It's an interesting thing; I have absolutely insulated myself from everything he describes. No social media, short, technical searches on Google for government or professional websites where I...
It's an interesting thing; I have absolutely insulated myself from everything he describes. No social media, short, technical searches on Google for government or professional websites where I already know what I'm looking for, heavy scriptblocker, ad blocker, and sponsor blocker usage. Spam calls get blocked before they ring me, spam texts go straight to the memory hole, spam emails to the junk folder. I believe that it is the way that he describes, but at the same time it's so foreign to my day to day...
Because I've put a lot of work into insulating myself from the awful, awful nature of the internet. It's good to be reminded of what it's like outside of the bubble of relative wealth and technical skill.
It's an article worth reading, though I felt a little sick reading it.
The fact that you went through the process of insulating yourself says that something happened to you, some tripwire was set off, which indicated to you that you needed to get out while you still...
The fact that you went through the process of insulating yourself says that something happened to you, some tripwire was set off, which indicated to you that you needed to get out while you still can. Canary in the coal mine, sort of thing.
The part that resonated with me was the early mention of feeling like the plot’s been lost with what the internet is. I too went through the process of putting up barriers to keep the sick of the internet at bay, to the point of not really being able to understand what folks AFK were talking about with their experiences of being online.
I don’t think someone insulating oneself requires some sort of bad event. I personally have always insulated myself from social media, but don’t have any past bad events in my life. I am an...
I don’t think someone insulating oneself requires some sort of bad event. I personally have always insulated myself from social media, but don’t have any past bad events in my life. I am an introvert, and social media has never appealed to me. I would agree that a traumatic event is a likely reason that someone would insulate themselves, but I don’t think it’s the only reason.
On the other hand, I have no traumatic event that caused me to step back. Instead, I just got frustrated that social media was constantly rug-pulling, teasing, and manipulating me with ads,...
On the other hand, I have no traumatic event that caused me to step back. Instead, I just got frustrated that social media was constantly rug-pulling, teasing, and manipulating me with ads, sponsored content, and constant redesigns that distracted from the actual interpersonal elements of social media.
I think I noticed because I was originally an absolute social media power user. I grew up somewhere where I didn't have a lot of access to actual in person socialization, so I used early facebook and instagram as a replacement. It honestly worked quite well until they filled the feed with ads, switched to a non-chronological feed, and turned up the 'engagement' dials to favor links, memes, and flame wars over text posts and photos.
To be honest I have still not found a method of communicating with people that is better than doing it live. Live cannot be monetized the same way non-live methods can. Discord is the only company...
To be honest I have still not found a method of communicating with people that is better than doing it live. Live cannot be monetized the same way non-live methods can. Discord is the only company going as far as it does on monetizing a largely live communication platform, and it remains largely usable without getting too much in the way (in spite of a huge number of annoying popups to engage with the paid functionality).
Of course discord and text messaging platforms are only really “semi-live since it saves your messages for people to respond whenever, but I think the point still stands.
I remember when I was a kid there was a mystique to chatrooms. They were the place you wanted to be and they were also a danger because we realized something that society has somehow forgotten; if you publish your personal information online it opens you up for people to take advantage of you.
I have spent a lot of time in forums as well, but “wait and see” is a very far stretch for social behavior. If you don’t respond to someone in a forum it’s nothing. There are some occasions where someone is expecting you to respond and you might disappoint them, but they are not all that common and they will be the only one you disappoint if you don’t respond to them; nobody else is watching for what you say. But if you don’t respond in a chat, everyone present knows the meaning of your nonresponse.
I am also very introverted. Social contact stresses me out and is very prone to give me anxiety. But the thing to realize is that even chat is a diluted social experience. Chatting is completely divorced from the efforts of appearance and body language. It also gives you a plausible buffer to formulate responses so you can’t be as easily shown to be taken off-guard. So when it comes to forums, I kind of feel like it’s anti-social media. It feels like it’s social because it requires some social understanding and can occasionally give you some warm fuzzies, but it’s essentially like you are sending mail through a drop chute that’s going through your 6 foot solid concrete blast walls. You’re living the highlights of life, not life itself. And honestly chatrooms are not that much better.
Of course the irony of these statements is that I am essentially repeating what our parents and grandparents used to say. I never gave them much weight but I think my personal experience has proven them right to a point.
I can't speak for the person you are responding to, but for me, it was not one single event or tripwire. It is more a cascade of different processes/events. Things like ad blocking just slowly...
I can't speak for the person you are responding to, but for me, it was not one single event or tripwire. It is more a cascade of different processes/events. Things like ad blocking just slowly started to make sense over time, so I installed an ad blocker years ago. The same goes for some other measures that shield me from some aspects of how bad the web has gotten.
I remember ads becoming a big concern rather quickly in the early 2000s when popups and pop-unders became one of the preferred ways to advertise. It was so bad that a number of browsers started...
I remember ads becoming a big concern rather quickly in the early 2000s when popups and pop-unders became one of the preferred ways to advertise. It was so bad that a number of browsers started implementing built-in popup blocking and used them as selling points.
I cannot understand why people do not still think this is a big deal when modal ads are a thing and they are even more annoying than popups were.
Not to downplay the annoyances provoked by the current version of the web, but I don't think anything could top the phenomenon of popups spawning popups spawning popups that you'd get if you...
Not to downplay the annoyances provoked by the current version of the web, but I don't think anything could top the phenomenon of popups spawning popups spawning popups that you'd get if you clicked on the wrong link, where you could only make it stop by killing the browser process.
There is a shortcut that no longer exists on browsers because it would break almost every website: pressing the escape key used to halt all JavaScript execution, which would stop pages from...
There is a shortcut that no longer exists on browsers because it would break almost every website: pressing the escape key used to halt all JavaScript execution, which would stop pages from running away from you like that.
Same, I've never even used most of the tech he talks about. The idea that any of that is essential to exist in society is the one part I can't agree with. There's a whole world out there of people...
Same, I've never even used most of the tech he talks about. The idea that any of that is essential to exist in society is the one part I can't agree with. There's a whole world out there of people working on free software that has no strings attached, it's often slightly less convenient I suppose but it sure beats yelling at the cloud hoping it will change.
There is a set of two paragraphs at the beginning I take some minor umbrage with: I don’t fit either description. I think that there are many Tildes users who don’t fit those descriptions. I’m...
Exemplary
There is a set of two paragraphs at the beginning I take some minor umbrage with:
You have, more than likely, said to yourself sometime in the last ten years that you “didn’t get tech,” or that you are “getting too old,” or that tech has “gotten away from you” because you found a service, or an app, or a device annoying. You, or someone you love, have convinced yourself that your inability to use something is a sign that you’re deficient, that you’ve failed to “keep up with the times,” as if the things we use every day should be in a constant state of flux.
Sidenote: I’m sure there are exceptions. Some people really just don’t try and learn how to use a computer or smartphone, and naturally reject technology, or steadfastly refuse to pick it up because “it’s not for them.” These people exist, they’re real, we all know them, and I don’t think anybody reading this falls into this camp. Basic technological literacy is a requirement to live in society — and there is some responsibility on the user. But even if we assume that this is the case, and even if there are a lot of people that simply don’t try…should companies really take advantage of them?
I don’t fit either description. I think that there are many Tildes users who don’t fit those descriptions.
I’m just completely done with the idea that every goddamn online service is “technology” and that if you don’t use it you are behind the times and will be too stupid to interact with the real world. There is a time when that was partially true, but that was literally decades ago. Email was revolutionary. Internet chat was revolutionary. But everything that has come since has been endless remixes of the same shit. People “left behind” by technology generally weren’t actually left behind; when it turned out they actually needed it, they came around to it. It turns out not everyone needs X the everything app.
But the essential problem with these statements is the assertion that these products and issues are “technology”. Fuck that shit. Technology is not the problem and attempting to blame technology deflects from the actual problems, which are all societal in nature.
In particular the problem that the author needs to address is a word that only comes up two times in the untold thousands of words that they use - capitalism. Heck, they don’t even think capitalism is the problem - both times they use the term they specify the problem is “growth capitalism” but even that is a misdirection. Growth capitalism is just plain old capitalism. Go find me a place in the world where there is capitalism without growth. It doesn’t exist. The author knows that the problem with rot and shit on the Internet is related to growth but somehow the fact that our entire economy is based on that completely eluded them.
It’s fitting that the end where they state their proposed solution is so short, because it not only completely misses the mark, it’s proven again and again to be ineffectual. Did we stop Reddit from closing their API and removing mods that didnt do what they wanted? Did our boycotting EA over their shitty practices make them stop being shitty? Did it even hurt the sales of those games?
In reality the only way to stop companies from enshittifying or rotting is to stop doing business with them en masse, but we have learned again and again that most people don’t care and will accept the shitty hobbled versions of products and services because they are free and their friends are using them. And so we are in a world where we often no longer have a choice but to do business with those companies due to societal pressures. If the author really dislikes the behaviours of these companies, the way capitalism works is that they should stop using them and work with alternatives. Yet they don’t do that and they don’t encourage their audience to do it either. Worse, they encourage them to keep using them!
Of course if you did keep switching it doesn’t stop the new companies from rotting their products as well. That is why enshittification has become such a popular term these days; everyone knows that things keep getting worse. There are only two solutions to this problem. Either we abolish capitalism or we move everyone to services that are either publicly owned or at the very least based on sustainable business models. Frankly I have no confidence that any of those are realistic either, but at the very least advocating for them would be a step forward to making them feasible by getting more people interested in implementing them.
I don't disagree with the points you're making, but I don't interpret the paragraphs you first quoted in the same way you did. People reading this text cannot be completely disconnected from...
I don't disagree with the points you're making, but I don't interpret the paragraphs you first quoted in the same way you did. People reading this text cannot be completely disconnected from actual technology, since they need, at least, a computerized device, a web browser, an internet connection. It is assumed - implied - that you can't reach the article without some basic technological literacy. As such, it follows that you aren't behind the times just because you refuse to engage with these shitty services and products - you and the author, in my interpretation, are in agreement here (or am I being too kind?)
Harmful products and services may not be in themselves "technology". However, the author seems to be making the point that many people's experience with actual technology is indissociable from these harmful products and services, due to societal pressures (as directly stated in the article), market forces, short-term thinking, profit-oriented thinking and more. That means the technology in people's lives - the same technology that they need and that has the potential to do so much good for everyone - is harming and violating them, not in itself, but as a vehicle for these things that simply require too much of an investment in time and effort to avoid, because they're forced upon you, baked into everything, required for everything.
The author takes a lot of words to make a relatively simple point, but they are not wrong. The incentive structures for anybody who wishes to provide a product or service online do not favour the...
The author takes a lot of words to make a relatively simple point, but they are not wrong. The incentive structures for anybody who wishes to provide a product or service online do not favour the consumer.
The point made is only slightly hampered by the article itself attempting to prompt me at least four times to provide my email so that they might contribute to the feed of unwanted spam that they lament.
To a certain extent, is this behaviour not a product of the network effect combined with ruthless competition? As a digital service, it seems if you aren’t growing, you are dying (or at least at...
To a certain extent, is this behaviour not a product of the network effect combined with ruthless competition? As a digital service, it seems if you aren’t growing, you are dying (or at least at risks of acquisition). This would then lead to such growth focussed behaviour.
If service could insulate/moat their product from network effects (and winner takes all outcomes), we would see less homogeneity, greater diversity and hopefully more respectful behaviour to customers.
The question is, how can that be achieved…
The services you mention are probably not viable these days in a sure corporate, capitalistic environment. The smaller, not corporate driven sites like tildes, lobste.rs, hacker news, and the...
The services you mention are probably not viable these days in a sure corporate, capitalistic environment. The smaller, not corporate driven sites like tildes, lobste.rs, hacker news, and the general fediverse don't fall into this model, but by design they aren't made to "take off" and swallow the internet. It is why these are the only types of sites I regularly frequent beyond required tasks likes search engines, cloud platforms, and like.
Yes, I agree and I think we are all here to a certain extent because tildes and similar sites don’t suffer from the same pressures because they are not profit/revenue generating. But for services...
Yes, I agree and I think we are all here to a certain extent because tildes and similar sites don’t suffer from the same pressures because they are not profit/revenue generating.
But for services which have to be commercial by their nature (music streaming needs to pay for rights for example), then this seems to be the natural order of things, at least at present.
The first line about word count should have warned me that this was more of a long rant than a well-distilled argument. Although the article brings up some good points, the biggest problem I have...
The first line about word count should have warned me that this was more of a long rant than a well-distilled argument. Although the article brings up some good points, the biggest problem I have is that it complains about a lot of things without considering the tradeoff the other way. For example, the author complains that companies subscribe to the Microsoft bundle because it's cheaper, not because it's better. Might it be important to consider that the employee experience might decrease in quality in other ways if the company is spending more on software, such as lower compensation, working environment, or lack of budget for other tools? I know big organizations often make suboptimal decisions, but I doubt most moderately well-functioning companies would choose a software that results in a massive hit in productivity without balancing the cost a bit. In larger companies it's probably someone's job to make a powerpoint every year justifying the cost vs. estimated productivity of various software options. Maybe they're making the wrong decisions sometimes, but I'm sure many companies are at least trying.
A related point is the laptop example. Despite the author's complaints, I think it's kind of bonkers that you can get a decently functioning laptop for $238. That's like getting a $120 laptop in the year 2000, scaling by median income, which is craziness. You can get something with much more normal specs for ~$400. What if you only have $238 though? If it were 20 years ago, you just get nothing. I think it's a good thing that you can get an incredibly cheap computing device these days, even if there are some tradeoffs. More midrange priced laptops are in my opinion much better than the laptops of the past. The author mentions income disparity, but based on the numbers I think this is an area that got better overall.
While reading the parts about unnecessary change over time in tech, I starting thinking about Sears, which is a company that is often held up as an example of a market leader who died due to failure to adapt to a changing world. So why should these apps change over time? Maybe the world is changing, and they don't want to be left behind. If that's the case, just following the current is not enough to keep up, you have to attempt to predict what customers will want, otherwise some more forward-thinking company will eat your lunch. Are these changes a good or bad thing? I don't know, but as far as retail, I prefer not to have to drive to the store, park in a huge parking lot, walk around the store for an hour, and then maybe not find the thing that I needed. I don't know if trends in social media apps are going in a direction that I personally like, but at least they have become a lot easier to use.
So overall, while I see the value in highlighting unfavorable trends in tech, reading this article felt like viewing the world through a filter that only shows you the negative side of the world. It's easy to pick out problems with things, but I'm not seeing a lot of good solutions proposed that don't sacrifice the positives. There is an inherent conflict between quality and the resources needed to achieve that quality, and the author seems to want both sides. He claims that companies are too cheap to buy or make better things, but he is also too cheap to buy better things. This sentiment is exactly how we got ourselves into this situation to begin with. My feeling is that there is more of a spectrum of products these days. If the product is free/cheap, then the quality will reflect that, but there are also higher quality products out there at a cost.
I guess my response ended up being a long rant too.
I respect your positive outlook. There are certainly benefits, but personally, I find the tradeoff here is unacceptable. What you're getting for your money here is nothing like what you should be...
I think it's a good thing that you can get an incredibly cheap computing device these days, even if there are some tradeoffs.
I respect your positive outlook. There are certainly benefits, but personally, I find the tradeoff here is unacceptable. What you're getting for your money here is nothing like what you should be getting if your aim is to "own a computer" - which you can use productively, for work, or for entertainment and socializing in a way that the author seems to feel was helpful to him in his youth. The experience has been perverted in a way that is very difficult to contextualize for someone without the experience many of us have had, getting into it fifteen or thirty years ago. It's not just that not everyone has the know-how to sanitize their devices - because they lack even the prespective to know that they should, these insidious products gradually, over time, erode the ways in which technology can empower people and improve their lives.
This happens in many other areas beyond the sale of trap laptops and smartphones, and my opinion is consistent across the board. When Facebook began offering free Internet access in India - but only for accessing services whitelisted by Facebook - I was angry, because this blatant violation of net neutrality skews people's idea of what the Internet is and what it can do for them (this service has now been regulated away). When european ISPs were offering plans that gave you unlimited traffic - but only for certain services like Youtube, reinforcing monopolies, cutting people off from the rest of the Internet, allowing ISPs to double-dip, I was angry for the same reason (and guess what, this practice has now been largely outlawed or regulated away). I just am not convinced at this point that these Windows S machines as described are ultimately a good thing.
Off-topic, but at an excess of ten thousand words, this article would be an excellent candidate for the "very long read" tag I've previously suggested.
Off-topic, but at an excess of ten thousand words, this article would be an excellent candidate for the "very long read" tag I've previously suggested.
This was a very long rant. There could be another extremely involved discussion about direct, indirect responsibility, the incentive structures that drive them and the same about them but I am...
This was a very long rant.
There could be another extremely involved discussion about direct, indirect responsibility, the incentive structures that drive them and the same about them but I am interested here in what would be needed for change which the article does not go into much.
In my opinion there are three broad directions from where change is even possible. Leadership, popular sentiment and external factors, changes by which we are certainly due for but the shape of them is anyones guess.
Popular sentiment could put a floor on how bad things can get. Lets take the laptop example. For that 238$ it would be possible to go buy used business class laptop, put Linux on it and have better experience than what the author describes. It would depend more on location but it is likely possible. I believe anyone to be technically capable of that much if they wanted which is why the societally glorified tech illiteracy is so frustrating.
I consider the second episode of Black Mirror to be the most terrifying horror I saw and taken metaphorically enough we are already there.
For someone who’s complaining about how technology is working against the user, having a popup to subscribe to their newsletter in the middle of the read feels disingenuous. Quickly exited after that.
For someone who’s complaining about how technology is working against the user, having a popup to subscribe to their newsletter in the middle of the read feels disingenuous.
The article is free. It's not reasonable to expect an author to want nothing at all in exchange for their work. The subscription popup didn't appear immediately on page load, and unlike most sites...
The article is free. It's not reasonable to expect an author to want nothing at all in exchange for their work. The subscription popup didn't appear immediately on page load, and unlike most sites nowadays you can dismiss it and continue reading.
It's an interesting thing; I have absolutely insulated myself from everything he describes. No social media, short, technical searches on Google for government or professional websites where I already know what I'm looking for, heavy scriptblocker, ad blocker, and sponsor blocker usage. Spam calls get blocked before they ring me, spam texts go straight to the memory hole, spam emails to the junk folder. I believe that it is the way that he describes, but at the same time it's so foreign to my day to day...
Because I've put a lot of work into insulating myself from the awful, awful nature of the internet. It's good to be reminded of what it's like outside of the bubble of relative wealth and technical skill.
It's an article worth reading, though I felt a little sick reading it.
The fact that you went through the process of insulating yourself says that something happened to you, some tripwire was set off, which indicated to you that you needed to get out while you still can. Canary in the coal mine, sort of thing.
The part that resonated with me was the early mention of feeling like the plot’s been lost with what the internet is. I too went through the process of putting up barriers to keep the sick of the internet at bay, to the point of not really being able to understand what folks AFK were talking about with their experiences of being online.
I don’t think someone insulating oneself requires some sort of bad event. I personally have always insulated myself from social media, but don’t have any past bad events in my life. I am an introvert, and social media has never appealed to me. I would agree that a traumatic event is a likely reason that someone would insulate themselves, but I don’t think it’s the only reason.
On the other hand, I have no traumatic event that caused me to step back. Instead, I just got frustrated that social media was constantly rug-pulling, teasing, and manipulating me with ads, sponsored content, and constant redesigns that distracted from the actual interpersonal elements of social media.
I think I noticed because I was originally an absolute social media power user. I grew up somewhere where I didn't have a lot of access to actual in person socialization, so I used early facebook and instagram as a replacement. It honestly worked quite well until they filled the feed with ads, switched to a non-chronological feed, and turned up the 'engagement' dials to favor links, memes, and flame wars over text posts and photos.
To be honest I have still not found a method of communicating with people that is better than doing it live. Live cannot be monetized the same way non-live methods can. Discord is the only company going as far as it does on monetizing a largely live communication platform, and it remains largely usable without getting too much in the way (in spite of a huge number of annoying popups to engage with the paid functionality).
Of course discord and text messaging platforms are only really “semi-live since it saves your messages for people to respond whenever, but I think the point still stands.
I remember when I was a kid there was a mystique to chatrooms. They were the place you wanted to be and they were also a danger because we realized something that society has somehow forgotten; if you publish your personal information online it opens you up for people to take advantage of you.
I have spent a lot of time in forums as well, but “wait and see” is a very far stretch for social behavior. If you don’t respond to someone in a forum it’s nothing. There are some occasions where someone is expecting you to respond and you might disappoint them, but they are not all that common and they will be the only one you disappoint if you don’t respond to them; nobody else is watching for what you say. But if you don’t respond in a chat, everyone present knows the meaning of your nonresponse.
I am also very introverted. Social contact stresses me out and is very prone to give me anxiety. But the thing to realize is that even chat is a diluted social experience. Chatting is completely divorced from the efforts of appearance and body language. It also gives you a plausible buffer to formulate responses so you can’t be as easily shown to be taken off-guard. So when it comes to forums, I kind of feel like it’s anti-social media. It feels like it’s social because it requires some social understanding and can occasionally give you some warm fuzzies, but it’s essentially like you are sending mail through a drop chute that’s going through your 6 foot solid concrete blast walls. You’re living the highlights of life, not life itself. And honestly chatrooms are not that much better.
Of course the irony of these statements is that I am essentially repeating what our parents and grandparents used to say. I never gave them much weight but I think my personal experience has proven them right to a point.
I can't speak for the person you are responding to, but for me, it was not one single event or tripwire. It is more a cascade of different processes/events. Things like ad blocking just slowly started to make sense over time, so I installed an ad blocker years ago. The same goes for some other measures that shield me from some aspects of how bad the web has gotten.
I remember ads becoming a big concern rather quickly in the early 2000s when popups and pop-unders became one of the preferred ways to advertise. It was so bad that a number of browsers started implementing built-in popup blocking and used them as selling points.
I cannot understand why people do not still think this is a big deal when modal ads are a thing and they are even more annoying than popups were.
Not to downplay the annoyances provoked by the current version of the web, but I don't think anything could top the phenomenon of popups spawning popups spawning popups that you'd get if you clicked on the wrong link, where you could only make it stop by killing the browser process.
There is a shortcut that no longer exists on browsers because it would break almost every website: pressing the escape key used to halt all JavaScript execution, which would stop pages from running away from you like that.
Wow, I wish I had known about that back then!
Oh right, pop up blockers is one thing everyone agreed on fairly quickly. I completely forgot (suppressed) about that hell.
Same, I've never even used most of the tech he talks about. The idea that any of that is essential to exist in society is the one part I can't agree with. There's a whole world out there of people working on free software that has no strings attached, it's often slightly less convenient I suppose but it sure beats yelling at the cloud hoping it will change.
There is a set of two paragraphs at the beginning I take some minor umbrage with:
I don’t fit either description. I think that there are many Tildes users who don’t fit those descriptions.
I’m just completely done with the idea that every goddamn online service is “technology” and that if you don’t use it you are behind the times and will be too stupid to interact with the real world. There is a time when that was partially true, but that was literally decades ago. Email was revolutionary. Internet chat was revolutionary. But everything that has come since has been endless remixes of the same shit. People “left behind” by technology generally weren’t actually left behind; when it turned out they actually needed it, they came around to it. It turns out not everyone needs X the everything app.
But the essential problem with these statements is the assertion that these products and issues are “technology”. Fuck that shit. Technology is not the problem and attempting to blame technology deflects from the actual problems, which are all societal in nature.
In particular the problem that the author needs to address is a word that only comes up two times in the untold thousands of words that they use - capitalism. Heck, they don’t even think capitalism is the problem - both times they use the term they specify the problem is “growth capitalism” but even that is a misdirection. Growth capitalism is just plain old capitalism. Go find me a place in the world where there is capitalism without growth. It doesn’t exist. The author knows that the problem with rot and shit on the Internet is related to growth but somehow the fact that our entire economy is based on that completely eluded them.
It’s fitting that the end where they state their proposed solution is so short, because it not only completely misses the mark, it’s proven again and again to be ineffectual. Did we stop Reddit from closing their API and removing mods that didnt do what they wanted? Did our boycotting EA over their shitty practices make them stop being shitty? Did it even hurt the sales of those games?
In reality the only way to stop companies from enshittifying or rotting is to stop doing business with them en masse, but we have learned again and again that most people don’t care and will accept the shitty hobbled versions of products and services because they are free and their friends are using them. And so we are in a world where we often no longer have a choice but to do business with those companies due to societal pressures. If the author really dislikes the behaviours of these companies, the way capitalism works is that they should stop using them and work with alternatives. Yet they don’t do that and they don’t encourage their audience to do it either. Worse, they encourage them to keep using them!
Of course if you did keep switching it doesn’t stop the new companies from rotting their products as well. That is why enshittification has become such a popular term these days; everyone knows that things keep getting worse. There are only two solutions to this problem. Either we abolish capitalism or we move everyone to services that are either publicly owned or at the very least based on sustainable business models. Frankly I have no confidence that any of those are realistic either, but at the very least advocating for them would be a step forward to making them feasible by getting more people interested in implementing them.
I don't disagree with the points you're making, but I don't interpret the paragraphs you first quoted in the same way you did. People reading this text cannot be completely disconnected from actual technology, since they need, at least, a computerized device, a web browser, an internet connection. It is assumed - implied - that you can't reach the article without some basic technological literacy. As such, it follows that you aren't behind the times just because you refuse to engage with these shitty services and products - you and the author, in my interpretation, are in agreement here (or am I being too kind?)
Harmful products and services may not be in themselves "technology". However, the author seems to be making the point that many people's experience with actual technology is indissociable from these harmful products and services, due to societal pressures (as directly stated in the article), market forces, short-term thinking, profit-oriented thinking and more. That means the technology in people's lives - the same technology that they need and that has the potential to do so much good for everyone - is harming and violating them, not in itself, but as a vehicle for these things that simply require too much of an investment in time and effort to avoid, because they're forced upon you, baked into everything, required for everything.
The author takes a lot of words to make a relatively simple point, but they are not wrong. The incentive structures for anybody who wishes to provide a product or service online do not favour the consumer.
The point made is only slightly hampered by the article itself attempting to prompt me at least four times to provide my email so that they might contribute to the feed of unwanted spam that they lament.
To a certain extent, is this behaviour not a product of the network effect combined with ruthless competition? As a digital service, it seems if you aren’t growing, you are dying (or at least at risks of acquisition). This would then lead to such growth focussed behaviour.
If service could insulate/moat their product from network effects (and winner takes all outcomes), we would see less homogeneity, greater diversity and hopefully more respectful behaviour to customers.
The question is, how can that be achieved…
The services you mention are probably not viable these days in a sure corporate, capitalistic environment. The smaller, not corporate driven sites like tildes, lobste.rs, hacker news, and the general fediverse don't fall into this model, but by design they aren't made to "take off" and swallow the internet. It is why these are the only types of sites I regularly frequent beyond required tasks likes search engines, cloud platforms, and like.
Yes, I agree and I think we are all here to a certain extent because tildes and similar sites don’t suffer from the same pressures because they are not profit/revenue generating.
But for services which have to be commercial by their nature (music streaming needs to pay for rights for example), then this seems to be the natural order of things, at least at present.
The first line about word count should have warned me that this was more of a long rant than a well-distilled argument. Although the article brings up some good points, the biggest problem I have is that it complains about a lot of things without considering the tradeoff the other way. For example, the author complains that companies subscribe to the Microsoft bundle because it's cheaper, not because it's better. Might it be important to consider that the employee experience might decrease in quality in other ways if the company is spending more on software, such as lower compensation, working environment, or lack of budget for other tools? I know big organizations often make suboptimal decisions, but I doubt most moderately well-functioning companies would choose a software that results in a massive hit in productivity without balancing the cost a bit. In larger companies it's probably someone's job to make a powerpoint every year justifying the cost vs. estimated productivity of various software options. Maybe they're making the wrong decisions sometimes, but I'm sure many companies are at least trying.
A related point is the laptop example. Despite the author's complaints, I think it's kind of bonkers that you can get a decently functioning laptop for $238. That's like getting a $120 laptop in the year 2000, scaling by median income, which is craziness. You can get something with much more normal specs for ~$400. What if you only have $238 though? If it were 20 years ago, you just get nothing. I think it's a good thing that you can get an incredibly cheap computing device these days, even if there are some tradeoffs. More midrange priced laptops are in my opinion much better than the laptops of the past. The author mentions income disparity, but based on the numbers I think this is an area that got better overall.
While reading the parts about unnecessary change over time in tech, I starting thinking about Sears, which is a company that is often held up as an example of a market leader who died due to failure to adapt to a changing world. So why should these apps change over time? Maybe the world is changing, and they don't want to be left behind. If that's the case, just following the current is not enough to keep up, you have to attempt to predict what customers will want, otherwise some more forward-thinking company will eat your lunch. Are these changes a good or bad thing? I don't know, but as far as retail, I prefer not to have to drive to the store, park in a huge parking lot, walk around the store for an hour, and then maybe not find the thing that I needed. I don't know if trends in social media apps are going in a direction that I personally like, but at least they have become a lot easier to use.
So overall, while I see the value in highlighting unfavorable trends in tech, reading this article felt like viewing the world through a filter that only shows you the negative side of the world. It's easy to pick out problems with things, but I'm not seeing a lot of good solutions proposed that don't sacrifice the positives. There is an inherent conflict between quality and the resources needed to achieve that quality, and the author seems to want both sides. He claims that companies are too cheap to buy or make better things, but he is also too cheap to buy better things. This sentiment is exactly how we got ourselves into this situation to begin with. My feeling is that there is more of a spectrum of products these days. If the product is free/cheap, then the quality will reflect that, but there are also higher quality products out there at a cost.
I guess my response ended up being a long rant too.
I respect your positive outlook. There are certainly benefits, but personally, I find the tradeoff here is unacceptable. What you're getting for your money here is nothing like what you should be getting if your aim is to "own a computer" - which you can use productively, for work, or for entertainment and socializing in a way that the author seems to feel was helpful to him in his youth. The experience has been perverted in a way that is very difficult to contextualize for someone without the experience many of us have had, getting into it fifteen or thirty years ago. It's not just that not everyone has the know-how to sanitize their devices - because they lack even the prespective to know that they should, these insidious products gradually, over time, erode the ways in which technology can empower people and improve their lives.
This happens in many other areas beyond the sale of trap laptops and smartphones, and my opinion is consistent across the board. When Facebook began offering free Internet access in India - but only for accessing services whitelisted by Facebook - I was angry, because this blatant violation of net neutrality skews people's idea of what the Internet is and what it can do for them (this service has now been regulated away). When european ISPs were offering plans that gave you unlimited traffic - but only for certain services like Youtube, reinforcing monopolies, cutting people off from the rest of the Internet, allowing ISPs to double-dip, I was angry for the same reason (and guess what, this practice has now been largely outlawed or regulated away). I just am not convinced at this point that these Windows S machines as described are ultimately a good thing.
Off-topic, but at an excess of ten thousand words, this article would be an excellent candidate for the "very long read" tag I've previously suggested.
This was a very long rant.
There could be another extremely involved discussion about direct, indirect responsibility, the incentive structures that drive them and the same about them but I am interested here in what would be needed for change which the article does not go into much.
In my opinion there are three broad directions from where change is even possible. Leadership, popular sentiment and external factors, changes by which we are certainly due for but the shape of them is anyones guess.
Popular sentiment could put a floor on how bad things can get. Lets take the laptop example. For that 238$ it would be possible to go buy used business class laptop, put Linux on it and have better experience than what the author describes. It would depend more on location but it is likely possible. I believe anyone to be technically capable of that much if they wanted which is why the societally glorified tech illiteracy is so frustrating.
I consider the second episode of Black Mirror to be the most terrifying horror I saw and taken metaphorically enough we are already there.
For someone who’s complaining about how technology is working against the user, having a popup to subscribe to their newsletter in the middle of the read feels disingenuous.
Quickly exited after that.
The article is free. It's not reasonable to expect an author to want nothing at all in exchange for their work. The subscription popup didn't appear immediately on page load, and unlike most sites nowadays you can dismiss it and continue reading.