Enshittification

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Welcome to Enshittification

A community for everyone who misspelt it as enshitification.

"I the onceler felt sad as I watched them all go, but business is business and business must grow, regardless of crummies in tummies you know."

This is your space to document the decay, demise, and destruction of the tech world as we know it. Share stories, articles, and firsthand experiences that capture the ongoing decline of once-celebrated platforms, services, and companies in the late stage capitalist landscape.

From monopolistic corporate shifts to anti-user updates and the relentless pursuit of profit over quality—if it’s broken, bloated, or just plain bad, it belongs here. We’re here to spotlight the moves that make the tech world worse, one piece of enshittification at a time.

Guidelines
🔹 Stay on Topic: Only post content about the decline of tech products, platforms, or companies.
🔹 Quality Content: Give some context when posting links or articles to drive quality discussions.
🔹 Respectful Discussion: Critique companies, crappy tech, and capital, not community members.
🔹 Positive Monday: The first Monday of every month is reserved for positive content only that shows enshittification isn't inevitable.

Join us to expose the changes that ruin the things we once loved and to discuss what comes next in a tech world gone wrong.

founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
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Catherynne M. Valente

https://substack.com/@catvalente

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7204240

A few days ago I sent a GDPR request to some company to delete my personal data. They said to install their app and send a ticket from the app. The email was sent from the email address to which the account is registered. Is this even legal?

"Good day,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the deletion of your account.

Please contact us in the application to delete your account and verify your information.

If you have any further questions, we are at your disposal."

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Google offered three options: $50 cash money, a $100 credit to Google's online store, or a free battery replacement....

Bharath wanted me to know that I was eligible for the money and it would soon be in my hands... once I performed a small, almost trivial task: giving some company I had never heard of my name, address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, and bank account details...

To get the cash, I had to create an account with something called "Payoneer." This is apparently a reputable payments company, but I had never heard of it, and much about its operations is unclear...

And though Google promised "no transaction fees," Payoneer appears to charge an "annual account fee" of $29.95... but only to accounts that receive less than $2,000 through Payoneer in any consecutive 12-month period.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19813319

The Dangers of For-Profit (Creative) Software | EndVertex

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CrowdSec "Community" offering only gets worse and worse!

First, they had raised a paywall around querying details on IP addresses that triggered Alerts. Only 30 queries per week for the "Community".

Now, they have extended that paywall to cover the whole Alerts feature! Only 500 alerts per month for the "Community"!

Enshitification meets cybersecurity!

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While onboarding with Aftermath, I went on a tangent, laying bare all my frustrations with manga-reading apps while pitching a blog. After spewing a word salad for what felt like a century, I was met with horrified expressions from my colleagues. The leading cause for concern wasn’t my pitch (thank god) but my casual comparison of the manga-reading ecosystem to streaming subscription services with the bonus of predatory practices rife in live service games. Reading the latest chapter of your favorite series involves jumping through a series of overcomplicated hoops that include microtransactions and earning points.

The source of my ire are Square Enix’s MangaUp and Kondansha’s K Manga. Like every good drug dealer, K Manga and Manga Up let you read the first couple chapters of a series for free. After that, you have to play ball with their respective ticketed and microtransaction coins to read new manga chapters. Similar to Hoyoverse’s umbrella of gacha games, K Manga and Manga Up gamify reading comic books through log-in bonuses, accruing bonus points for completing assigned chapters, and “paying to win” to give yourself a modicum of freedom from their respective bullshit.

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As I'm sure most of my multi-lingual peers feel, I hate youtube's recent addition of automatic AI dubbing on certain videos. It's enabled for some videos that are in a language different from your youtube account's setting.

This also goes for the automatic title translation. Show me everything in its original language, PLEASE!

I understand more than one language, you don't need to translate everything to the single language setting I have. The auto-dubbing should be set to OFF BY DEFAULT. At least give me the option to opt out of it. There's nothing more annoying than having to wait for a video to load, only to have to restart it back in its original language as soon as I realize the dubbing is active.

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Perhaps not strictly enshitification of a service, but feels like a precursor to the enshitification of the idea of an open internet.

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Economic consolidation is killing us. Robbing us of value, dismantling the financial fabric of our society, and disconnecting us from one another. From Walmart to Uber to Amazon and beyond, everyone loses: consumers, workers, and ultimately even the heartless profiteers orchestrating this disaster.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/27607209

Archive.today link.

More dystopian crap from Meta.

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/51919648

Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.

The text in the image:

I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology

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