This week, Trevor and Eugene sit down with science fiction author and tech activist Cory Doctorow to unpack the concept of "enshittification"—the theory that explains the decay of the modern internet and why massive monopolies are deliberately making our tech worse.

From Google tanking its own search results to digital stores clawing back video games you just paid for, Cory exposes how predatory corporate tactics make the average consumer suffer.

But it’s not all a capitalist horror show; Cory leaves us with a genuine message of hope, breaking down the massive, unprecedented global coalition that is finally fighting back.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/c/[email protected]/p/832312/f-droid-has-my-condolences

Pay the $25 ransom little devs or else!

Imagine having a perfectly working calculator on your phone. Imagine it now connects to a server in the internet to perform the operations and give you the information back. Imagine then that the "x" multiply operation becomes a premium feature. Ah, and now the graphing feature for some functions becomes a premium feature.

This is the exact case with one workout tracker that I've been using for years already. I've always wondered, why do they want to log my data on the cloud if all the graphs, logs and metrics could be calculated on my phone?. Then I saw how some plots started disappearing from the standard free user plan. And now the core plots, the plots that are even the minimum they start to hide behind monthly payment.

Friends, have you seen this with other apps? Do you know of a feasible replacement for this shit?

So we know how enshittification has spread across many sectors. like services or products get worse after a certain time. but there are ways to fight or reverse them too.

Few of them which is universal and applies to mainly all.

1. Antitrust laws : if there is healthy competition then someone can switch to something different and it applies for every sector.
2. Govt regulations : EU has good consumer protection laws so it helps too
3. community pushback: if people started boycotting it or make themselves more loud and clear at consistent level then it also helps too There maybe others but for now i know this much

Now moving to tech sector

1. Interoperability : This is very crucial and if there is no vendor locking then it means people can use it before it gets enshittified and then move on to other products. Example: Obsidian
2. Open source software: This is also a great way to resist enshittification. anyone can create a fork so if original ones become bad or bloated then a new fork can fixed those problems too. I know that chromium and android is open source but they still have some problems that dont make them too much resistant as it supposed to be. Chromium is open source but is also very popular too. Something like WEI which could have killed the open web and android even if its open source , it is impossible to be used for majority of people without the closed source layer of google.
3. Right to repair: Companies can send updates to firmware and potentially brick devices too so if schematics, driver code and other things important to understand somethings are available too then it can be fixed too
4. Decentralization: If a service is not controlled by one entity then it is enshittification resistant. example : fediverse
5. Community maintained : If a product/service is maintained by community/individual it has higher friction for enshitiffication. Example: Ubuntu and linux mint both are open source but we have problems with ubuntu like being forced to use snap. linux mint is maintained by community and it is what ubuntu should have been.
6. Works offline: If some software can work offline then it can resist the bad updates. Services/product that dont have these 4 things so ofc they have a higher chance of enshittification but they still can be fixed too ie reverse engineering and breaking their digital locks and also scrappers too for exporting stuff. Though there is one thing which i mentioned ie breaking digital locks have consequences and can land someone in federal prison for 3-5 yrs all thanks to the section 1201 of dmca. while it cant punish someone if he keeps to themselves but this required a constant distributed effort in most cases. If this section dont exist then anyone can break digital locks and fix things too

anyway that's it from me, there are other things that involve in other sectors too so please share it or add more to tech sectors

Under capitalism the endpoint of every app is a slot machine.

Spotify has been pissing me off recently. Repeated pop up (internal) ads, and now this. Are there any alternatives that don't require selfhosting?

Cherry on the top: The new widget doesn't work.

Obligatory Fuck Nestlé!

https://lemmy.world/post/48172188

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/technology/p/1175761/amazon-inform-prime-members-that-its-bundled-music-benefit-will-introduce-ads-and-drop-o

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1175760/amazon-inform-prime-members-that-its-bundled-music-benefit-will-introduce-ads-and-drop-o

I know it's quite an insignificant bit of enshittification but I still feel a bit miffed that every logo these days looks the same.

The internet didn't use to have so many ads and the commercials from the past used to actually entertain us. Today, brands just flash their products and expect us to buy it. And as if we didn't have enough ads here on planet Earth, tech bros are now attempting to deploy ads into space.

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Matterport_May_2025_subscription_pricing_restructure

So, just a heads up for anyone who hasn't had red vines in a while, I have some bad news. I haven't had red vines in maybe 2-3 years. I bought some last night, and.....enshitification.

They are sooooooo thin now! They used to be girthy tubes. Like the size of straws. Now it's less of a vine, and more of a hollow slightly wobbly stick. Still tastes how I remember. But there's like half of what it used to be.

Would not have bought it if I knew how bad it got. Figured I'd save you guys some money for anyone who cares about this sort of thing. Which, given the community, I would assume would be the vast majority of you.