We’re living in the #enshittocene, in which the forces of enshittification are turning everything from our cars to our streaming services to our dishwashers into thoroughly enshittifified piles of shit. Call it the Great Enshittening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

–

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

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  • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
    1·
    10 months ago

    But it’s a double-edged sword. Users can twiddle back. The universal nature of digital products means it’s always technically possible to disenshittify the enshittified products in your world. Mercedes wants to charge you rent on your accelerator pedal via a monthly subscription? Just mod the car by toggling the “subscription paid” bit and get the accelerator for free:

    https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

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    • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      HP tricks you into installing a “security update” that sneakily disables your printer’s ability to recognize and use third-party ink? Just roll back the operating system and you won’t be forced to spend $10,000/gallon to print out your boarding passes and shopping lists:

      https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

      Self-help - AKA #AdversarialInteroperability - isn’t just a way to override the greedy choices of corporate sadists. It’s a way to hold those sadists in check. It’s a constraint.

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      • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
        1·
        10 months ago

        Imagine a boardroom where someone says, “I calculate that if we make our ads 25% more invasive and obnoxious, we can eke out 2% more in ad-revenue.” If you think of a business as a transhuman colony organism that exists to maximize shareholder value, this is a no-brainer.

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        • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
          1·
          10 months ago

          But now consider the rejoinder: “If we make our ads 25% more obnoxious, then 50% of our users will be motivated to type, ‘how do I block ads?’ into a search engine. When that happens, we don’t merely lose out on the expected 2% of additional revenue - our income from those users falls to zero, forever.”

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          • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
            1·
            10 months ago

            Self-help is the third constraint on enshittification. But when competition fails, and regulatory capture ensues, companies don’t just gain the ability to flout the law - they get to wield the law, too.

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            • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
              1·
              10 months ago

              Tech firms have cultivated a thicket of laws, rules and regulations that make self-help measures very illegal. This thicket is better known as “IP,” a term that is best understood as meaning “any policy that lets me control the conduct of my competitors, my customers and my critics”:

              https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

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              • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                1·
                10 months ago

                To put an ad-blocker in an app, you have to reverse-engineer it. To do that, you’ll have to decrypt and decompile it. That step is a felony under #Section1201 of the #DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. Beyond that, ad-blocking an app would give rise to liability under the #ComputerFraudAndAbuseAct (a law inspired by the movie Wargames!), under “tortious interference” claims, under trademark, copyright and patent.

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