Get out of the driver's seat

[UltraBudgie]

Middlemen... fah!

Google and Microsoft both are hard at work making users a "passive" element in online services... just a revenue source to be exploited. 

The middlemen will tell us what to access, what to see, what to hear... all the while 'telling' us what to think about it... be telling us what 'everyone' thinks about it... and it's all 'entertainment' so lies are fair game. 

And even when they are called out... they can hide behind "AI" and "algorithms" making it all "no one's fault."

And the market forces are in place to make it spiral. Imagine you have a website selling stuff. Well, to increase sales, you'll want to make a deal with google, so their AI assistant knows when to recommend your product as an option. They also have enough data to know exactly how much each customer might be willing to pay, which options to highlight to them to best get their attention, etc. All they ask is a small percentage. No problem! Sales boom. But, some people are still using the old webpage portal, with fixed pricing! Well, I guess we don't really need to make that easy to use any more, eh? Let's put a link in there to "Log in with Google". Hide things behind their wrapper, guide them to a "unified shopping experience". Gradually, the enshittification takes over, and everyone gives up trying to use things directly. Then those options disappear entirely. See how it'll go? It awesome, in the old sense of the word that means "awful".

One of the few ways to protest other than personal boycott is social shaming. Recently, when people use Siri to answer questions, or Google voice assist or whatever, I will sometimes laugh in their face -- "ha! you actually use that crap?" It does not make me very popular. But then again that has never really been a risk for me, and it does occasionally give opportunity to explain myself. Sadly, people seem to respond to the social pressure of someone laughing at their stupidity much more than reasoned argument.