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.
disagree.
i stopped using most social media, and what little social media I do use now is FOSS like lemmy.
I cancelled my youtubeTV subscription and now pirate all my media. Along with this I also stopped watching sports which have been greatly enshittified over my lifetime.
I stopped using Plex (enshittifying) and switched to Jellyfin which is FOSS.
these actions have significantly reduced enshittification in my life. Not saying it’s possible for everything, but sometimes there absolutely are non-enshittified alternatives.
That’s wonderful! It’s good to diminish the amount of enshittification you experience in your life!
Enshittification, writ large, goes on regardless. The point of the essay is that avoiding it in your personal life is good (if sometimes tiresome, depending on the specifics of your life) and you should totally do that, but the root causes of enshittification can be defeated by organized collective action.
This is the fly in the ointment. I (and most here) do all the things to avoid enshittified products, but as you’ve mentioned it is work. Some of the “work” is fun because I am “technologia” oriented, but many of the people I know simply cannot be bothered to consider alternatives to these shit products. They don’t know it is shit and think that’s the only choice and follow along. I can’t blame them for their choices too much. Life is full of other things they are occupied with, so I do try and help when I can.
Many that are obligated to be advocates for the common man and these issues have abandoned their obligations to the people they are supposed to serve. They have essentially been enshittified too and we haven’t yet organized to solve that issue which seems to be the most important enshittification to date. More to come later, I am sure.
This is not only very similar to my experience and entirely possible, but it’s also extremely healthy mentally and, date I say, physically.
Getting rid of social media will improve your mood dramatically.
I also like doing homelab stuff, and it’s even more satisfying to know I’m having a better experience than, say, someone subscribing to every streaming service but still having to watch ads.
I’m still using YouTube with smarttube or whatever it’s called now and vanced. They have adblocking and sponsor block so I don’t get shitty ads and I can still pick who I watch. I did go and download a bunch of kids videos since someone watches the same show all the time and now just use jelyfin for that.