this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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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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Most grocery stores in my country have established an App (or card) you're supposed to use and it's slowly but surely going down the route of enshitification.

They start by letting you collect points. Then it's extra savings. Eg regular price is 3€, sale price is 1.80€ but app users get it for 1.50€. Cool, a way to save some money, you might think. Nope. Once they reach a critical mass of app users it continues to sales being App-only so everyone is now forced to use the App but there's no bonus left. Two of the biggest chains are at this stage. You now have the regular price (3€) and the app price (1.80€) which is the exact situation as before the app existed but they force you to jump through some extra hoops to get it.

Additionally to that they collect all this data with the sole purpose of manipulating you into spending more money at their store than you did before. They extract their profits from their customers and if we help them get more efficient at that it'll be us that lose out.

Tl;dr: Fuck store apps.

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[–] JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 23 hours ago

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