Enshitification is /our/ fault, not the enshitifiers
Enshitification is /our/ fault, not the enshitifiers
The whole capitalist infrastructure is designed for corporations to fully exploit profitability to the most extreme possible result. Sure, we can blame capitalism, which is a useless activity. In fact, it’s a harmful stance because blaming capitalism artificially puts solutions out of reach.
Within this capitalist system we are stuck with, can you blame the corporate enshitifiers? Again, same problem. Doing so puts the solution out of reach as corporations who work for their shareholders (not you) laugh all the way to bank.
It’s our fault. We have control and we squander it. You don’t have to solve CAPTCHA puzzles. You don’t have to switch to the clearnet every time a website blocks Tor. You don’t have to send a message to a GAFAM recipient. It’s because spineless pushovers fail to stand up for themselves and solve CAPTCHAs, tolerate cookie walls, and do whatever dance the corps force on us. We need more people to get a constitution and stop licking boots.
Corporations are doing their job (profiting). We are not doing our job. As consumers, it is OUR job to reject the garbage and ensure that we don’t make enshitification profitable.
Sure, we can blame capitalism, which is a useless activity. In fact, it’s a harmful stance because blaming capitalism artificially puts solutions out of reach.
What are the arguments to back these 2 sentences?
"If all those stupid other people would do as I do the world would be a better place": great way to make oneself feel good for being the best person on earth while everybody else is shit.
I know some of the things happening out there because people don't seem to care are absolutely heart wrenching. But yelling at others "If only you would change!" doesn't help - especially calling them names like "spineless pushovers" is only going to make matters worse. Instead try to understand where they come from and take them by the hand to somewhere more wholesome.
It doesn’t help to conceal the fact that there actually are people who do not lick boots.
Instead try to understand where they come from
I know where they come from. They come from addiction to convenience. They come from a place where they’ve not read Tim Wu’s “Tyranny of Convenience” essay, as they are surrounded with others who just roll with the garbage. They don’t know the fighting opposition exists because there are so few of us. It’s first and foremost important for them to know there are those who do not solve CAPTCHAs, and click through cookie walls, etc. We exist -- that’s the most important msg to take away from this.
You exist, and you are convinced that whatever you are doing to make the world a better place has to be the status quo, and everyone doing less than that or doing something different is a bad person. And on top of that you insist in being insufferable about it. Do you believe this approach is going to change anything? Or is making yourself feel superior so much more important than actually approaching others and work together, even in an imperfect way?
This gives me an idea. The equivalent of bumper stickers for our fedi traffic. An icon or something at the bottom of my posts signaling that I don’t solve CAPTCHAs, or use clearnet, or email MS/Google recipients, etc. It would have to be a tiny 1-liner that’s not severely cluttered or noisy, but /something/ like the blue ribbon campaign decades ago. Maybe avatar is a good place for that, to keep things tidy.
Each of these options depends entirely on what you need as an individual. Do you need to solve a Captcha so you can use a specific website? Maybe, maybe not. Some of those choices may be optional, some may be essential, some may be essential to taking your life down a specific path that's important to you.
It's the same as the argument for switching to Linux. Can a lot of people switch to Linux and continue to do what they need to do with their computers? Absolutely. Can everyone? No. But they can use a service like 0patch to keep getting security updates to older versions of Windows after their EOL. Is Libreoffice going to be a good solution for people who need a note-taking app that auto-syncs to cloud storage without having to manually save or wait between timed saves and who need the same text available across multiple devices? Probably not, but there are alternatives to google docs that might work. There isn't always going to be a better option, and sometimes the most anti-corporate option isn't going to be the best option, but some shift where possible is better than no shift anywhere.
Prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn't actually fit isn't an answer to the problem any more than being annoyed at whatever corporation that's enshittifying their product.
And while we're here, a brief word about the broadening of the term enshittification. I've seen a lot of people insisting that enshittification only be used to apply to social media or to web services or digital products, but that really doesn't capture its full potential. If people are using the term enshittification to refer to their favorite body wash swapping to cheap ingredients after they do an IPO, or to the phenomenon of new washing machines breaking down inside a year when their parents still have one from the 80s that works great, that's not a bad thing. The sanctity of the word retaining its original application isn't important (and isn't how language works), it's the awareness that the word brings that's important. If people are realizing that the companies they help bring to prominence are developing a habit of raking back value as soon as they have the opportunity, that's something we should want to see.
Yes the enshitiffiers are bad, but we are the ones who enable them.
Walmart doesnt put small shops out of buisness, we do when we shop at wallmart! Its quite obvious its our fault, because if we didnt shop at wallmart, it would be the one going out of buisness....
If youre not using linux right now, youre telling microsoft and apple that youre OK with them enshittifing everything. We need to do more than complain to fix the world.
I don't buy anything at Walmart and I probably only been in one less than 5 times.
Walmart specifically chose areas where people needed values, people barely getting by financially, and don't have a lot of time and energy.
I get the point of this post but putting the blame on consumers is exactly the public relations speak used by these corporations.
Stop blaming the victims of unfetterwd capitalism. The current state of affairs began with Reagan and Thatcher (and their billionaire backers) that sold the world the idea of trickle-down economics.
You say that from a Cloudflare node, @HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works. The “victim blame” card is obviously a silly failure here, as is your analogy. You may be forced to toil for shit wages under Reaganomics because if you don’t, you suffer more. But this is not true of CAPTCHAs. Stop pretending you must solve a CAPTCHA, when in fact you’re just too lazy to not play the victim and send your correspondence by snail mail instead of webmail. You choose to be a victim when you choose to interact with enshitified resources, so you’ll get no respect from me. I respect those who have the constitution to walk away from it, not feed the oppressor.
So we could sit around pointing fingers or we could be the change we want to see in the world
So you're saying that unhoused, impoverished unemployed people have the social capital to change the world?
C'mon buddy. Not everyone is capable of changing anything ... especially when poverty rates and unemployment are spiking.
Ass-u-me things like that based on your personal experience is naive at best.
Here's the thing: protesting enshittification takes expertise, time, and energy. I've been working on degoogling and such, and it's honestly difficult. Installing Linux is easier now than it used to be, but it's still a learning curve for the average person.
We function as a society by relying on each others' expertise. For example, it's impractical to expect everyone to understand the intricacies of medicine, law, and engineering--so we entrust others in areas we don't fully understand.
In addition, we can create regulations that benefit and protect the average person, who likely doesn't even understand the potential dangers and pitfalls. Ideally, regulations like this are instigated or heavily influenced by the domain experts, as they have a much better understanding of what would be beneficial for everyone.
The problem isn't that everyone isn't an expert in everything, the problem is that regulation part is broken. Instead of creating laws that benefit people, we create laws that benefit a select few at the expense of the working class.
Enshittification is our fault, but not for the reason you suggest. It's our fault because we've fallen into personality cults and elected people to lead who don't have our best interests at heart. As another commenter mentioned, Reagan and Thatcher are two of the most egregious examples in recent history--people who should never have even been considered for the roles they took. Trump is just another in a long line of these.
Because even though I'm not an expert in most areas, everyone has a responsibility to think critically about who runs for office and who they vote for. I don't expect everyone to be an expert on politics (we're all susceptible to manipulation on these things, after all), but it doesn't take an advanced degree to identify an insincere politician. Just ask the millions of Americans who voted to relieve themselves of healthcare (the face-eating leopards have been very busy lately).