this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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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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Hi there. My guide is currently hosted at survival.aesistril.com. I wrote some stuff but it's really hard to write every guide by myself.

My goal is to create a easy to follow guides for the average joe and compile every other guide into one web page. I want to be able to link this whenever a relative or a friend asks me how to get rid of x

Name and URL suggestions (under .aesistril.com subdomain) are welcome. I am currently using open source hardware icon because it looks cool

I am using the CGA color palette and I would appreciate if you don't use any other colors. Not a strict restriction though

Source code is here on GitHub. Pull requests, markdown guides, docx, txt, every type of contribution or constructive criticism is appreciated

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My piHole is the one thing that lets me use my phone without getting bombarded with ads. Best choice of my life. Set up Wireguard to VPN when out and about too.

I feel like the original guides are good but maybe compiling braindead simple guides would help mass adoption.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Exactly. I can follow official guides but I'm a fairly experienced enthusiast. Official guides are just not written for non-techies. I never succeed by sending them to other people.

This is what people need. Slow guides with definitions of every single word explained gracefully

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I can’t wait for an AI to copy this guide and submit the worst summary article possible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Hey, that's a pretty cool project! Keep up the good work!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

When I load the home page, I quickly understand that it's a guide collection. But perhaps if I were in your family's shoes, I might wonder why any of this matters. Why publish a site like this? Maybe the answer could become an expanded top section (five sentences?) with a hyperlink to a secondary page that gets into detail. Refer to (1) for some presentation ideas.

Have you asked friends and family what frustrates them the most in their interaction with software and hardware? There are hundreds of potential tutorials you could include, but priority matters. I think you're on the right track putting adblocking ahead of device rooting.

The body font is an effort to read. Refer again to (1) to see what a difference a clear typeface can make. You've also got a legend to denote each guide's platform relevance, which is good. Average Joe is probably also wondering what is achievable in an hour, versus what would take a weekend and some shopping.

(1): https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

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

I love the look of the website, looks super cool

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Enshittification survival guide: Don't use any proprietary software, firmware or hardware. Don't use any centralized service. Keep your data on hardware you own and control and enjoy physical access to, and don't save it in any kind of proprietary format.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Well, living without proprietary hardware, firmware and sometimes even software is really hard to achieve. You have to use specific hardware which is often very expensive. You're probably fine with mostly foss software and proprietary hardware. If you want some fancy hardware (i ve recently looked into a garmin watch(which is still not terrible for privacy)), you also need proprietary apps, which isn't great, but you don't actually have an alternative.