Armok_the_bunny

Armok_the_bunny , 2 months ago

I take issue with three things about this article.

1. Enshittification happens when a company seeks short term profit over long term stability, usually to appeal to shareholders. Valve is privately held, so the shareholders it has to appeal to are just GabeN and anyone else in the company that holds stock, and GabeN at least has a long history of valuing quality over short term profit.

2. The article seems to just gloss over all the reasons online sentiment about Epic trends negative, such as controversial statements made by the CEO, missing and long overdue features that should be quite basic, and yes, timed exclusives. It just memes about how they give out free games, and now that I think about it that does stink of the first step of enshittification, and the lower cut from developers stinks of the second.

3. I'm much more inclined to blame Apple for Valve not bothering to support Mac, as Apple is the one that should be responsible for so many of the things that make it not worth bothering. Apple is the one that failed to make their platform attractive to gamers and is the one that made their shiny new computing architecture that is incompatible with all the existing software. It's quite unfair in my eyes to ask Valve to support a platform that nobody else does.

Maybe the author has a point, maybe Valve will sell out when GabeN retires if he has the company go public, but until that happens I'm unconcerned. This all reads to me as someone using the shiny new word for clicks.

Armok_the_bunny , 3 months ago

Isn't enshittification a process that occurs completely independently of net neutrality existing or not existing?

Armok_the_bunny , 2 months ago

What I meant was, doesn't enshittification refer to a specific process of being good until you have market capture, then being shit to abuse that market capture for profit. I don't think enshttification applies where net neutrality does on the grounds that the telecom companies affected by it have never done the first step of being good to consumers, they have always been monopolies by virtue of being financial bullies.

Armok_the_bunny , 3 months ago

The answer seems fairly obvious to me if they really want to improve search results: blanket ban any domain owned by any company known to engage in blatant SEO spam, let them appeal after 6 months. The fact that isn't done means Google sees profit in allowing SEO spam to exist as long as it doesn't push too many people away.

Armok_the_bunny , 4 months ago

The AWS side of their business isn't the side everyone complains about with unethical behavior, it's possible to be mad at one side of a company and to boycott it without doing the same to the other side of the company. It really helps that AWS has actual competitors in a way that Amazon shopping doesn't.

Armok_the_bunny , 4 months ago

Good to know. Sad to say I don't have much choice there unlike how I can just avoid shopping through Amazon, since it's not up to me who hosts websites.

Armok_the_bunny , 5 months ago

Since this is the Internet and this sarcasm doesn't exist, the serious answer is that the court systems (ideally) do nothing but enforce laws. That is their job, they should be the primary organization doing that job, alongside the police sometimes, and they don't have any job aside from that.

Armok_the_bunny , 5 months ago

Quoting whitehouse.gov: "federal courts enjoy the sole power to interpret the law, determine the constitutionality of the law, and apply it to individual cases." The executive branch contains the police as well as the various other departments that investigate potential crimes and bring actions in court against those that commit said crimes.