this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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This is literally not an example of enshittification and the article is intentionally misleading.
First of all, all of the original Notepad functions are unchanged and still free.
Literally nothing got shittier.
Which is why describing Notepad as getting a paywall is quite frankly flat out disingenuous.
They are adding new, cloud running, AI features to Notepad that are locked behind a paywall. You can not like that for whatever reason, but that's not an example of enshittification. That's an example of them charging for new functionality.
The whole point of notepad is that it's a lightweight minimalist app that makes opening/editing text files as fast as possible while also being robustly reliable because of its simplicity. These are its core features. Adding pop-ups and more advanced features makes it slower to use and more complex, and with more complexity there is more chance for issues. Therefore the key advantages of notepad are shittier-->enshitificstion
But the prompt to sign in is the default.
The only way to get rid of it is through Settings.
The popup is shittier, also takes a lot longer to open than it used to, but yeah, the article is definitely misleading clickbait.
It's sensationalist
Even if you're right, why the fuck add in unnecessary features to a simple word program?
the same reason why every program gets an ai feature: data farming, and reason to ask money for it
It's not even a simple "word" program - that's what write/WordPad was. Notepad is supposed to be just a bare bones text editor, like for altering an .ini file or writing a website in 1997.
I love wordpad. Still used it when I sucked Bill Gates' chesticles on the Windows machine
Why not? Who cares what they do? It's not enshittification to add new features.
It is, especially when no one needed it
You are conflating yourself, with every other person.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean.
Notepad is a basic product users expect to use for the most minor edits. It has established expectations for over 2 decades, changing how or what it does won't benefit more people if not frustrate them.
From a product design point of view it has been made harder to access, by adding a whole login procedure justified by feature additions that no one asked for. This drastically reduces the privacy too.
Depends whether it qualifies as enshittification, but they definitely didn't do any favors.
Don't use them if you don't want them. A paywall even helps you stick to that.
That's like how enshittification starts, "oh we're just going to paywall these features, don't worry all the old ones will be free!" And then the old parts start getting replaced by "New and improved!" Parts that also somehow need to be on the cloud and paywalled.
The old parts are literally just a basic wrapper around the most basic WPF text control. Notepad is literally the kind of app used as a tutorial for intro to coding that you can crank out in half a day.
There is no risk of it becoming proprietary or locked behind paywalls.
This is a junk, click bait, article designed to drive up hysteria cause it gets engagement. Supporting trash misinformation outlets like this is far more corrosive then adding new paid features to an existing application.
Why the hell would I need cloud AI functionality to edit basic txt files???????????
VCs put a lot of money into AI, and they won't hesitate to kill you to make sure they get their money back.
If you don't have a computer that can run a local AI model and want to use any of their text editing features?
Why would anyone want those features in fucking notepad of all places?
They're absolutely useless when editing .txt, .ini, .bat, or .cmd files, which is what notepad is for.
Put them into Word, if you want that crap!
Glad I switched to 100% Linux.
I'm using Vim now. LoL
Who cares? I use VSCodium. It's like VIm but doesn't limit itself to interfaces you can express via the command line.
Assholes and idiots, aka Microsoft's core consumers
It's particular ironic how previously the big uproar was about adding these features in the first place. First it was "nobody wants this! Keep AI out of Notepad!" And now it's "how dare you prevent me from using AI in Notepad!"
It's two sides of the same enshittification coin.
No it's not, it's people falling for junk click bait.