this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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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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My wife's 2017 Volkswagen, with only 160,000 very gentle km on it (100,000 miles) suddenly had a warning light come on. It seems that the sensor on the turbo charger had gone bad, but the only way to fix it is to replace the entire turbocharger, close to $5,000.
From what we have read, Volkswagens of this age start to have large numbers of very expensive repairs. Lesson learned, she got rid of the Volkswagen and bought a hyundai.
That’s bullshit. That vintage of VW has like two sensors on the turbo. They’re easy to get to and cost like $100 tops.
And $5,000 to replace a turbo is nuts. A new turbo can be around $1,500 but it’s less than six or eight hours of labor for a good mechanic.
I’m an idiot code monkey and I replaced mine in my garage in a weekend.
+1 to this. $5k is BS, Especially if we're talking USD, but this also sounds like classic VW making a simple repair a massive job, replacing unnecessary parts, charging exorbitant prices and throwing away perfectly good components that end up in landfill, and best part is in the end it probably wasn't even what they diagnosed to actually be the cause of the problem, dealerships love to fix symptoms, not causes. A good independent Euro specialist would have loved that job.
The price was $4-5,000 in Canadian dollars, so probably a bit over USD $3,000. And this came from my local mechanic, who sourced it from Volkswagen but also called around to scrapyards to see about just buying a sensor.
It's not like he had anything to gain. He actually recommended that we sell the car, and he knew that he would be losing business because my wife's new car is electric and he doesn't service those.
I had the VW dealer quote me $6,000 for a new turbo when the actually problem is probably a clogged catalytic converter.
Also they told me I put in the wrong turbo but it’s literally the same part number and manufacturer as the one I pulled out.
I got news for you, I purchased a used Hyundai 2019 that has turbo, and the one thing wrong with it was the turbo. My father's a mechanic, so he said he would put it in, but I believe the cost for the part was around $500. Idk what a dealer would charge. He then told me that turbos, on average, only last about 100k anyway, so it's definitely a part that will most likely need replacing more than most sadly. Then, a month later, the entire car died, and the engine was bad... this was earlier this year, and my father again said he would do it, but a new engine takes time, which he doesn't have, so now I've been car less for 4 months, yay!
This new car had 93k on it. My last car (Nissan Sentra) lasted 19 years and 250k on it and only traded it in because we were nervous it could go at any time. Thanks for the great car, Hyundai!