This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “Show Me the Incentive, I’ll Show You the Outcome,” about the process by which we ended up with an enshittogenic policy environment:
The whole point of the conservative project is to take away choices, and corral us into “preferences” that we disprefer. Eliminate no-fault divorce, suppress the vote, gerrymander the electoral map, cram a binding arbitration clause into every terms of service and a noncompete into every labor contract, buy up all your competitors, DRM-lock all the media, ban contraception and abortion, and you’ve got a world of partners you can’t divorce, politicians you can’t vote out, companies you can’t sue, jobs you can’t quit, services you can’t leave, books and music you can’t move, and pregnancies you can’t prevent or terminate.
And after you are relentlessly corralled into all these things you hate, you will be told that you don’t hate them after all – because you revealed your preferences for them.
Consumerism is a terrible way to make change at the best of times, and it gets less effective by the day, as authoritarianism and market consolidation shrink the world of possibilities to an endless Pepsi Challenge, where “choice” is narrowed to which flavor of sweetened battery acid you hate the least.
I don’t think that end users are to blame for enshittification.
I recently discovered some of your powerful writings about the Meta corporation, and its mistreatment of its users. I am one of the people who have directly experienced this abuse. In a nutshell, here’s what I’m dealing with:
I have been on Facebook for almost 15 years. This past June they shut me out of my account, and blocked my pages from public access. To get back in, they are insisting that I prove my identity via a “video selfie”. Since they are now using facial recognition technology, I have not complied with their demand. Meta has ignored all my attempts to appeal this ruling.
I have reported this to the Better Business Bureau, and also to a Canadian consumer watchdog agency. So far, I have had no success in getting anyone to intercede on my behalf. Here’s the main problem: I manage five pages on FB, which I have poured a huge amount of creative work into. They will all be deleted some time in December. If that happens, I intend to do a blog post exposing their mistreatment.
I have already written a detailed account of this complex situation, and I am hoping to send it to you as an attachment via email. If you think my case has merit, I would greatly appreciate it if you could possibly put me in touch with one or more media outlets that might be interested in giving this problem some coverage. Thanks for your time.