https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags
'"Enshittification" isn't just a way of describing the
symptoms of platform
decay: it's also a theory of the
mechanism of decay – the means by which
platforms get shittier and shittier until they are a giant pile of shit.
I call that mechanism "twiddling": this is the ability of digital services to
alter their business-logic – the prices they charge, the payouts they offer,
the particulars of the deal – from instant to instant, for each user,
continuously:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/
Contrary to Big Tech's own boasting about its operations, the tricks that tech
firms play to siphon value away from business customers and end-users aren't
very sophisticated. They're crude gimmicks, like offering a higher per-hour
wage to Uber drivers whom the algorithm judges to be picky about which rides
they'll clock in for, and then lowering the wage by small increments as a way
of lulling the driver into gradually accepting a permanent lower rate:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
This is a simple trick. The difference is that tech platforms like Uber can
play it
over and over, and
very quickly. There's plenty of wage-stealing
scumbag bosses who'd have loved to have shaved pennies off their workers'
paychecks, then added a few cents back in if a worker cried foul, then started
shaving the pennies again. The thing that stopped those bosses was the
bottleneck of payroll clerks, who couldn't make the changes fast enough.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
