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In the old days, you'd take a survey on a McDonald's receipt and get a coupon for a free fry or something. These days, every product will sign you up for a newsletter without consent, ask for a review, or beg you to spend your time on a survey after the smallest interaction. Everything from the Art Institute of Chicago to Cava (a fast casual restaurant). And it's not just once, they'll send you reminders too. In-app, the prompts stack up on each other. I dread opening Jellyfish because I know I'll have to click through more than one pop up every time I want to check something quick. No, I still don't want to go to your conference, I'm trying to get work done.

Why can't they at least offer something of small value, like 10% off your next food order, or some API credits, so it's a fairer exchange? I guess because everyone's doing it, no individual product gets penalized for annoying their users.

There are exceptions of course, like Kagi. But they're far and few between.

Often, they'll ask for the review before I even had the time to really use the product. Like, I've just laid my hands on this thing, how am I supposed to know anything yet?!

When they send these 30-question surveys, surely they must be aware that the people who respond are not a random sample of the customer population but a sample of the subpopulation that is willing to take a 30-question survey for them?

Simple. Your mistake is assuming that these surveys used to gather actual information.

The 30 questions satisfy all of the bikeshedding smoothbrains in the survey-design-committee. The survey itself isn't used to make informed decisions to improve the product, but entirely to justify the manager's impact and thus everybody's bonuses.

As the joke goes,

Do you think [big tech company] understands consent?

> Yes

> Ask me later

Related to this, does anyone here know how to stop my iPhone asking me to turn on iCloud?

> Yes

> I am sinful and will go to hell

About 10 years ago I tried installed Little Snitch on my laptop. I set it up to check with me every time any native app tried to connect to the internet. "Here we go" I thought. "I'm going to actually see what apps are doing!".

I think I naively thought I'd end up with 10 rules or something, blocking telemetry. Oh what a sweet naive child I was. Its constant. Everything on my computer seemed to use about 8 different telemetry and update services. The sheer number of packets of environmental waste being produced every second by modern computers is breathtaking. It never stops.

Reading this article, I wonder what would happen if you tried selling software the old way again. "Buy our software! Pay once. We'll mail you out a USB stick with the program on it. Our software does not access the internet." It would be terribly inefficient, but it'd probably be fun to try. It would definitely force a lot more rigour around releases & testing.

It might not have a great impact, but I've started to fight back. Interrupt me in the middle of an important task? You get a 1-star rating. Ask me for some random information you shouldn't need? Get bogus answers. And so on.

This was the reason I switched from Windows to using Linux full time back around 2006. Windows used to be somewhat peaceful bu around then it increasingly started interrupting me instead of me generating interrupts for it. I gather Windows hasn't gotten better since then.

At least with Android it is mostly the apps that generate interruptions, so I can choose apps that do not, and control notification permissions for those I need.

Windows is unusable. I kept a long time because of "family member will wanna use Excel" but that is not a thing anymore. Alternatives are good. Very little Windows specific software I need anymore. Really just Backblaze better pricing is all I care for.

>And yet, this is how a lot of modern software behaves.

Not in my experience. Typically all of the "news" happens either during startup, or as part of some other flow. It doesn't happen in the middle of using software. Google Docs is not throwing up a blocking dialog in the middle of you typing a sentence.

>The analytics didn’t prove the feature was unwanted. The analytics proved that we buried it.

If I actually wanted a feature I would go through 10 menus to flip the switch. If the analytics says no one is uses it that is proof that no one wants it. It is possible that the user is unaware of it though.

>the product stops being a finished artifact

When you are doing constant software updates it is not a finished artifact anyways.

Enshittification didn't start recently. It was always there. You just didn't notice it because of your age. Your youth and childhood days always have good memories, doesn't matter how shitty those days were.

Selling is just as old as money. Every business that tried sell you soaps and cosmetics had to scare you about bacteria, making you forget that bacteria was always there with you for millennia. What you call enshittfication is the change accumulation that you witnessed over decades. Ask children who hasn't seen all that change. They see everything is just fine.

No company in the days of yore could pop up stuff on a screen that was always in my pocket.