A general thread about what @doctorow used to describe how the web 2.0 platforms die…
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“Pay to play”…
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One of the first examples of shitification I can think of that affected me personally was when Adobe Photoshop moved from selling software editions that one actually owned to a fucking subscription service.
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I have a few videos that got a few thousand views (a lot for me) and YouTube started sending me emails about promoting my channel (which I don’t care to). I ignored them but since then my views have dropped back to the single digits.
At the same time YouTube is only recommending videos that come from content mills and onely rarely content from individuals.
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The enshittification of Google is so long progressed and entrenched it’s actually difficult to remember that they actually did some stuff well at one stage or another.
They are literally the absolute worst at everything they are the market leader in.
Shittiest data harvester that also can be, barely, used as a search engine? Check
Shittiest private data exfiltration app that also allows you to use the web? Check
Shittiest
Etc.
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Hell yeah. Same.
MS Office Suite.
Adobe Acrobat (full feature version).
All that is required to work in ordinary “industry standard” environments.
And it’s not just their stupid damn lamprey-hoovering of one’s credit card for subscription fees, it’s all the data-tracking they do now that users are absolutely required to be connected [online] to the company mothership at all times, to access all features of their products.
Dunno, maybe Cory @doctorow covered that already.
Monetization to the nth degree. Win-win. For late stage capitalism. Not for us plebes.
One of the many reasons why open source software and apps matter, now more than ever. With enough of us, with luck, we can do this:
ETA: clarifier
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I haven’t read Chokepoint Capitalism yet (I just got a copy) but I’m guessing that they are going to make connections to how software changed over the years to the current stuff with social media’s enshittification, including that rental pathway that seems to be increasingly popular for companies that sell software…
It really is why I prefer open source stuff if at all possible.
For me, I get videos from the youtubers I regularly watch (some of whom are quite “big” I guess - Jessie Gender, Steve Shives, FD Signifier, Kaz Rowe, a few others), but every now and then, they try to slip in some rightwing bullshit…
The few times you’ve posted a video here, I usually go check out a couple of other of your vids, so I guess you probably get a bump in views when you do that, as I’m sure I’m not the only one who does that.
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Yay Fran! I love her videos. She manages to keep going about it her own way, despite YouTube trying very hard to make her fit the traditional business model (Home Depot sponsorships and videos about making bookshelves).
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I don’t watch her as much as I should, cause she’s great! My husband watches her stuff pretty regularly… it’s just in his nerdy wheelhouse!
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Here is what I mean about my feed…
Note the first video… Now, that might be a bit different, as I will sometimes watch videos on the history of religion, but don’t watch videos that are just straight preaching like that…
From the channel:
I don’t really have a sense here of political orientation of this channel, but I’m guessing not “liberation theology”? 
Although, I hate that “rock and roll true stories” channel, too, as the one video I watched of theirs they were shitty to one of Lou Reed’s former partners Rachel, misgendering her and spreading some serious BS about her. So, it’s not history, so much as sensationalist trash.
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To add to the pile here, I had a (relatively) inexpensive adobe subscription at my last job, paid by my work credit card.
When I left last year I saw that by the time the subscription was up for renewal, my work credit card would have expired, so didn’t bother cancelling the subscription because, it’s already dealt with.
Then, this year, I got charged again for the subscription, on my personal card!!!
I had other subscriptions on my personal card, but the fact they could just switch that over without my consent pisses me right off. I tried to contest the charges, to no avail. I’ve since cancelled, but honestly, WTF?!?
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There seems to be some arrangement that subscription services have with credit servicers to make this happen. This is why the “get a new card number” trick also doesn’t work for particularly aggressive magazine subscriptions.
Meanwhile NPR needs to track me down and beg me to update my credit card info before the expiration date changes, otherwise my sustainer membership disappears.
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I’m still on an old copy of Cs3 on my 2013 MacBook Pro because I refuse to pay for a subscription for something that I already own.
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Everything good on the internet gets destroyed, eventually.
Oh no…
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The Steam subreddit has been forced back open.
Looks like Reddit is forcing another sub open, but there are users advocating changing the sub to be about actual steam.
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actual steam
Surely they can all find a thread on that started by someone or other here at bbs.
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From a link in there, it looks like an r/piracy mod got booted
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See also: Rocket Player.
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