Comment on 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

partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

First, it looks like this may be a dressed up advertisement for their newly released book:

My book on Enshittification is coming out in a couple of months, and the early reviews are already coming in, and they are gratifyingly glowing.

That fact alone doesn’t discount their argument, but it should be considered.

Second, I disagree with this premise of the author:

Because this isn’t an individual problem, it’s a systemic one.

I disagree, its both.

As the author rightly identifies, there are somethings that are only addressable systemically such as healthcare of mass transport. However a whole other host of items the author references are absolutely individual problems. Example from the author:

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)?

Yes, I opt-out of nearly every Ticketmaster event. It is an individual problem with an individual solution.

If so, you’re not gonna have a lot of friends, which is a pretty shitty way to live.

My friends largely also opt out. Perhaps we self select for like-mindedness.

This means that they don’t have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don’t compete.

They can still lose my business if I opt out of the entire industry, such as corporate social media. No amount of competitors changes my mind on that. This could also be done on streaming services, choosing to read instead etc.

This isn’t just a systemic problem as the author suggests.

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