Enshittification

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What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

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Exercise Bike Company Yanks Features Away From Purchased Bikes Via Firmware Update (www.techdirt.com)

submitted 2 days ago by schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de to c/enshittification@lemmy.world

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[–] manxu@piefed.social 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It seems like a simple concept that everyone should be able to agree to: if I buy a product from you that does x, y, and z, you don’t get to remove x, y, or z remotely after I’ve made that purchase. How we’ve gotten to a place where companies can simply remove, or paywall, product features without recourse for the customer they essentially bait and switched is beyond me.

We have all the legal and governmental tools required to enable that recourse. We just chose not to any longer at the turn of the century.

The other day, I spent - no exaggeration - 3.5 hours trying to cancel my waste collection service. Calls would go to phone numbers that automatically disconnected after a 20 minute hold, humans would transfer/drop calls after a 40 minute wait.

The previous administration instituted a very basic "one click cancel" rule, but we voted for people that killed that. Last century, companies as powerful as AT&T and Oracle lost bruising fights with government agencies. The same are now toothless.

[–] Cherry@piefed.social 5 points 2 days ago

Too many people just accept degradation of their service and are unwilling to challenge bad behavior. Too many companies have taken advantage of this.