rlowery
CiaraWe need a word for real-life enshittification caused by online culture. Like being unable to find an organisation’s info because they’ve Instagram but no website. Or panicked people being sent a videolink to download to their phone when they ring for an ambulance. Or being excluded from residents' association news if you're not on Facebook. Or having cash payment refused. Or staff in the business you’re physically standing in telling you to find the answer to your question on their website.
Murat Cem Mengüç@CiaraNi Apple Store manager telling you to make an online appointment to buy a product when you are actually in the store that has the product.
@mcmenguc Yes, precisely this kind of thing! It's become too common.
CaveDave
Athro Rob@engravecavedave @CiaraNi @mcmenguc #specsavers in England, in the shop, tell me to go online to book an appointment.
Phil Thane ✅@robriley @engravecavedave @CiaraNi @mcmenguc Local hospital car park that had two payment options, by phone or cash. But the cash function has been broken for a year. Elderly guy in front of me in the queue had had to buy a smartphone just to go to hospital.
@pthane So awful and exclusionary. And given that it’s a hospital, it’s an abdication of social responsibility too.
@CiaraNi Yes but the real abdication was when the NHS trust handed over the car parks to a private parking company.
@pthane Ah yes, a whole other layer of social enshittification there, privatising vital public services.
@robriley A perfect example. Infuriating and inefficient and unfortunately quite common now.
James Bartlett 
@mcmenguc
The solution to this specific problem is to stop buying Apple products.
The solution to this specific problem is to stop buying Apple products.
SamuelJohnson@JamesDBartlett3 @mcmenguc To that specific problem only if you don't need something for an existing Apple product you already own.
Recently I was sent an email link to a form by my motor insurer requesting one piece of newly legally required data. The form gave an error, and continued to do so in subsequent weeks during which I received reminders and at no time could I get past voice mail. Their website carefully avoids furnishing an email address.
Tedious BS like this increasingly common.
Jamin Bogi@mcmenguc Then showing up for the appointment, only to have an hour-long wait due to the walk-ins ahead of you... 😭
Negative12DollarBill@CiaraNi now that I got everyone’s attention: free Palestine! 🇵🇸
Dean@dean @CiaraNi we were able to convince the #Apple store manager to sell us a #MacBookAir eventually without making an online appointment. But one of my worst experiences of this sort was at a #verizon where we waited over an hour before they told us they couldn’t give us a phone contract because they had no operating phone line at the time. They had no landline or cellular service in their own store! They told us to buy the package online.
Matthew Green@PressTheButtons This has become too common. As have phone menus where you spend 5-10 minutes just listening to 'choices' and pressing 1 and then 7 and 5 and inputting customer numbers before you get near a human, all the while being interrupted by a robot voice reading their doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou website-address to you, as if you hadn't thought to look for the answer to your question there first.
Kayla “Iacovino with an i”@mcmenguc @CiaraNi I go on an extended rant about this every time my husband wants to go to the Apple Store. On top of it being a crowded, germ infested, unfriendly place. I love when they’re like “oh it’ll be about 30 minutes until we can get the product and check you out. Can you wait here?” And I have to say something like “yeah I’ll just hang out at iPhone cases. For 30 minutes.” I swear if Tim Cook got a glimpse of what it’s like to shop in an Apple Store he would be appalled.
@Kayla Such an unnecessarily customer-unfriendly experience!
Lance, Enjoying Copious Pollen@CiaraNi This stuff drives me batty. Technology should make life easier, not less accessible for those who don't want to use FB/ IG or install unnecessary, data-slurping apps.
@analogfusion Me too. Technology is excluding so many people. Or rather, it's the companies and organisations who are doing the excluding, demanding that we use their technology their way.
@CiaraNi That's the crux of the matter right there: technology is increasingly deployed in ways that work against people.
I've long been a tech enthusiast, but I want to use the devices I buy for my own benefit rather than serving ongoing corporate agendas.
The maker of my operating system doesn't own my computer, and I should be able to control how the system is used, which features are enabled, etc.
@analogfusion Agreed, all of this! The expectation that we must download apps and accept constant updates and give away our data and fill our phones and computers, often for something simple and banal like buying a ticket or asking customer service a question.
@CiaraNi I don't know if you saw my posts from months ago, but I actually forfeited attending a concert I'd paid for because of this.
I forget the name of the ticketing agency, but in order to use your ticket, you have to download an app to present at the venue. They won't let you print a physical copy. I didn't realize that at the time.
The only other option is presenting the credit card used, but it has to be in your name (it was in my wife's).
I refuse to play their game.
@analogfusion That's a great example of this kind of thing.
Jill the PillThis is a good collection of these problems. Add the common situation where an uncurated search engine or map platform will give directions to facilities that no longer exist, particularly a problem when searching for electric car chargers on a low battery.
And fragility: when the credit card network or machine malfunctions, no-cash businesses just can’t function. Underfunded cities wasted millions on electronic parking meters and kiosks that couldn’t survive ice.
King Kaufman@jill_the_pill @CiaraNi @analogfusion
It's even more annoying when a business that does take cash WON'T function if their system is down. They refuse. Write down what people buy and enter it into the system later? Take cash? Nope.
@jill_the_pill Those are real problems. Even just seeing the card-swipe machines go offline for a short period in a supermarket - utter chaos. Everyone paralysed, staff and customers alike.
@analogfusion
@analogfusion
potpie@jill_the_pill @CiaraNi @analogfusion The school I work at has a Chromebook for every student. We're encouraged to make use of them and, overall, it's pretty good. But many classes have become quite dependent on them: online textbook, Google docs and other platforms for assignments, online everything all the time. Feels like putting all our eggs in one basket.
@potpie @jill_the_pill @CiaraNi I understand why schools use them, and it makes economic sense. Personally, I try to avoid being beholden to big data.
We support Microsoft's cloud services at work, so I have to use them there. On my personal machine, I have even OneDrive disabled.
@analogfusion 'Beholden' is a great word here, in this whole context. That's what we've allowed ourselves to be in too many situations.
@potpie Great point. I think about this whenever I see that a small local business or club solely communicates via one restrictive online platform - they're only on Facebook, or only on Instagram. If that product shuts down or substantially restricts its features, they're left standing on air.
David Brent 📚@analogfusion @CiaraNi Ticket stubs used to be great souvenirs and reminders of good times. I guess those days of having a paper ticket as a keepsake are gone.
At Disney World, Fast Passes used to be a paper ticket. If you didn't use it, you could just hand it to someone else who might want it. Since everything is all digital now, that little act of kindness is impossible.
@dbsalk Oh yes! I put the ticket stubs in opera programs afterwards and could instantly transport myself back to the right date and place later. Not the same with digital tickets, sadly.
And I'm all nostalgic now for the way we passed on bus and train tickets for unused portions to the nearest stranger getting on as you got off. Little acts of social solidarity!
Heather@CiaraNi Design Museum in London makes you have to have a phone for them to email the tickets to then you need to have your phone out of dark mode for them to scan the tickets.
You're. A. Design. Museum. Why do you not understand this design is horrific?
You're. A. Design. Museum. Why do you not understand this design is horrific?
@Akki That’s a great example of not-great design and use of technology
@CiaraNi I've literally never had any other digital ticketing system require me to change out of darkmode before, I was very flustered because I was like, where even is that option, I turned it on when I bought the phone, where do i turn it off and blind myself ? Just don't do interlaced images, do a background of white for your barcodes, geeze.
eyrea 🇨🇦
Thomas Adam
Lauren Weinstein@Akki @CiaraNi Clearly the design is not good, but I'll mention in passing that dark mode is problematic for scanning in a variety of circumstances. I'll add that for many people with common eye issues dark mode is MUCH less readable than white mode, and sites that do not permit white mode are causing them many problems.
@lauren @CiaraNi Oh this topic has come up on mastodon before, the minor amount of research out there has a roughly 50/50 split on if dark or light is better - it's totally down to personal preference. Poor UI on websites isn't new for accessibility or readability though, not limited to light/dark mode.
@Akki @CiaraNi I can hardly focus in dark mode at all. This appears to be the statistical norm, or closer to it: https://medium.com/@h_locke/why-dark-mode-causes-more-accessibility-issues-than-it-solves-d2f8359bb46a
@lauren @CiaraNi it's funny because as I was forced to read the first half of that article in light mode, it was giving me the halo effect it says people get in dark mode. Can't be arsed to sign up to read the whole thing but I'm sure I have read it before which is what sparked off another debate somewhere on mastodon where we concluded it's down to individual need/preference. Which is fine. Make it optional for everyone. Accessibility needs options. No one should be forced into a box.
Oliver Mantell@CiaraNi We had one last night: a taxi firm that only uses an app (so when the ordered taxi ‘disappeared’, there was no number to call / way to query it).
@olivermantell Perfect example. That exact situation happened to us last time I was in London amd it was a pre-booked taxi trip to catch a train. No way to contact them, just increasing one-way notifications that gave us no information about length of delay.
WikiParty@CiaraNi Best is when you phone your ISP because service is cut, and they direct you to their website.
@michaelgraaf It’s both illogical and dismissive of the customer.
Sven (retired)@CiaraNi Lol, finding an actual business information between all the fluff posts on Instagram* has made me furious in the past, too. 😅
What's that video link example thing, though?
* not to mention all the "It's better in the app" and "You should REALLY log in, you know?" popups.
@Sven A recent news story here (Denmark) about emergency service dispatchers haranguing callers after sending them an SMS with a video link. Idea is good, it lets you show the injury or wound for assessment. But there are recordings of dispatchers being rude and demanding to people who, mid-panic and mid-emergency, couldn't find & work the link. They just kept ordering a distressed man to work out the videolink on his phone instead of just dropping it and sending help for his injured wife.
@CiaraNi Ugggh.
Modern healthcare needs a lot of change, this is not one of them. 😅
@Sven It's a wonderful solution when used appropriately, but it requires good situational judgment by the people operating it. They need to know when *not* to insist that it is used and to understand the human factors (highly distressed end users, often in pain).