's worked.

  • Most of us are here on Lemmy having individually made the decision to evade the enshitification of other sites.
    ...And it's worked.

    I love how unshitty Lemmy is 😊 . That's why I post here so much!

    But Reddit isn't less shitty as a result. I think it's even getting worse.

  • Nah, fuck off with all this.

    Would you say individual choices have slowed or reversed enshittification?

  • I love how unshitty Lemmy is 😊 . That's why I post here so much!

    But Reddit isn't less shitty as a result. I think it's even getting worse.

    I think maybe the wording in your title is throwing people off because as a lot of people are pointing out we CAN make make choices that limit the amount of enshittification we experience in our own lives. Seems like what you're trying to say is choosing not to support enshittification doesn't stop companies from continuing enshittification.

  • I think maybe the wording in your title is throwing people off because as a lot of people are pointing out we CAN make make choices that limit the amount of enshittification we experience in our own lives. Seems like what you're trying to say is choosing not to support enshittification doesn't stop companies from continuing enshittification.

    Fair, thank you. There does seem to be some confusion about enshittification vis a vis personal effects, versus Enshittification that exists in the world. (Reducing the former doesn't reduce the latter, and the latter still remains everyone's problem.) I used a bookmarklet to grab the link and tagline. I'll update the title to more accurately reflect the content of the essay.

  • Boycotts work because boycotts are collective . That's his point. If you get enough of society together to boycott X, or to call their government out on Y, or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter. What doesn't matter is a bunch of people buying an item, while you are making your own private 'boycott'. Personally, I 'boycott' youtube. Guess what? They don't care. They have enough eyeballs that they don't miss me at all.

    P.S. I was happy that Paramount+ asks "why?" you cancel your subscription because I got to explain it was due to the 60 minutes settlement and firing Colbert... but I doubt they care that 1 person stopped giving them money over that.

    .

  • While this article has some good points, it really is sad, and kind of ironic, that the first paragraph of it is bullshit clickbait that completely undermines the rest of the text.

    Yep. The title and the intro are both clickbait designed to drag in people incensed by the suggestion that their positive individual actions won't have impact - which are absolutely the same people that don't need to be fucking converted into the belief that regulations and enforcing laws already on the books would be good things.

    The people that do need to read the article will read the title and intro paragraph (as is often auto-copied into posts on social media pages) and they'll chuckle to themselves that they know that already and move on with their day.

    Tl;dr. This article annoys the converted, and misses the ideal demographic.

  • Would you say individual choices have slowed or reversed enshittification?

    I reject your premise. Good day.

  • This you?

    you vote with your money in a more efficient way than any election

    If you look, I was the person explaining that per Doctorow collective action is good. You're replying to a post where I said, "...or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter." Maybe you meant to reply to someon else, or maybe you're a sock puppet that forgot to change accounts.

  • Great!

    Is... is someone trying to stop you from doing that?

    I might.

  • Most of us are here on Lemmy having individually made the decision to evade the enshitification of other sites.
    ...And it's worked.

    Naaaah, it's still in the wrong paradigm, just a taste of the better world.

    Like Hanseatic league and Hussites and Cossacks were not quite the revolution you'd want, and the same with Dutchies, but at some point angry Frenchies decided it's time to show how it's done, and around the same general period of time some unrefined colonials decided they are tired of tea.

  • EDITED TO MAKE THE TITLE MORE APPROPRIATE. The previous title of this post was "I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life" which was the slug line as it appeared in my mailing-list-to-RSS reader. Although this is the first paragraph of the linked essay, it does not do a good job of explaining the thrust of the essay, and some people (not you though) seem to be arguing with the title instead of the essay.

    (Thanks to ski11erboi@lemmy.world for the heads up.)

    END OF EDITED SECTION

    Here's why you're getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don't have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don't compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they've amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about "fighting for the user." Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

    Capitalism can't be reformed into something good/worthwhile. That's why its state was allowed to pass anti-trust laws. Even if companies are "broken up", it's just a legal restructuring. The system still profits, controls, etc. It's political theater, not any kind of real change.