Maybe it’s time we all go back to living like it’s the 80s. Watch OTA broadcast TV and read more books and call people on the phone instead of text them. And use computers to do taxes and word process and play simple games.
The real problem with YouTube is the censorship, both of creators and commenters, when they aren’t saying anything offensive or problematic but simply referencing different companies, corporations, governments, countries or industries.
I’m in favor of censorship in some cases - which is why it really takes an insane amount of ridiculous nonsensical censorship that actually hinders constructive online communication for me to be saying there’s a problem with censorship. I thought I’d never say there was a censorship problem, but there really is now, although it seems mostly restricted to YouTube. Elon Musk’s Twitter has some stupid censorship too, though. It takes away accountability when things can’t even be criticised anymore, and misinformation/disinformation is allowed but can’t be corrected, for example.
And those are unfortunately 90% dead as compared to 10 years ago.
Back then I could easily find multiple chatrooms for any fandom all incredibly active. Now I’m lucky to find a singular one that isn’t dead. Fandoms mostly moved on to the big monolithic sites like reddit where interactions and conversation are incredibly artificial
I agree that enshittification is a, well, shitty term, but I know obly it to describe the problem at hand.
Alternstives I think of are walled gardens, collapse of the internet as we know it, lockdown of social media sites, etc. - none of them all that simple and miss the point enshittification has.
Decay is a natural process however that just happens if you don’t stop it. I still think ‘enshittification’ fits it best because it implies a bit of intentionality on the part of the shittifiers.
The term is sticky (ewww) and I think we are stuck with it.
Capitalism does this to itself due to the profit motive. Where once is innovation and brand new disruption becomes petty iteration as this new frontier slowly but surely becomes a well-oiled profit machine. The upside is that FOSS makes replacing this profit-generating soul-sucking bloatware with better alternatives very easy.
Replacing the existing infrastructure of Capitalism by building up parallel structures is a valid means of weakening Capital itself.
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