Submitted 3 weeks ago by sundray@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/
disagree.
i stopped using most social media, and what little social media I do use now is FOSS like lemmy.
I cancelled my youtubeTV subscription and now pirate all my media.
I stopped using Plex and switched to Jellyfin which is FOSS.
Not saying it’s possible for everything, but sometimes there absolutely are non-enshittified alternatives.
That’s wonderful! It’s good to diminish the amount of enshittification you experience in your life!
Enshittification, writ large, goes on regardless. The point of the essay is that avoiding it in your personal life is good (if sometimes tiresome, depending on the specifics of your life) and you should totally do that, but the root causes of enshittification can be defeated by organized collective action.
the root causes of enshittification can be defeated by organized collective action.
This is the fly in the ointment. I (and most here) do all the things to avoid enshittified products, but as you’ve mentioned it is work. Some of the “work” is fun because I am “technologia” oriented, but many of the people I know simply cannot be bothered to consider alternatives to these shit products. They don’t know it is shit and think that’s the only choice and follow along. I can’t blame them for their choices too much. Life is full of other things they are occupied with, so I do try and help when I can.
Many that are obligated to be advocates for the common man and these issues have abandoned their obligations to the people they are supposed to serve. They have essentially been enshittified too and we haven’t yet organized to solve that issue which seems to be the most important enshittification to date. More to come later, I am sure.
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.
I’m still using YouTube with smarttube or whatever it’s called now and vanced. They have adblocking and sponsor block so I don’t get shitty ads and I can still pick who I watch. I did go and download a bunch of kids videos since someone watches the same show all the time and now just use jelyfin for that.
Counterpoint: 🏴☠️
Would have been better to use a gif of the luigi death stare
Corollary: yar har fiddle-dee-dee
Other counterpoint: good choices and not being an asshole make me happy.
And another: consumption and people being shitty are unrelated.
Some times, to both statements 😂
Tldr; Join physical movements like a union to focus on actual laws being created and/or enforced while shitting on people for doing anything that else that may be positive
Also tries to sell their book bragging about how early reviews are raving about it. Provocative for clicks to say obvious shit that they’re selling. “Bruh, join a union”
Also their conclusion doesn’t read to me like it actually goes against personal conscious consumption choice. Like saying join a movement as if a movement doesn’t start with a bunch of individuals making choices about how they spend their time, use their money, speak their opinion, etc and figuring out all these individuals have a lot in common and have a common point to organize around
Article is like, “ya Linux, Signal, Mastodon, etc. But they’re all niche and you as an individual make so little difference so join a movement.”
Linux is probably the most used kernel for operating systems in the world. Not a good example. Backend operating system for the Internet. Signal is far more popular than a decade ago. Don’t know about Mastodon. Regardless if people aren’t being encouraged to engage in more private and/or decentralized Internet, why the fuck would they be engaged enough to go to some political meetup about something they don’t individually engage with and develop personal interest towards. Collective action starts with developing individual interests that converge to a collective group of individuals with shared interests
Also shit on people’s good causes and their small actions and not realize that those little things keep people engaged and they’re potential conversation points to bring people into more direct organized action.
Then after complaining about small niche movements that apparently won’t amount to anything long term, they point out small niche organizations that for some reason will grow and amount to something long term for reasons I imagine being that they care more about those than using decentralized and open source software (services)
The great news is that he’s on Mastodon, if you’d like to reach out: mamot.fr/…/pluralistic)
He might care a little about distributed services.
I read his article and won’t read his book. I won’t reach out to him. If he wants to engage better with people, he should try not starting with belittling people’s efforts that they can do in there personal lives of which doesn’t preclude anything they can do communally
Its like global warming. Is what im doing going to stop it. No. Do I want to be as little responsible for it as possible yest. If my consumption is half anothers then I have reduced my share of the responsibility by half. If my consumption further is in a way that causes half as much harm. Well now im down to a quarter share. Does it mean anything overall? Maybe not but it means something to me.
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.
Your assessment is spot on.
If so, you’re not gonna have a lot of friends, which is a pretty shitty way to live.
Or you choose friends who will stay your friends even if you miss a concert???
I would argue that, if that is a requisite for them being your friends, they are not your friends. Win - win.
First, it looks like this may be a dressed up advertisement for their newly released book:
To be fair, this is a web archive of Cory Doctorow’s email newsletter, normally sent to a self-selecting audience that expects to see Cory try to sell us his stuff. But also, as the coiner of “enshittification” this is a subject he’s been examining for many years.
It really is sad, and kind of ironic, that the first paragraph of this article 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.
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?
I might.
Don’t care if I end up naked in the woods siphoning Internet with a tin can, I will always try and encourage others to do so.
“Do all this! Do more! You’ll make your life somewhat better, and in some cases, much better.”
I don’t care.
I avoid the services as a protest and I also enjoy the alternatives.
I’m not going to bankrupt them, but I’m not helping them.
I’m not going to bankrupt them, but I’m not helping them.
That’s good!
If you ever want to step up to hurting them, you’ll probably need to party up.
Yeah fuck doing the right thing, just consume as you are told by corporationa... DEFF don't eat any broccoli, they are gross!
Far be it from me to defend a jumping-off point for discussion, but I didn’t see anything in the essay saying that people shouldn’t “do the right thing.” Just the opposite, in fact (“Do all this! Do more! You’ll make your life somewhat better, and in some cases, much better.”)
I self-host open source software, pay for services that I don’t want to host (email, etc) and I prefer buying things to subscribing/renting things. I experience far less enshittification than most as a result.
Nah, fuck off with all this.
Would you say individual choices have slowed or reversed enshittification?
I reject your premise. Good day.
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.
Well, it’s Cory Doctorow doing the saying.
But in my own opinion, boycotts work for products and services that you pay for; personally refusing to use services that rely on money from other business, less so. The #DeleteFacebook movement has existed since at least 2017. Twitter loudly hemorrhaged users after the Musk buyout. “DeGoogle” has been a thing since 2006. Small business, progressives, and others have been advocating boycotting Amazon for over a decade… and yet they all still exist, they are all still bad actors, and show no signs of getting any better.
The people who have left those services are better off, and that’s good – better than good! But these corporate ogres haven’t stopped destroying society because of it. They haven’t even slowed down.
To look at it another way: ALL of these corpos fear government regulation, especially in labor and fair business practices: You know that’s true because they ALL spend billions fighting it tooth and nail.
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.
I live without adverts in my life.
I have no subscription services.
When a service stops being useful I switch.
Aside from my steam library, I own everything I own. I don’t find this difficult. I’m not missing out, I enjoy films, TV, games, friends, work and life generally.
My personal choices have made a massive difference to my experiences, if I compare them to the ones I see people talking about on Lemmy.
The irony of posting this on Lemmy and not Reddit. lmao
The irony
How so?
Most of us are here having individually made the decision to evade the enshitification of other sites.
…And it’s worked.
Well, I guess the prerogative is on the rest of us non-Americans to break unjust American IP laws to counteract the lack of lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws, or make laws in other countries that better enforce competition laws on American companies.
I have a glimmer of hope that Europe is getting in gear somewhat for that.
I do Cory’s overall point about needing to think more of solidarity than individual choices, but I disagree on discounting them completely, those choices do carry a certain degree of importance as well in effecting systemic change. Saying, “well, society isn’t changing, enshittification isn’t going anywhere so I shouldn’t bother changing my habits” won’t get us anywhere. It has had real effects.
Things that start in the margins have the ability to get noticed by big players and then bring about change. A couple examples: Linux gaming is in a viable state that was unimaginable 8 years ago. The Canadian boycott of US products and travel has had a very measurable affect on US tourism and select industries, and has spread to other countries. Valve nor the Canadian government started either of those efforts, but they helped signal-boost and take concrete supportive actions when they see that even a small group of people independently have supported that change already.
Valve nor the Canadian government started either of those efforts, but they helped signal-boost and take concrete supportive actions when they see that even a small group of people independently have supported that change already.
It’s *nice *when that happens, when big-money players take notice of grass-roots movements and push forward their agendas. Pretty rare, though.
Capitalism can’t be reformed. That’s why its state was allowed to pass anti-trust laws. It’s just more political theater, not any kind of real change.
unyons@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Defeatism will get us nowhere. The power of the people dethroned kings, and it will dethrone capitalism too.
I do agree that the actions of a single person are a drop in the bucket, but we can only fill the bucket if many of us offer their single drop. We each must do our part, no matter how insignificant that part may be.
sundray@lemmus.org 3 weeks ago
I agree! And, I think the linked essay agrees, also? I mean the last sentence literally says, “You can’t fight enshittification. But together, we can.”
That sounds very different than, “Acceptance of or resignation to the prospect of defeat. Acceptance of the inevitability of defeat. Acceptance of defeat without struggle.”
unyons@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I actually didn’t even notice the link to the article. Oops. Thanks for pointing that out.
hisao@ani.social 3 weeks ago
I think the point this article is trying to make is that while individualistic consumer-level ways to sidestep enshittification do work for those who follow them, they don’t fight the bad actors back efficiently and to achieve that it needs to be done collectively.
unyons@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Thank you for pointing this out. I honestly missed the link completely! I’m not usually the type to comment on a post that links to an article without reading it. Oops.