Submitted 8 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
‘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’?
‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
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Unintentionally brilliant
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
Best comment I’ll read today.
The irony of clicking on this link and getting hit with “accept cookies” “Subscribe to unlock this article”.
Annoying for sure, but not what “Enshittification” refers to.
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
Welcome to language. It evolves.
Or perhaps, from your point of view, it’s getting enshittified. Even if you don’t like it.
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.
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?
Enshitification was coined by Cory Doctrow specifically for the tech space
You’re not wrong it was coined this way, but he has referred to the process in other arenas where monopolies exist:
But it’s not just tech that faces the curse of bigness: your bank, your insurer, your beer company, the companies that make your eyeglasses and your athletic shoes — they’ve all run out of lands to conquer, but instead of weeping, they’re taking it out on you, with worse products that cost more.
Enshittification follows monopoly as sure as night follows day.
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
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.
the term is way more specific, though.
HAHAHAHAHA
right? This article brought to you by the ultimate enshittifyer of news, the Financial Times. Reason’s in the name!
They really meant it!
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Enshittification = Corporate Greed
It’s one of many expressions of corporate greed.
The tech world is going downhill fast. Whatever you can’t get in a fully gnu way is going to be taken away from the comment person eventually.
I’ve been trying to remember and watch all the old YouTube videos I loved before they disappear either completely or behind a paywall that I won’t pay.
Let’s get some shoes. Let’s get some shoes. OMG! Shoes!
All of that will be gone soon. Not just the space where people can let their creativity flow, but where there is nearly 2 decades of that kind of creativity archived.
Download those videos while you still can, use youtube-dlp.
I actually just went through my old favorites (that are still accessible) and downloaded them with jdownloader last weekend.
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.
Security camera stuff is really lacking. The only good one is zoneminder and it barely works.
“Subscribe to unlock article.” Oh, the irony. 😂
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.
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.
Even if a great new service or product comes along it alway hust 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 : snikket.org
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.
Me personally I have just accepted this is the way it is going to be. The company makes a good product and then it stops making a good product, I move on.
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.
If the market was competitive, people would just choose another product or service that didn’t use such practices as you can clearly be profitable without doing this.
Yup. Time to build the walled gardens and pay for entrance. The times were good and now you can live that for a fee.
It will have to get worse before it’s pushed back against.
I actually thought the paywalled article was the meme at first.
Also shoutout Bypass Paywalls Clean (D). It’s practically up there with uBlock Origin as required to browse today’s internet.
The add-on you linked appears to be a fork after the original was DMCA struck, the original is still available at gitlab.com/…/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean
I believe the one you linked is the fork. Here is the original.
github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
I recommend the fork you linked because the original author supposedly was slow and reluctant to add new sites and now copies fixes from the fork.
Read more about the history here: gitlab.com/magnolia1234/…/1
Holy shit, YES!
It was coming for absolutely everything since 2013 at least.
I will never forget the day when Creative Suite was no longer a thing. I will never forget the day when Apple flattened iOS. I will never forget the day when the Xbox One was announced.
Can you believe their modern products are basically a continuation of what they started back in 2013? This is why it’s the worst year of all time.
Oh man we should really do a review of the most recent worst year limited to just the last 200 years or else we are competing with the black Plague or the final boss of 536 C.E.
We have been shockingly stagnant for some time now but it’s been creeping for a while now. Decades of slow but building shittiness.
The initial investment and machines put in motion and more and more the only goal was to scrape as much profitability from them.
Now that the tech is struggling to advance in meaningful leaps and bounds that the populace can easily be pushed into following cause it truly just keeps getting better we are really in the shit zone. But Companies have realized they are so big that your options are work with them for whatever scraps they feel like giving, or don’t work at all cause who else is there.
We should run a review of the most recent worst year limited to just the last 200 years or else we are competing with the black Plague or the final boss of 536 C.E.
I really feel it now that Prime and Netflix have ads in the middle of their content.
If everyone who complained about ads in Prime and Netflix canceled their accounts, then Prime and Netflix would be motivated to remove their ads.
I’m like 99% sure “enshittification” is just a code word for “capitalism”
*subscribe to unlock this article *
Make that 100% sure.
Corporate greed is ruining everything, as per… But hey! We have a cool edgy new tech term for it now!
Enshitification only comes for the things capitalism touches… So yeah, everything…
We just need to go back to paying for services. Free free free everything forever is not a sustainable business model. That’s why the big players just sell you to advertisers instead. And everyone is getting pretty grossed out about how much data that actually takes on you, so we’re passing privacy laws. Those laws mean these services can’t be free anymore.
Good. They shouldn’t be free.
I wish it wouldn’t come to products… I understand the need to make a profit, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of landfilling perfectly good hardware. I’d love just an affordable tablet with 5+ years of updates and an unlocked boot loader maybe with NO battery, and just a USB
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.
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 really think this is overblown. Almost all the services encompassed by the term are luxury. We don’t need Netflix. Just stop paying for it. Businesses all follow a similar trajectory: concept -> growth -> monetisation -> decline. If you’re over 30 you’ve seen many companies rise and fall. They all fail eventually, and from their ashes rise new companies. If you’re ambitious, you’ll capitalise on the opportunity and your company will fill that gap.
Embrace change.
It WAS coming for everything, but it’s been here awhile now.
Fine with me if we life in the enshittocene. If the fedicene is coming right after it
Okay that’s it, it’s been overused.
Yeah you might as well give up… everything is lost…it’s never going to get better but can you put me in your will plz? I want that bag of Cheetos
It’s the bubble popping and its glorious.
So, not unlike, say… “Ow, My Balls!” era IRL? That tracks.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A link to an article about enshittification that’s just a solid paywall…
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This would be a meme by itself:
Image
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 8 months ago
SIXTY NINE EUROS PER MONTH HOLY FUCK
csolisr@communities.azkware.net 8 months ago
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.
RGB3x3@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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 3 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.
gibmiser@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Whatthefuck
floofloof@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I make it $100 Canadian per month, plus tax. It’s not intended for us lowly poors.
noodlejetski@lemm.ee 8 months ago
archive.is/1O12l
Garbanzo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Still can’t read the content without pop-up ads. Hella enshitified.
LetThereBeR0ck@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks for this, the article was well worth the read
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Which does answer the question very succinctly.
smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Nothing wrong with paying for content? Enshittification is about something different than just being expensive or bad.
csolisr@communities.azkware.net 8 months ago
Paying for content: fair enough
Paying almost A THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR for content: barely worth it
linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Here’s my response: [just paypal me $5 to see it]
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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
Lycerius@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A paywall you find only after you have to manually reject cookies. Done? Okay, here’s your paywall!
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 8 months ago
FWIW Cory Doctorow was famous before coining that word. He’s done a lot of great work. You should research before saying things.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 8 months ago
Let’s skip for a moment that, as other posters already showed, Cory Doctorow was already famous before coining the word. As in: let’s pretend that his only achievement was indeed to coin the word “enshittification”.
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”, even if you’re pretending otherwise. It’s a big fucking deal.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
kratoz29@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It was on purpose, now you get the point clearer.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.