Mastodawn

calcifer 🧯Aug 20, 2024

I swear people don’t understand planned obsolescence. PLANNED is the key

If I stop supporting a 6-year-old version of something because I have data suggesting hardly anyone uses it anymore, that’s just garden variety obsolescence

If I plan on day one to stop support after 6 years, THAT is planned obsolescence. Same if I just make design decisions such that most of them will break before then.

If I deliberately break old things, that’s not planned obsolescence, that’s FORCED obsolescence.

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calcifer 🧯

Forced obsolescence is mostly illegal and ought to be completely illegal.

Planned obsolescence is grayer. If I note that 95% of people replace their fridge within 10 years, so I decide to save money by only building fridges that last around 10 years… that’s not necessarily a problem (yes, we can get into how disposable culture is a problem, but I could write a whole paper on the complexities of blame there).

It’s definitely a problem when it’s more like hey I noticed people will not be upset or buy a different brand in the case a fridge only lasts 8 years, so let’s only make ours last 8 years so we can sell more.