Reminder: Cory Doctorow isn't worth listening to.

[lina@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

Reminder: Cory Doctorow isn't worth listening to. The problem isn't "enshittification", it's Capitalism, and while he believes you can fix both (his latest is saying the former can be fixed by legalizing reverse engineering, which while needed is absolutely not enough).

Allowing reverse engineering and/or right-to-repair don't stop companies from building absolute trash, and wouldn't stop companies from doing anticompetitive shit anyway.

Capitalism needs to die.

[twinkle@sweet.succubi.services]

@lina@mastodon.catgirl.cloud I don't know who that is but to extend on the point made here: enshittification is a product, a symptom of capitalism, fixing enshittification doesn't fix the core problem

I don't know how to fix capitalism and I don't think anyone does but what I can say is that whatever you try to advocate for should be in opposition of the problem, not the symptoms of the problem; laws that patch up enshitification is just waiting for a legal loophole to be found, or one would just be written in there in the first place. companies spend a lot of money lobbying against having restrictions on corporates and we don't want to be playing whack-a-mole because that's what they want us to play.

[atax1a@infosec.exchange]

@twinkle cory doctorow is the scifi hack writer who coined the term "enshittification" as an advertisement for his speeches and books

[elizafox@social.treehouse.systems]

@lina Bans on reverse engineering have not stopped Chinese companies from reverse engineering western products and making worse cut-down versions of them, often to disastrous results. Like deaths, injuries, destroyed property, burnt down houses…

[lina@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

To be incredibly plain: Cory Doctorow is pro-capitalist and just wants things to go back to "the good old times when capitalism was our friend" and doesn't actually want to fix the fucking root of the problem, which requires getting rid of fucking capitalism, not "making it almost indistinguishably less fucked".

[pip@infosec.exchange]

@lina Doctorow has pretty explicitly identified, many times, enshittificaiton as a core tenet of unrestrained capitalism. He also has been a very forceful voice for muscular antitrust, so I'm really not sure how you came to this conclusion.

[lina@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@pip@infosec.exchange So his solution to the root of the problem, which is capitalism, is...?

[pip@infosec.exchange]

@lina Powerful antitrust; right to repair; interoperable software; a new, open web; strong labor unions; digital privacy for everyone; and leaders who respond to the actual needs of the people. He's being singing this song for years if you're willing to listen.

Call him out when he's wrong, but to say he's useless because you sometimes disagree with him is fucking stupid, sorry not sorry.

[lina@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@pip@infosec.exchange I've read all that, and sorry-not-sorry, no that's not a solution. That's tweaks to a system that's broken by design. It's pro-capitalist, and I'm staunchly anti-capitalist.

So yeah, I'm going to keep saying that capitalism needs to die - because it does - and repeating that he shouldn't be listened to, because while the ideas may be "good", they're only that in the context of a system that's beyond fucked and needs to be ripped out by the roots.

I'm calling him out because he's wrong: you can't fix what's broken by design, and thinking that you can is stupid.

[pip@infosec.exchange]

@lina I don't really follow. What is he missing / what specific sin is he committing in your mind? I don't see Doctorow as being particularly pro-capitalist (I'm an anti-capitalist as well)

[lina@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@pip@infosec.exchange

Anti-capitalism isn't about "fixing" capitalism, or "changing" it, it's getting rid of it outright. It's about moving to a different system altogether. He might not be pro-this-flavour-of-capitalism, but he's certainly not advocating for anything actually different.

Everything he's saying is working within the bounds of capitalism. He doesn't want it to go away. It's not "a specific sin", it's that I fundamentally disagree with him because he thinks passing a couple laws will work, when there's actually no way to fix this within the confines of capitalism.

And he's not missing anything; as others have said, he's more interested in selling books and speeches (which getting people to use his specific terminology, and evangelizing on his behalf, drives) and profiting from this system.

If that isn't clear enough, then I really doubt I'm the one to best explain it. At least, not in the confines of toots on a social media site.

[aurelia@social.treehouse.systems]

@lina this is me and most criticism leveled against AI art. it sounds like "can we please just go back to an acceptable level of exploitation" rather than "fuck the system that created this fucked up incentive to automate creative expression away".