Now tell us what those of us with lives, the need to interact with the rest of the planet, and better things to do than most of that bullshit can do. I run Linux and ad blockers. That’s the most I’m going to do. I’m not going to become a hermit and live in a bunker.
Unfortunately, you’re suggesting some technical workarounds for the non-tecnical problem.
All problems are user’s own. Yes enshittification sucks. You’re free to disconnect as much as you can.
Wrong attitude. Only atomization and further exploitation lies that way. The solution is to get vocal and demand higher standards.
“There are workarounds to these problems” doesn’t disprove “there are problems”. In fact, it only proves it more.
Wait, is rarbg back? It was taken down a while back, did someone actually resurrect it?
Blaming the user and saying there are alternatives really doesn’t work.
If you don’t stand up against Pixel phones getting enshittified, then Fairphones are also going to get enshittified. If you don’t stand up against U.S. airports getting spying facial recognition, then U.K. airports are also going to get spying facial recognition because they now know that nobody will give a shit.
Now Firefox is also getting enshittified, because just look at the most popular web browser. Google Chrome is literal spyware and they get no actual pushback, and are instead getting rewarded so Firefox copies it.
So, for example, instead of saying “Stop moaning about Netflix and torrent your movies even though you might get arrested if you don’t have good opsec in countries with strict copyright laws.”, push back against those changes. Boycotting works, telling your friends and family how Netflix is fucking them over without putting the blame on them works, even a Mastodon post works. But a half-assed response to an obscure article that blames the user doesn’t work.
Being a doomer is good and all but it doesn’t accomplish anything either. I agree with your points too, and am aware that what you’re proposing is boycotting, but the way you propose it is not the way, as per the video I linked.
At this point, I guess we just do what we can do and try to have blind optimism.
Always cut out the intermediaries.
(I’m glad this story was published. We may roll our eyes, but it’s a contribution toward raising normie’s consciousness, which is welcome.)
Always cut out the intermediaries.
In this vein: when you can, PAY CASH. Normalizing credit and debit transactions also normalized bleeding money from businesses to VISA, Mastercard, and whatever monster you bank with. They all suck. :) Businesses pay more for credit transactions than debit transactions, so use debit if the business doesn’t take cash.
Who uses Adblock??? They’re a bullshit, sellout company.
You install Ublock Origin instead and add the annoyance and adblock-blocking lists…
There… Now you don’t need to watch ads to watch your ads. Your news and recipe sites no longer have an ad every other sentence. A couple pages still refuse to load because you have an ad blocker. You learn to live without them. Your Google searches have sponsored sites filtered out.
You tell your mother that you can’t read that article and it’s not being represented on any other news platform, and suggest it’s possibly not all that reputable. She tells you she got it from Facebook. You tell her to stop getting all her news from Facebook. You realize maybe social media is a symptom of a sick society too involved in each other’s daily doings. You delete your social media accounts and block the pages.
You decide you want to read that book from the Wikipedia page your friend recommended. You open up Libby to see if your local library has a copy of the book. They don’t, but they have digital copies of several other books by the same author. You make a note to check them out later, as they’re not about the topic you were looking for. You search Google for the book title followed by .epub download and find several sites that have the book your looking for. You put it on your tablet, then put on your shoes, and go out to the park to read your new book. While you’re walking, your coworker texts you to complain that your supervisor fired him for plagiarizing work off ChatGPT again. He doesn’t understand how they could tell.
You get to the park, sit, and enjoy your book for a while.
… I kinda want to sit outside and read now. How many hours left in the work day?
I have experienced every single one of those situations. Such a frustrating but accurate article.
