Post by @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io

@jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io 22 hr. ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/117592857554097967

There is a part of me that gets what Jason is seeing here. The problem is that I can also see past that, and it's bad.

The problem is a near total lack of consumer protection. Your tv sucks, and spies on you, and is overflowing with ever more ads because courts and regulators refuse to hold them accountable for it. You bought a product, you had a warranty, and the people we empowered to enforce all that just didn't. This hyper-libertarian-free-for-all is not the solution to that. It just formalizes everyone being completely on their own. It's amnesty for samsung. It's not liberation for you.

Society is fracturing under the weight of capitalism. How do you think the response to that problem is to destroy society?

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hyakinthos

@hyakinthos@layer8.space 10 min. ago

@jenniferplusplus
> because courts and regulators refuse to hold them accountable for it.

That’s true. But that’s just ½ of it. It’s the consumers who buy the enshitified garbage that send a clear signal in support of enshitification.

I will not buy a washing machine now that I have been stung, and learnt the hard way that all modern washing machines now have kill switches. So I wash my clothes by hand. Yes, it fucking sucks but it’s important to not be part of the problem by buying the shit

Toni

@giorginolab@mstdn.science 11 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus apparently "disruption" is for me, but not for thee

Jake in the desert

@jake4480@c.im 15 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus I'm mostly at the point where if I even see anything about 'AI', I check out, close the tab, read something else. This stuff is beyond too far.

Flaki

@flaki@flaki.social 19 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus plus we have to tiptoe around repurposing decades-old, largely unsupported hardware we have supposedly bought and, purportedly, "own" in an economy where 1, electronic waste is overflowing while 2, purchasing new tech is increasingly made infeasible by a megalomaniac billionaire class' fever dream. And we have always had, right-to-repair, DMCA's reverse-engineering provision… it is simply that now a centralized entity controls the skill that irks said ruling class, and they don't even have to Make An Example by suing a Bunnie Huang or Aaron Swartz into oblivion, they just get you kicked off the platform, easy.

Jenniferplusplus

@jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io 22 hr. ago

IOW, this story is like: "people are slopping up workarounds for shitty software in shitty electronics, and that's awesome"

But the proper framing is: "people are slopping up workarounds for shitty software in shitty electronics, and it sucks that's the only recourse available to them"

Maybe software and electronics should not be so shitty in the first place. But I dunno, I've just spent two decades building software that I refused to make shittier, and often being punished for it

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Disputatore@masto.pt 10 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus one can either dream about what should be, or work with what is.

Urkel

@stevenqurkel@infosec.exchange 20 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus +1 on this. The only way to match the pace of garbage being released is with more people/money, or the same “productivity” boosters. It’s wild (to me) that the shitty software is being built by companies that are often using the same genAI tools as the people building the workarounds and the AI companies are banking on both. It reminds me of TMZ posting an inaccurate story so they don’t get scooped, following it up with a separate, corrected story later and profiting from the engagement of both during the window of confusion.

So much time and resources could be saved by treating quality as a first-class citizen BEFORE shipping 😿

Jenniferplusplus

@jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io 19 hr. ago

@stevenqurkel the software embedded in smart appliances has always been dogshit, no one needed AI to do that.

But otherwise, yes

blinking japes constantly

@bjc@shangdu.kublai.com 20 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus this is the tech equivalent of those headlines: "heartwarming! single dad who can't afford car walks 5 miles every day to work in twenty year old shoes to send his kid to college!"

twifkak

@twifkak@mas.to 20 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus "spent two decades building software that I refused to make shittier, and often being punished for it"

oh yeah, been there, can relate. got enough for a short book but I think box breathing and hobbies are a healthier use of my time.

Colin from Edinburgh.

@photoncollector@mastodon.social 22 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus

The internet is not forever.

As soon as someone decides that it's time to cut those cables, it's done.

And easily done, at that.

Riley S. Faelan

@riley@toot.cat 22 hr. ago

@photoncollector So, you don't understand the Internet.

@jenniferplusplus

Colin from Edinburgh.

@photoncollector@mastodon.social 22 hr. ago

@riley @jenniferplusplus

Prove that by disproving what I said.
Take as long as you need.

1 more reply

Lykso

@lykso@tiny.tilde.website 22 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus Yeah. All the "good" use cases I've seen for generative AI point to societal failures that *ought* to be addressed further upstream.

Dan Marchese

@dan@social.marchese.me 22 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus all the “we need to regulate AI” legislators confuse me. Everything they’re saying to regulate against is already illegal. We’re not supposed to need special laws to prosecute an existing crime just because someone used AI to do it.

This is a great example of solving a problem that we shouldn’t have in the first place. In software at least you get a bunch of weird unnecessary complexity from solving a problem in the wrong place (or solving one you invented).

Ethan Marcotte

@beep@follow.ethanmarcotte.com 22 hr. ago

@jenniferplusplus Man, yes, all of this. We need more social contracts, not fewer.