Shout out to Cory Doctorow
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I hope the following is useful:
Enshittification, by Cory Doctorow. DRM-free ebook $15 at his website https://craphound.com/shop/
Basic process:
"1. First, platforms are good to their users.
2. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.
3. Next, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.
4. Finally, they have become a giant pile of shit."
The book describes not only how this happens but why, and what we can do about it (hint: collective action will be required).If your into audio-books libro.fm/credits you can use on the vast majority including his audio-books credits - you don't have to do the monthly subscription thing just prepay two or more book credits and use whenever you want - libro are $15 that way; though last year you could for Black Friday though the following Monday get them for 10% off ($13.50 an AB that was) no matter how many credits you bought. Also Cory has worked out with them sales that every blue moon come about for something like $10 on select AB's of his in the past as well. That site is even in his enshittification book (well, I never got to the final version but I would think that made the cut - it was in the publishers printed "preview edition" which is an uncorrected proof).
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craphound.com is where his books and a few others things are at, it is his personal site from the 1990s to today. As far as the blog he has it is at on a different website of his at https://pluralistic.net/ which started posting in February 2020.
@sn thanks for the links! I need to get through Enshittification first and I am hoping that i can glean a list of what Cory believes to be action items to combat enshittification and maybe we can help make them reality?
What is your take on the lowest hanging fruit / lowest barrier to entry actionables people can mobilize around?
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I'm 48% through Enshittification, also thinking about what I can do to help the causes. I'm a data scientist, considering a job change anyway. Is anyone in Canada helping helping to lobby the government to allow more legal de-enshittification? (like allowing DRM breaking to be able to port your data to a new platform; he mentions this idea in an interview https://youtu.be/P1EKQidRooc?si=lFpZSoGLP4_DYTxI)
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I haven't read the book but have heard a number of interviews with Cory Doctorow and read a number of related new articles and blog posts, such as https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-general-theory-of-enshittification . The concept of enshittification really resonates with me as I look around. The internet and, to be honest, a lot of other things seemed so much more promising a decade ago. I remember Doctorow said a few times that one of the root causes is the rise of near-monopolies and oligopolies. Which could easily be applied to our two political parties and lots outside of FAANG as well. We've lost our ability to police such organizations. Anyways, just wanted to say I really like Cory and will check out the audiobook.
@ilam.fields said in Shout out to Cory Doctorow:
I remember Doctorow said a few times that one of the root causes is the rise of near-monopolies and oligopolies. Which could easily be applied to our two political parties and lots outside of FAANG as well.
This reminded me of an analysis of the political system through the use of tools used to critique competition in business, the "Five Forces framework".
https://www.hbs.edu/competitiveness/Documents/why-competition-in-the-politics-industry-is-failing-america.pdfIt's a long report, so a shorter alternative might be this podcast that Freakonomics did in 2018: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/americas-hidden-duopoly-2/
Forgive me if this is already mentioned by Doctorow in the book. I'm just starting it.
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Wow. I skimmed through all the graphs in the report, I’ll admit @skeet. Seems like a broad impact analysis.
Its becoming clear that I need to get through Enshittification asap. And then probably give it a reread. I have gotten through the End of Competition now.
I have a new idea of what direction this board and site can take where we aren’t trudging on the toes of the advocates that preceded us in this space. Tell me what you think, and if theres something like this out there like this.
What if we make graphical representations of every part of our lives. They could be physical, like a picture of a house and car parked outside. They could be a picture of a computers internals or something more virtual like a collection of tools we typically use physically represented.
Then we can take the best tools in each of those spaces in addition to the tool that has a near monopoly and show people the best current alternative. For instance, Cory mentions Kagi.com for search instead of Google. I am going to try it and report back.
If we maintain these graphical representations we can also distribute physical copies like originally planned. The physical copies can just suggest the alternatives, the virtual copies can include all links to background info.
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Yup! Lets compare notes if we both dig in here and maybe make a graphic of it?
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@pastvulcan I'm roughly 50% through Enshittification as well, as of this morning.
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@pastvulcan I'm roughly 50% through Enshittification as well, as of this morning.
@approxinfinity I just finished it. I like his positive messaging at the end, but it didn't give clear things that I (individually or with a few friends) can make progress on. I'll have to think more about it.
@skeet Doctorow led me to switch to both DuckDuckGo and Brave; I wasn't sure if I search enough to be worth paying for Kagi. I also looked into Protonmail, but the calendar integration seems to be lacking--which might be partly Google's fault that you can't change the default calendar app on Android. My family has a nice set of shared calendars and organization system that I'm loathe to give up.
@unshittified I feel like one of the major points in the book is that for some monopolistic areas there isn't room for good alternatives (like alternative email/calendar combos for mobile that don't take your data). So, I don't think graphical representations of the different shitty things would be very clear.
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@pastvulcan so i was thinking if multiple sites offer alternatives but they arent integrated well we could get deep with those communities, provide feedback and learn more about the limitations… and report back! I do have some faith that the more we know, the more I believe we will be able to effectively illustrate.