A useful listen, well put, and reason elebenty billion to boycott Amazon (amongst others) :)
#tech #monopoly #extraction #extortion #degeneration #roteconomy #enshittification
https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577?i=1000750283543
True. Google has only had ONE successful product ever.
#feilnerism: "Scalability is causing more problems than it solves. KISS rules. #DigitalSobriety #DoINeedThis? And it's equivalent to #growth in economy."
#roteconomy #enshitification @pluralistic and @edzitron really worth listening, despite all the ads. :-)
This week’s Better Offline is a recording of a panel held by Clarion West in Seattle earlier this year with Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron, discussing enshittification, The Rot Economy, and the destruction of modern tech platforms, moderated by Whitney Beltrán. Cory Doctorow: https://craphound.com/ Whitney Beltrán: https://brightwhitney.com/ Get involved with Clarion West: https://www.clarionwest.org/get-involved/give/ Clarion West is a nonprofit literary organization that runs an acclaimed six-week residential workshop every summer, online classes and workshops, one-day and weekend workshops, a reading series every summer, and other events throughout the year. At Clarion West, you’ll be among award-winning and best-selling writers in science fiction, fantasy, games, horror, and more. Our workshops and classes are taught by world-class instructors from across the field of speculative fiction. Wherever you may be in your career, whether novice or sage, we offer a diverse listing of classes that is packed with valuable information to take your writing to the next level. Want to support me? Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/w08jbm4jwg it would mean a lot! YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [email protected]
Oh hey look, Some More News did an episode on the topic that makes everyone hate talking with me for more than five minutes. Of course, they do it much better, and it can basically be summed up by this one line in the video: "Everyone laundering human suffering so the end-user can shelter themselves in plausible deniability."
That's the problem, though. This is all propped up by willful ignorance, and I have a hard time imagining enough people will take the blinders off to make a difference.
Even when I hung with IWW folks, people would still talk about their Amazon orders, like there's no alternative. There is. you've just decided your immediate "need" was more important than the well-being of every other link in the chain of misery.
I am so thankful to see someone with an audience as large as Hank Green's getting this righteously pissed off about AI. Ed Zitron is doing good work, but he's niche as fuck. Your mom has at least heard of Hank:
https://youtu.be/Vz0oQ0v0W10?si=sKhguLMUmH0mf7L5
#AI #slop #RotEconomy #BetterOffline #NerdFighters #LateStageCapitalism
I'm trying to figure a way out of printing and framing @pluralistic 's latest:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-permanence
But maybe I have a better idea. The @eff could put together a Most Wanted deck of playing cards of the priests and enablers of #enshittification and the #roteconomy.
Please do, and then take my money!
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.Sep 10, 2025Pluralistic: Hate the player AND the game (10 Sep 2025)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/
@theluddite
> do you think it explains just how much money they're willing to set on fire? And even then, what is it about AI that makes that connection?
I'm convinced by Ed Zitron's thesis of the #RotEconomy:
A huge portion of financial activity, is based on the value of tech company stocks
Tech stocks are valued only because investors expect them to grow, rapidly and forever
Tech corps that don't promise unreasonable 10×, 20×, etc. growth, are severely punished
They have *no ideas left*.
Baldur Bjarnason @baldur:
“Businesses today don’t care about management, productivity, or even costs.
“Manifestly and demonstrably, businesses only care about control over labour and stock prices and they ignore anything resembling modern management theory or related fields.”
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/disingenuous-discourse/
#LabourSuppression #RotEconomy #ParanoidBoss #GenerativeAI #GenAI #Union
"We will eat whatever slop gets scooped onto our plate as long as it's a bigger scoop than China's or Russia's."
This is an incredibly well reasoned philosophical argument against the continued encroachment of AI and the rot at the heart of our tech and our economy, but this one sentence cuts to the quick of why it will still steam-roll over us: The vast majority of the populace, at least in America, and I suspect in the larger "developed world" does not care. As long as there is reasonably palatable slop for us to consume, that's good enough to appease us. I see little islands of folks like me ranting and raving about this shit online, but do it in person, and you'll find yourself speaking with a sympathetic (but docile) choir, or folks who just... don't get it. They *like* it.
THEY LIKE IT.
They like the slop. It's good enough. It's easy. Why do I have to keep making things so difficult?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dm_UY8jCGQ
#GenAI #RotEconomy #Enshittification #Luddite #KingLudd #MainFrameBreakers
dryad
JochenInSecurity
Markus Feilner
Poor 'Possum
Oliver Sampson
bignose
bignose