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 ski11erboi@lemmy.world 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.
Defeatism will get us nowhere. The power of the people dethroned kings, and it will dethrone capitalism too.
I do agree that the actions of a single person are a drop in the bucket, but we can only fill the bucket if many of us offer their single drop. We each must do our part, no matter how insignificant that part may be.
I agree! And, I think the linked essay agrees, also? I mean the last sentence literally says, “You can’t fight enshittification. But together, we can.”
That sounds very different than, “Acceptance of or resignation to the prospect of defeat. Acceptance of the inevitability of defeat. Acceptance of defeat without struggle.”
I actually didn’t even notice the link to the article. Oops. Thanks for pointing that out.
I think the point this article is trying to make is that while individualistic consumer-level ways to sidestep enshittification do work for those who follow them, they don’t fight the bad actors back efficiently and to achieve that it needs to be done collectively.
Thank you for pointing this out. I honestly missed the link completely! I’m not usually the type to comment on a post that links to an article without reading it. Oops.
Oh yeah the blog post is helper not doomer, but actually your point still stands anyways.