cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17602033
You are the victim of a con — one so pernicious that you’ve likely tuned it out despite the fact it’s part of almost every part of your life. It hurts everybody you know in different ways, and it hurts people more based on their socioeconomic status. It pokes and prods and twists millions of little parts of your life, and it’s everywhere, so you have to ignore it, because complaining about it feels futile, like complaining about the weather.
It isn’t. You’re battered by the Rot Economy, and a tech industry that has become so obsessed with growth that you, the paying customer, are a nuisance to be mitigated far more than a participant in an exchange of value. A death cult has taken over the markets, using software as a mechanism to extract value at scale in the pursuit of growth at the cost of user happiness.
These people want everything from you — to control every moment you spend working with them so that you may provide them with more ways to make money, even if doing so doesn’t involve you getting anything else in return. Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and a majority of tech platforms are at war with the user, and, in the absence of any kind of consistent standards or effective regulations, the entire tech ecosystem has followed suit. A kind of Coalition of the Willing of the worst players in hyper-growth tech capitalism.
Things are being made linearly worse in the pursuit of growth in every aspect of our digital lives, and it’s because everything must grow, at all costs, at all times, unrelentingly, even if it makes the technology we use every day consistently harmful.
This year has, on some level, radicalized me, and today I’m going to explain why. It’s going to be a long one, because I need you to fully grasp the seriousness and widespread nature of the problem.
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I haven’t read the article so I can’t comment on it, but thinking that the solution is simply avoiding the services in question is not enough. It assumes that people know what the consequences to sign up are (most people probably don’t understand DRM) and it also assumes that there are better alternatives. Unfortunately, for the latter, I feel like there are fewer and fewer alternatives and the ones remaining are becoming increasingly niche. One may not be able to get a car which is self-repair friendly, independent on internet connectivity. So what does one do if one needs a car? Build one?
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You literally cannot attend a baseball game without installing the Ticketmaster app on a smartphone. Full stop. There are no alternatives.
Maybe a small example, but simply avoiding this stuff is becoming difficult.
Are there other games or events that totally require Ticketmaster?
The graduation at my university. That’s how they handled tickets. I was on both ends. Watching my friend graduate and giving to tickets to my family so they could come to my graduation.
That’s fucked up
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Right. I can also just hang out in the park and watch little league.
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I understand the attitude of “if you want a curated stream of music or a free app, you need to accept that you are giving up your privacy to get that.” Like, pay for the app or buy the music and curate it yourself as an alternative. Just like people have done for generations.
But we’re talking about a thing that just four years ago required only a paper ticket that could be purchased with cash suddenly requiring an app. The product didn’t change in any way, it just requires an app now. I think everyone should be angry about that.
One of the main points of the article is not how it affects one as a individual, but how impacts the very social fabric of our societies. Even if you’re spared from the effects of the rot economy, you’re surrounded by people who are, and it impact them psychologically which in turn affects their mood, well being and their behavior towards their peers.
While I don’t agree with everything in this article, it has some very important points. The digital services that we use can have an impact on our digital daily lives on par to a governments.
This isn’t a call for every person to save themselves. This is a call to save our peers and our well being on a macro level.
Sadly, a lot of it comes down to financial well-being.
Owning and controlling stuff costs more. If not money, then time.
It doesn’t have to be just the listed examples. It’s just anything that ceases to listen to the community and starts making changes on a whim. I’m sure you’ve had some experience with any service changing just for the sake of changing.
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