Ensh*ttification so moved to Blogspot

 

The book Chokepoint Capitalism came out in November 2022, co-authored by Canadian Cory Doctorow.  The guy is a machine, I think he has released another 3 or 4 books since then, some fiction, some very cutting observations.  He is alt of mainstream and doesn't subscribe to DRM (digital rights management).  I finished reading Red Team Blues and will delve into The Bezzle in a few months.

In the Chokepoint book he coined the term "enshittification", which now has its own Wikipedia page: 

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

By "platforms" he means specifically two-sided markets, and the first chapters of the book are a litany of life in the early 21st century: Facebook, Google, Uber, the list depressingly goes on and on.  Spotify is particularly nasty, since they keep steering you away from your own choice of music to "playlists", and have forced the sad pattern for musos trying to be heard, striving to be on playlists to earn another 1/1000th of a cent. Consumers get these constantly algorithmically curated piles of songs, most now with Autotune.  If you remember an old song from your childhood, it may well be hacked to fit (example: the note that goes on forever at the end of A Day in the Life doesn't anymore).

Amazon is the poster child for Chokepoint Capitalism, and ironically, you can buy this book there (no link provided).  Suppliers need to toe their line; this is a variation of a monopoly called  "monopsony".  This was in play last century with Walmart, an institution that thankfully doesn't exist where I live.

Somehow anti-trust legislation is not being enforced, but of course our lives are full of a lot of unfair wrongs in amongst the daily amazingness ('Everything is amazing, nobody is happy' by the pariah Louis CK).  By the way, you don't need to watch that linked video on ad-saddled YouTube, you can take the URL into https://yewtu.be, or add the Ad SpeedUp browser extension to say, "yes, I watched your ads, at 16x the rate".  Disclaimer: at the time of this writing.

Ok, so what does this have to do with Blogger?  

I used to put my words on Medium to just write longer stuff that I could reach from places like LinkedIn.  But in 2023, the year investors seemed to finally want a return on Internet business models and monetisation tightened its grip, Medium got complicated.  Or maybe not, anyway I don't want to know, so I started looking around and I noticed Substack was picking up writers.  Except.. there is some political tinge now to that platform and I don't want to deal with that energy.  

And then I discovered this place still exists!  From 1999!  And I may have known and forgotten that since 2003 it has been owned by Google, so it comes with the Google login and Google Analytics.  Of course at any instant this arrangement may be enshittified due to the wonderful world of Web 2, but for now, it works.  And it works like it did in 1999!  It is easy.  Just type!  Amazing.  No jarring popups or evolutionary battles for screen real estate.  It is so refreshing, and therefore damning of more 'modern' sites in contrast.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and let's see how long this part of Google works like this.