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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I hate Verizon (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So my internet went out on Friday at 6am. Trying to navigate the Verizon website and app has been a pure hellscape, with repeated requests to revalidate using a PIN which is denied arbitrarally, causing call to drop. If you do manage to get a warm body, they put you on hold or transfer the call will inevitably drops causing one to start the whole process again. Finally, they said it was a router problem, which was only 6 months old and no longer compatible with their service. Finally got bounced back to Sales at 5PM, who ordered a new router for me and waived the recurring fee (either $400 for a new router or $18/month for something paid for many times over). Anyway, I went to pick up said new router at the location indicated only to find that they don't stock equipment and I have to drive another 4 miles to a nondescript store in a strip mall. I finally get home and try to self-install which bombs out, necessitating another aventure into their website/app hellscape. About 18 hours after the initial outage, I'm back in service. I've never run into a company who is so blantant in their desire to piss off their customers. If only there were viable alternatives in my area.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

One time, at Verizon camp, i tried to establish new service while porting two lines to two new phones. No one could figure it out. My order was cancelled and recreated several times by several people, none of it worked. And, they changed one of the phones i was purchasing without my consent. Then, they only sent one phone on the order. At the end, i sent their executive board a nasty email detailing my experience with all of the order data, encouraging them to look into it themselves. I heard from some regional executive personally, but the damage had already been done.