Beyond this, AI is very useful for plain old enshittification. Surveillance pricing - changing prices or wages based on the other person's desperation and ability to pay - is something AI is *very* good at:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/21/cod-marxism/#wannamaker-slain
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If you ask a chatbot to recommend a product and it steers you toward an inferior option that generates a higher commission for the company, who can say whether that was the chatbot cheating, or if it was it a "hallucination?" Likewise, if you ask a chatbot to solve your problem and it does so in an inefficient way that burns a zillion tokens (which you have to pay for), is that the chatbot malfunctioning, or is that price-gouging?
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/16/jackpot/#salience-bias
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new by @citizenlab
Bad Connection
Uncovering Global Telecom Exploitation by Covert Surveillance Actors
"Our investigation uncovers two sophisticated telecom surveillance campaigns and, for the first time, links real-world attack traffic to mobile operator signalling infrastructure."
https://citizenlab.ca/research/uncovering-global-telecom-exploitation-by-covert-surveillance-actors/
One of the questions I get most frequently is "what about AI and enshittification?" This is a complicated question! Obviously, AI is *very* enshittification-prone: as "black boxes" that do not produce reliable, deterministic outputs, AI products have a lot of intrinsic cover for their enshittifying behavior.
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I really don't know what to do with a handful of - I assume well-meaning - replies to my science funding shit-posts. They have the form of debunking or advocacy, "explaining" something to an ignorant public. That something is, in short: "science needs money, so there is no room for critique on how scientists organize under fascism."
This can also be applied to politics. Restrictions on immigration and out-migration are both preludes to state enshittification, since a population that can't leave for another state will, on average, put up with more abuse from their political classes without leaving. Tying your work visa to your employer is *very* enshittification-friendly:
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3h agoAround five years after I first started working on this document about the vision of a Knowledge Space, I am finally ready to call this version 1.0! 😁 Here it is: https://w3id.org/knowledge-space/
And it's now actually more than just a vision, as all the main parts have been implemented (see "Current Implementations"). I'm always curious to hear feedback, and there will be follow-ups on the implementation side.
(Applying this to the effort to kill the concept of "marital rape" is left as an exercise for the reader.)
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3h agoHOERA FEEST VOOR IEDEREEN NEEM EEN VRIJE DAG @astridpoot IS JARIG
Good morning from Düsseldorf! #btconf is about to start.
Or if shitty men lobby to end anti-discrimination laws (making it much harder for a single woman to survive on her paycheck) and to end no-fault divorce (to make it much harder for a woman to leave the husband she marries to survive in a world where it's legal to discriminate against her in the workplace), in anticipation of being able to be a shitty husband without losing their wives, they are enshittifying marriage.
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3h agoPatriots for Europe secretary-general under new scrutiny for alleged EU funds misuse
A senior member of the far-right Patriots for Europe in the European Parliament could face an anti-fraud investigation over allegations of millions of misspent EU funds.
If they can bind workers to noncompete "agreements" that make it illegal for the cashier at Wendy's to get $0.25/h more at the McDonald's, that's even *more* enshittifying:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/10/zero-sum-zero-hours/#that-sounds-like-a-you-problem
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Gentle souls ... 💜
3h agoIf we were to compare nations+regions (i.e. ITL areas https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/ukgeographies/eurostat) this would more readily show the gaps between the south of England and the rest of us. Let us see more easily how badly large areas of the north of England do compared to Scotland. You don't really see that when all of England gets averaged.
So if the business lobby bribes Republican state legislators to pass "right to work" laws that make it nearly impossible for workers to unionize, and then the businesses involved worsen their workers' pay and conditions, we can call that enshittification.
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Note that this definition requires a degree of intent. Enshittification isn't just bargaining hard when you find yourself in a position of strength. It's what happens when you set out to systematically weaken other people's bargaining position in anticipation of a future opportunity to fuck them over in order to improve your own situation.
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Teaser in der TL: Laut Statistischem Bundesamt ist der Anteil der Fahrradfahrer an den Verkehrstoten im vergangenen Jahr erneut gestiegen. Vor allem ältere Menschen auf E-Bikes sind demnach gefährdet.
Mein Kopf: Die Fomulierung ist unredlich. Es sind nicht Ältere und E-Bike-Fahrende besonders gefährdet, da wartet ja keine SUV-fahrende Person extra drauf. Sondern deren Anzahl ist innerhalb der Gruppe von Menschen außerhalb von PKWs gestiegen und daher die Unfälle statistisch häufiger.
