The relentless march to the bottom line. The ever worsening quality of products and services, at the same time that sizes are reduced, and prices are raised. The fact that people don’t matter beyond their ability to be squeezed for their last penny.
And ths fact that mosr people don’t seem to care
The caps on bottles that are made to stay on the bottle, i always pull that shit off whilst getting slighty enraged
Capitalist society
*gestures vaguely at the world in general*
Enshitification
Ads. Subscription serfdom. We don’t own much anymore.
War
Having to pay for EVERYTHING! Want to not live outside? Gotta pay rent. Want water? Gotta pay the water company. Want to eat? Gotta buy food. Want to go somewhere? Got to pay for vehicle insurance.
I keep telling my friend that we’re heading to the Cyberpunk society without the cool cybernetics. Hell, Nestle tried to privatise water which FALLS FROM THE SKY.
Conservatives.
Subscription pricing for almost everything. I had a pest control company try to sell me one where i pay every month for 4 quarterly treatments. Why would anyone think this is a good idea?
Greed
I could write a novel about it but leave it with:
Peoples apathy and singlemindednessThe car behind me or across the intersection’s headlights blinding me making it hard to see the road and also potentially causing a migraine. Ban them from the streets!
Lawyers and politicians.
Trying to meet users where they are over where you want them to be. For free software or creative commons endeavors, if a proprietary collaboration products (especially if exclusively) like Microsoft GitHub or Discord or Slack or Figma is
- locking issues behind their account + ToS
- ban projects that undermine capital interest (Yuzu, youtube-dl, third-party clients flagged as malicious, constantly breaking API to make building upon difficult)
- blocks a swatch of potential users for US sancations or a local regime
- happily hands off data to feds
- collects gobs of data to either sell and/or use to train AI models they will sell back to us
- Requires userStyles, userScript, filter lists to scrub the ads & social media features to have a worthwhile experience (kids call these “mods” on Discord for some reason)
- uses social media hook tactics to get you to spend more time on the platform
- have bloated clients that tear into your RAM
When there are free software alternatives that fit the bill (& crucially aren’t resource hogs hurting feasibility) or even non-profits running competing so you don’t need to pay, reach for these options. These projects might be less polished, but since they aren’t fighting to profit propped up by investors, this is to be expected? By getting curious users in the space they will report bugs & contribute upstream instead of building “mods” to correct the predatory option. If you have witnessed even one “enshittification” instance, you know this is inevitable so don’t waste your effort propping these up. Choose tools/services that align with your principles instead handwaving them as unimportant—or assuming users are too inept to learn something new. But also, there is a block of folks that are under respresented that already do know how to operate these platforms that are possibly disinfranchized or blocked that you haven’t even accounted for by choosing the corporate option.
I’m pretty sure I’ve signed my rights away to ever sue a company just to be a good user and report a bug.