this post was submitted on 12 May 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 stuff drives me crazy. I'm not an artisty type, but sometimes I wanna enhance a photo, enlarge something, remove a background, on layer images, so I search up "free online whatever tool," go through the upload and whatever, and then all of a sudden it's all "nah, I changed my mind. the thing I told you I did I'm gonna have to charge you for or make you sign up for an account or whatever."
If I wanted to go through all that, I'd already have a dang tool installed! Thankfully after enough of these roadblocks, I've got a pretty good arsenal of free utilities, though nothing to help you out here. It looks like some other comments do though!
Needed a PDF editor on my phone once. Was a fn nightmare to find one.
Google links need upvote/downvote buttons!