Lmst

BTW let's be clear: Almost all #twiddling is "illegal but it's OK because we're doing it digitally".

In no sane society are you allowed to sell an apple, then reach across the counter & replace it with a rock as the customer is about to bite into it. You promise & receive money for a thing, you're obliged to deliver THAT thing, not something else & you CERTAINLY can't change the thing later without the buyer's consent.

We know what to do about this. We just don't.

https://helvede.net/@jwcph/114346761961885978

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist Cory Doctorow @pluralistic speech at the 2025 Ursula Franklin Lecture. >

https://vimeo.com/1059798497

#enshitification #monopsonies #twiddling #LockedUsers #LockedSellers #GAFAM #lecture #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination#speech #SurveillanceCapitalism #interoperability #competition #regulation #WorkersPower #BigData #sellers #users #TechnoFeudalism #employment #ratings #Uberisation #queries #JediBlue #profiling #enshitified #internet #abuse #DataBrokers #AntitrustLaw #TechLayoffs #RegulatoryCaptures #TechnologicalAbuse #privacy #value #GiantPileOfShit #TechnicalMechanism #rankings #unions #digitalisation #nursing #speech #lecture #video #coporatocracy #monopoly

Amazonがプライバシー設定をなし崩しで破壊、Alexaの音声アップロードを強行

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://p2ptk.org/monopoly/5383

BCG Consulting will help you (Retail Grocer) use #AI to enter the Dynamic Game and "improve volumes, margins, and customer value perception simultaneously." -- "customer value perception" is very different than customer value, of course, which tends to reduce "volumes and margins". #dynamicpricing #enshittification #twiddling

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/overcoming-retail-complexity-with-ai-powered-pricing

The effect of #twiddling puts us up-and-coming writers in a dilemma that we didn't ask to be put in. We would like that qualitative feedback that Doctorow talks about, but our audience is a zygote that only divides based on a chain of arbitrary whims.

12/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

- and also that if they get their way with this, we will *all* be marginalized.

Remember, the end goal of Capitalism As Policy™️ is to eliminate any & all rights & turn them into privileges that can be traded for profit & also be granted or withheld by the powerful at will.

Essentially these tools are either already biased against all of us, or will be when their owners are done #twiddling.

https://mastodon.social/@tess/113047665053440692

@Nonilex If properly constructed, such regulation could also ban "surge pricing" & all the other price #twiddling bullsh*t everyone is trying to roll out - or already perpetrating - right now, like raising prices if they have data showing that this particular customer just got paid, or their biometrics show that the customer is in a hurry, or hungry etc.

It's incredibly predatory & definitely fits the descriptor of "price gouging" & it's likely to be obscured by tech; it needs to be hit hard.

@jay_peper Sounds like #twiddling , one of the unfair advantages gained thru #enshittification .

#CoryDoctorow talked in 3 episodes of 'On The Media' podcast about #Enshittification and, unsurprisingly, it was enjoyable to hear Cory talk about it.
The links are to the full show, but Cory was only on in the last part of each show.
And you'll learn about other awesome words like #SurveillanceLag and #Twiddling 😁

Part 1: https://waaa.wnyc.org/otm/otm050523_cms1323478_pod.mp3/otm050523_cms1323478_pod.mp3_ywr3ahjkcgo_d1f604e55d3c73f74ff0d946247c8ec2_50569272.mp3

Part 2: https://waaa.wnyc.org/otm/otm051223_cms1325774_pod.mp3/otm051223_cms1325774_pod.mp3_ywr3ahjkcgo_fb25f5cdd4249541bd0367bb14cc006a_51599266.mp3

Part 3: https://waaa.wnyc.org/otm/otm051923_cms1327710_pod2.mp3/otm051923_cms1327710_pod2.mp3_ywr3ahjkcgo_b553074145b6377ee4a6fc1dcfd628b9_50268834.mp3

Reviving 2010s-era *twiddling*, here's the NYT and Masnick: "An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/technology/mike-masnick-techdirt-internet-future.html ".Mr. Masnick exhorted the music industry to accept the internet and the opportunity it offered to connect with more fans. ...The digitization of music didn’t go exactly the way Mr. Masnick had hoped. Creators weren’t the primary winners; subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music were..." #twiddling #Tech #Art #Artists #AIEthics

Platformism is the same as conservativism: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

#FrankWilhoit #Twiddling #SelectiveDisruption #RIPPowerVentures

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

Frank Wilhoit described conservativism as “exactly one proposition”:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

This is likewise the project of corporatism. Tech platforms are urgently committed to ensuring that they can do anything they want on their platforms — and they’re even more dedicated to the proposition that you must not do anything they don’t want on their platforms.

They can lock you in. You can’t unlock yourself. Facebook attained network-effects growth by giving its users bots that logged into Myspace on their behalf, scraped the contents of their inboxes for the messages from the friends they left behind, and plunked them in their Facebook inboxes.

Facebook then sued a company that did the same thing to Facebook, who wanted to make it as easy for Facebook users to leave Facebook as it had been to get started there.

Apple reverse-engineered Microsoft’s crown jewels — the Office file-formats that kept users locked to its operating systems — so it could clone them and let users change OSes.

Try to do that today — say, to make a runtime so you can use your iOS apps and media on an Android device or a non-Apple desktop — and Apple will reduce you to radioactive rubble.

@pluralistic

Does your business, or do your investments, depend in #twiddling, #enshittification, and other modern variations of the #EnclosureActs? Are you sure that's a sound strategy? One that won't blow up in your face?

(Reminds me of why I had such a bad feeling when they announced we were moving to a service economy…and service promptly begin to deteriorate. Cory Doctorow once again explicates some of why and how.)