What a crazy read! Terrifying but somehow also hopeful?
Indeed, long but good read. Showed in great detail how we got here and what has to change
Fuck, inject everything Cory Doctorow says into my veins please
that was my thought process when I added his blog to my RSS reader… turns out he says an absolute buttload of things.
Comment unclear. Does he say a buttload of good things that should be read more broadly?
yes, but you’d have to make it your full time job in order to read everything he posts.
…decisions we can reverse and people whose names and pitchfork sizes we can learn.
…ushering in the enshittocene.
Oh, Corey my man. There’s only one you.
Zero per cent of app users are running ad blockers
Not to take away from his point, but… Pi-Hole.
I use AdAway to modify the host file on my Android phone. I literally can’t load ad content; sometimes it gets in the way since the ad is the easiest way to get to what I want to click occasionally, lol.
Also, the Vanced app can modify apps to eliminate ads. Or X-Manager for Spotify does a similar thing.
Then there are alternative front-end apps, like NewPipe/LibreTube for YouTube, Xtra for Twitch, and others.
Or there is just straight piracy to avoid the ads, but in their own apps. Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service is basically a pirate Netflix app with full control of your stream quality.
Regardless, I think his point mostly stands; it’s a very small percentage of users modifying apps to avoid ads or telemetry.
Finding it ironic that I’m literally not able to finish this article because it keeps plastering the page with ads.
@Gaywallet As usual, Cory Doctorow writes beautifully and insightfully (go read the article, it isn’t just a litany of what is bad, it is about how it is bad and why it is bad). Hard to pick just one pull quote but I’ll go with “the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive”.
It’s also got a substantial helping of “here’s how things are getting better, and will continue to get better in the future.”
This is a really great read, but I’m less optimistic than he is.
Retirement rates are up and new workers in the work force are down. (Look at a demographic pyramid for more details)
Instead of “saving for retirement” by giving money to investors to invest in growth opportunities, now retirees are taking money out of the system to live on. Suddenly the pressure Is no longer on growth for companies, it’s on generating revenue that can be passed on to share holders, ether by stock buy backs or dividends. And there are not nearly enough new young workers coming to the work force and putting away savings in investments to make up the difference.
Capital is getting rarer now, if companies want it, they need to prove they can generate revenue, no more blitz scaling, no more “we’ll figure out how to monetize later”. Suddenly the free services need to make money, enshittification is the inevitable result.
Just to be clear, generally stock buy backs are not to increase revenue or dividends, but to increase the stock price by creating a false scarcity. Potential dividend increases from corporate stock ownership are a shell game as the corporation received the dividend and it is simply added to the cash on hand and book value.
Nearly all growth in stocks is capital based. Every corporation wants to increase revenue and profits because that forms the basis for valuation. Yes, there are young companies who are “forward looking” and trading on factors based on revenue and not net income, but most of the market is based on a net income multiplier (which varies by industry).
As much pressure as the boomers (and soon GenXers) will place on revenue, it will never be enough to support the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Rather, they will be selling capital to fund their retirements. This will lead to long term stagnation of stock prices (in the best scenario) or a collapse of market value as retirees try to sell their stock for the next 9 month round-the-world cruise. This is a negative feedback loop, too, as the more people sell, the lower the value of their stock, requiring they sell even more shares to get to a fixed value in cash. I think of this as just one more Fuck You (added to the collapse of public health and public retirement subsidies) the boomers will be handing Millennials and GenZ. Actually, I thought you might catch a break with housing, as the value of housing as they all move into retirement homes would drop with the glut of units coming to market. Alas, corporations have found they can buy those units and rent them back at exorbitant rates, so they’ll be tag teaming the boomers in fucking over the youth of today.
What I meant by stock buy backs as a way of generating revanue was more that it’s a way to take revanue and pass it on the shareholder without using dividends, which are what the corporate tax is on. The way I worded it was really poor.
I don’t think the current generation of retirees are screwing over younger generations maliciously, they just haven’t critically examined the whole economic system and don’t seem to get that the current system is incredibly unsustainable, they just want the money they were promised. They are so insulated from the decision making process that they don’t understand the reality of what they’re demanding.
Indeed. This is definitely Hanlon’s razor on their part. Though, still, this is a failing of humans - to recognize the impact their actions impose on others.
I’d say it’s not even really their place to be “examining the whole economic system.” Each individual is just a regular Joe who put in their time at a job over their life and would now like to reap the rewards of their effort in retirement. It bothers me when people insult other people simply for being caught up in a systemic issue that’s beyond their control.
The solutions for systemic problems need to be systemic as well. If we as a society don’t want to see housing move over to an exclusively rent-based system then we’ll need to address it through things like zoning changes and other legal reforms. When people oppose those things by voting against them, then we can start to apportion blame around.
I totally agree, systemic problems require systemic solutions. If a system is failing “just being better” is never a solution.
My point is that failure here is in the economic system that encourages this kind of detachment. That the retirement system is built around accumulating value and investing into capital to pay for retirement later, makes these kinds of situations inevitable.
Seems to be very similar to his The Enshittification of TikTok post, linked here on his own platform (no ads).
I didn’t do a full comparison, though.
Its literally the same author, doing a follow-up to that article.
First, thank you for the comment.
Under different circumstances, however, I’d be more likely to take it to heart.
Certainly, I’m fully aware it’s the same author, which should also be pretty evident from my comment, as I clearly stated that it was similar to his other article.
Kindly let me know if you have suggestions about how I could have worded my comment differently.
You may not have had the correct context, but I was merely pointing out that the sticker was similar to the one he wrote about TikTok, because others had mentioned how cancerous the ads were on the linked platform, and there was a small chance it was the same story, repackaged.
Of course, there was also the chance that someone might have missed it, which would be a shame, because it’s a good read.
Until now, I’d been under the impression that my comment was simple enough for most, but I see now that a lot of my intentions with it were implied only, and maybe I should have brought bigger crayons.
I learned about Cory Doctorow when I found a copy of Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom at a bus stop. Never been disappointed.
Cory 😍😍
Perhaps you know of examples from Smart City, such a downgrading of public services in your cities?
