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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After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad (www.tweaktown.com)

submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/enshittification@lemmy.world

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[–] venotic@kbin.melroy.org 44 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Even if you're right, why the fuck add in unnecessary features to a simple word program?

[–] kepix@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

the same reason why every program gets an ai feature: data farming, and reason to ask money for it

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not even a simple "word" program - that's what write/WordPad was. Notepad is supposed to be just a bare bones text editor, like for altering an .ini file or writing a website in 1997.

[–] Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 1 points 12 hours ago

I love wordpad. Still used it when I sucked Bill Gates' chesticles on the Windows machine

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why not? Who cares what they do? It's not enshittification to add new features.

[–] And009@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

It is, especially when no one needed it

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You are conflating yourself, with every other person.

[–] And009@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 14 hours ago

I'm not exactly sure what you mean.

Notepad is a basic product users expect to use for the most minor edits. It has established expectations for over 2 decades, changing how or what it does won't benefit more people if not frustrate them.

From a product design point of view it has been made harder to access, by adding a whole login procedure justified by feature additions that no one asked for. This drastically reduces the privacy too.

Depends whether it qualifies as enshittification, but they definitely didn't do any favors.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 day ago

Don't use them if you don't want them. A paywall even helps you stick to that.