EDITED TO MAKE THE TITLE MORE APPROPRIATE. The previous title of this post was “I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life” which was the slug line as it appeared in my mailing-list-to-RSS reader. Although this is the first paragraph of the linked essay, it does not do a good job of explaining the thrust of the essay, and some people (not you though) seem to be arguing with the title instead of the essay.

(Thanks to [email protected] for the heads up.)

END OF EDITED SECTION

Here’s why you’re getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don’t have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don’t compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they’ve amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about “fighting for the user.” Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

    • Mac@mander.xyz
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      2 days ago

      Most of us are here on Lemmy having individually made the decision to evade the enshitification of other sites.
      …And it’s worked.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Naaaah, it’s still in the wrong paradigm, just a taste of the better world.

        Like Hanseatic league and Hussites and Cossacks were not quite the revolution you’d want, and the same with Dutchies, but at some point angry Frenchies decided it’s time to show how it’s done, and around the same general period of time some unrefined colonials decided they are tired of tea.

      • Sundray@lemmus.orgOP
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        2 days ago

        I love how unshitty Lemmy is 😊 . That’s why I post here so much!

        But Reddit isn’t less shitty as a result. I think it’s even getting worse.

        • ski11erboi@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I think maybe the wording in your title is throwing people off because as a lot of people are pointing out we CAN make make choices that limit the amount of enshittification we experience in our own lives. Seems like what you’re trying to say is choosing not to support enshittification doesn’t stop companies from continuing enshittification.

          • Sundray@lemmus.orgOP
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            2 days ago

            Fair, thank you. There does seem to be some confusion about enshittification vis a vis personal effects, versus Enshittification that exists in the world. (Reducing the former doesn’t reduce the latter, and the latter still remains everyone’s problem.) I used a bookmarklet to grab the link and tagline. I’ll update the title to more accurately reflect the content of the essay.