It’s not the intended effect, but this just made me sad:
That really matters. Not because the internet is the most important issue facing us today. Far from it. Compared with the climate emergency, genocide, inequality, corruption, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism and sustained racist, homophobic, misogynist and transphobic attacks, the internet is just a sideshow. But the internet is the terrain upon which these fights will be waged. It is the communications medium we will use to organise to save our species and planet from their imminent eradication. We can’t win these fights without a free, fair and open internet.
It’s become increasingly difficult to imagine the sort of wide-scale change needed to achieve that vision actually happening.
Really good article and worthwhile a read!
Let the implications of most-favoured nation settle in. If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you’re paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop – even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store.
I haven’t shopped at Amazon for well over a decade now, but apparently even I am affected by their business model…
That is why I get tired about the “individual action” suggestion, that I alone could stop using Amazon and hurt their sales, I could de-Google my life and keep my privacy, or recycle plastic and save the ocean, or swear off AI to fuck with Nvidia.
But all that is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of people who all readily handed over their lives to these companies and haven’t left (or can’t). And governments who abdicated regulatory authority to them, which have allowed them to run rampant.
They’re still making it so these massive companies have force in my life. I alone can’t do anything about that.
Hmm are you implying collective actions are in order?
Providing good service and quality products used to be primary. That’s how economies prospered. Nowadays it’s all about subscriptions, trickery and collecting money. Bad service and little value for your buck seems to be the norm. We throw away unrepairable good products and replace them with new products, by design. Sell, sell, sell (not fight, fight, fight).
Enshittification is a well documented and understood concept
Well yeah, because the author of this article has invented the term and has given insightful explanations like in this article ;)
Greed
The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. Corporations, being artificial, immortal colony-organisms that use humans as their inconvenient gut flora, do not have consciences to appeal to.
A great argument for efficient regulation.
I came here to say obviously it’s enshitification, only to find that the article is actually written by the Corey Doctorow. Love that guy.
Why the hell did The Guardian include comment from an Amazon Spokesperson? ‘‘Nuh uh, that’s not true’’ no fucking duh that’s their response.
because they killed all the brick and morter stores
Meh, lots of them earned it.
Nothing like the experience of being hounded by a sales person.
