Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again | Cory Doctorow
www.theguardian.com
The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives, says science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow

There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disenshittify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead.

This means digital rights activists who’ve been trying to get rid of the “anti-circumvention” laws have a new potential ally: investors and technologists who’d like to make a hell of a lot of money raiding the margins of the most profitable lines of business of the most profitable companies the world has seen.

  • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.comEnglish
    5·
    8 hours ago

    Lock-In effect in general: If your friends, neighbors, even governments all use product x (i.e. Whatsapp) and expect you to use those too in order to communicate with them It is very difficult to switch to something else because the people you want to talk to have to be convinced one by one to give it a try. (it’s possible, just very hard to do)

    One way to combat this is with bridging / interoperability that allow for partial transitioning. This obviously isn’t applicable to many, many things. But a chat program (e.g. Whatsapp) is actually an example where it is applicable.

    • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      Good point… I found that apart from technical interoperability it often works pretty well if you explain to your friends that your alternative (signal,Matrix, whatever…) is just that. An alternative which is always good to have just in case. Don’t try to force them to uninstall WhatsApp, even if this would obviously be the best choice. Instead encourage them to try the alternative and keep WhatsApp in case they don’t like it. Test it with them. In practice this often means they find out that it works just as well and does not hurt to have on the device. Even if they don’t use it actively yet, the next time someone asks them if they have Signal (or whatever) they will be happy to say that they already have it. Patience is key.