Post
If you want to live in a better world, then shut up that nagging, neoliberalism-trained reflex that treats corporations as charitable enterprises and "consumers" as the secret legislators of the market and the ultimate authors of all its dysfunctions.
Even for their most ardent defenders, markets are supposed to "process aggregated demand signals" about the willingness of different parties to accept different offers.
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But if the only "demand signal" you can offer is a binary "take it or leave it," that's a *very* thin data set (and it gets thinner still when "leave it" requires a time machine so you can go back to before you started and warn yourself that the offer's going to be altered adversely in the future).
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There are a range of ways to respond to a worsening offer from a merchant, well beyond "take it or leave it." You can complain. You can sue. You can picket. You can boycott. You can spraypaint "GREEDY PIGS" on the corporate headquarters. This is a rich set of infomrational inputs for the market indeed.
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When it comes to digital services, you have even more opportunities to program the great market computer in the sky (all hail the infallible market computer!). For example, if a company makes the ads on its webpage too obnoxious and invasive, you can install an ad-blocker, a thing that 51% of all web users have done, making it the largest consumer boycott in human history:
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/
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An ad-blocker enriches the take-it-or-leave it, thin data-set of internet usage patterns by allowing users to make a *counter-offer*: "How about *nah*?"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah
Of course, no one has ever installed an ad-blocker for an *app*, because that's a *felony* under Section 1201 of the DMCA. An app is just a web-page skinned in the right kind of IP to make it a crime to protect yourself while you use it.
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@pluralistic
That's why they say, "It's better in the app".
First question I asked was, "Better for who?"
That's why companies - like Snapchat - are insatiably horny to get you to switch from using websites to using apps.
Ultimately, I just don't think neoliberal economists believe in what they're selling. They don't want a market of "demand-signals" that can be used to guide allocations. They just want to help the greediest, worst people on earth screw you as hard as they can, all day long.
And then blame *you* for it.
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I'm on a tour with my new book *Enshittification*!
Catch me next in #Cambridge, MA; Washington, #DC and #Brooklyn!
Full schedule with dates and links at:
https://pluralistic.net/tour
eof/
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