By the time you are livestreaming on twitch one would assume all caution regarding feeding the beast has long left the room and few fucks will be given.
unfortunately feeding the beast was normalized long ago
there was some resistance in the early 2000’s but we got lazy and want cheap flights, easy ways to pay for shit and real time maps so gave it all up for lolz
Using Amazon, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or Doordash, or Uber doesn’t make you lazy. Platform capitalism isn’t enshittifying because you made the wrong shopping choices.
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When [we] blame corporate power on “laziness,” we buy into the corporations’ own story about how they came to dominate our lives: we just prefer them. This is how Google explains away its 90% market-share in search: we just chose Google. But we didn’t, not really – Google spends tens of billions of dollars every single year buying up the search-box on every website, phone, and operating system:
Blaming “laziness” for corporate dominance also buys into the monopolists’ claim that the only way to have convenient, easy-to-use services is to cede power to them. Facebook claims it’s literally impossible for you to carry on social relations with the people that matter to you without also letting them spy on you. When we criticize people for wanting to hang out online with the people they love, we send the message that they need to choose loneliness and isolation, or they will be complicit in monopoly.
Luckily, we’re not just “consumers.” We’re also citizenswho can exercise political power. That’s hard work – but so is organizing a co-op or a boycott. The difference is, when we dog enforcers who wield the power of the state, and line up behind them when they start to do their jobs, we can make deep structural differences that go far beyond anything we can make happen as consumers:
We’re not just “consumers” or “citizens” – we’re also workers, and when workers come together in unions, they, too, can concentrate the diffuse, atomized power of the individual into a single, powerful entity that can hold the forces of capital in check:
Antimonopoly policy is the foundation for all forms of people-power. The very instant corporations become too big to fail, jail or care is the instant that “voting with your wallet” becomes a waste of time.
By the time you are livestreaming on twitch one would assume all caution regarding feeding the beast has long left the room and few fucks will be given.
that’s exactly what they want you to think.
this shouldn’t be normalized
unfortunately feeding the beast was normalized long ago
there was some resistance in the early 2000’s but we got lazy and want cheap flights, easy ways to pay for shit and real time maps so gave it all up for lolz
those didnt generate slop and steal from creators
generative AI is different
i think it can be useful in some situations but i think it should be trained ethically
There was no need to steal, people willing gave access into every facet of their lives from banking to socials to spotify.
We were generating the slop and feeding it to the beast on a grand scale for decades, now the beast is vomiting all the slop back up.
No, “convenience” isn’t the problem: Enshittification isn’t caused by “lazy consumers.”
what’s the solution, then?
i can see a somewhat clear path in moving people not off of social media, but to fairer platforms.