We’re living in the #enshittocene, in which the forces of enshittification are turning everything from our cars to our streaming services to our dishwashers into thoroughly enshittifified piles of shit. Call it the Great Enshittening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

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If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

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  • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
    1·
    10 months ago

    These companies have convinced their regulators not to enforce privacy, consumer protection or labor laws, provided that the gross violations of these laws are accomplished via apps.

    This is where #TechExceptionalism is warranted: while the bosses that run these companies aren’t any nobler - or more wicked - than the Robber Barons of yore, they are equipped with a digital back-end for their businesses that let them change the rules of the game from moment to moment.

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    • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      Think of labor law: as #VeenaDubal writes, gig-work companies practice #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, turning your paycheck into a slot machine that pays out more when you are more selective about which jobs you take, and which then docks your pay by tiny increments as you become less discriminating about answering the app’s call:

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      • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
        1·
        10 months ago

        This is a plain violation of labor law, but the fiction that gig workers are contractors, combined with the opacity and speed of the wage discrimination back-end, lets the companies get away with it.

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        • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
          1·
          10 months ago

          But the monsters who hatched this scam are no worse than their forebears, nor are they any smarter. Any black-hearted coal-boss memorialized in a Tennessee Ernie Ford song would have gladly practiced algorithmic wage discrimination - but there just weren’t enough green-eyeshade accountants in the back office to change the payout from second to second.

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          • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
            1·
            10 months ago

            I call this “#twiddling” - turning the knobs to continuously adjust the business logic that the firm operates on:

            Twiddling is everywhere, and it is only possible because “it’s not a crime if we use an app” has been accepted by (captured) regulators. Think of Amazon’s #PricingParadox, where deceptive search results - which Amazon makes $38b/year on - allow the company to offer lower prices, but charge higher ones:

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            • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
              1·
              10 months ago

              The first constraint on enshittification is competition - the fear that you’ll lose money when a disgusted customer take their business elsewhere. The second constraint is regulation - the fear that a regulator’s punishment will eat up all the expected gains from an enshittificatory move, or even exceed those gains, leading to a net loss.

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              • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                1·
                10 months ago

                But the less competition there is in a sector, the easier it is for the remaining companies to capture their regulators. Say goodbye to that second constraint.

                But there’s another constraint - another one that’s unique to technology, and genuinely exceptional. That’s #SelfHelp. Digital technology is infinitely flexible, which is why managers can twiddle the business logic and change the rules on a dime.

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                • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                  1·
                  10 months ago

                  But it’s a double-edged sword. Users can twiddle back. The universal nature of digital products means it’s always technically possible to disenshittify the enshittified products in your world. Mercedes wants to charge you rent on your accelerator pedal via a monthly subscription? Just mod the car by toggling the “subscription paid” bit and get the accelerator for free:

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                  • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                    1·
                    10 months ago

                    HP tricks you into installing a “security update” that sneakily disables your printer’s ability to recognize and use third-party ink? Just roll back the operating system and you won’t be forced to spend $10,000/gallon to print out your boarding passes and shopping lists:

                    Self-help - AKA #AdversarialInteroperability - isn’t just a way to override the greedy choices of corporate sadists. It’s a way to hold those sadists in check. It’s a constraint.

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