this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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^Qn.

How to reduce the enshittification on various services.

( eg: Payment sites instead of Apps, Ads in Facebook site - I rarely use FB )

Any browser addons, scripts are welcome.

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[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 67 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You seem to be taking about something other than enshittification, which has a specific meaning and isn't just places not respecting privacy or whatever. Per Cory Doctorow (who invented the term) via Wikipedia:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

If enshittification is what you're assist interested in reducing, check out Cory's book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

[–] max641@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ok. Let me check the book.

[–] Baku@aussie.zone 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 50 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Start getting into self hosting, you dont need all that expensive hardware. An old laptop can get you started.

Heres some stuff you can do.

Fix youtube:

A script (with yt-dl) on a schedule checks a list of channels to download x amount latests videos from their channel.

Fix Television Streaming:

Jellyfin allows you to stream your own content regardless where you sourced it. I output the youtube videos from above in it

Fix Music Stream

Ive setup Navidrone to stream my music library. Previously i only ever played locally stored music but storage space limits forced me to look beyond and its been working well

Fix Cloud computing

Get full control and ownership of your data so it cant be exploited behind your back. Nextcloud is well documented on how to setup your own cloud system including office apps, calendars.

Fix personal online communication.

Signal appears to be one of the only ones competent to so it right.

In general on the web:

  • Always ublock origin, I've yet to see a better one and i flat-out wont use the desktop web without.

  • Use bookmarks for sites you visit regularly rather then giving search engine the extra traffic every time. This sounds super mild but its actually a focus lifehack. You dont need 90% of the shit your being distracted with.

Most people only need a handful of urls for a few functions. For me half of those are selfhosted and those that arent are in someway selected and configured for personal least hassle least shit experience. Ever since I bookmarked Wikipedia and wolfram i’ve used them more to get answers than conventional search engines.

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Jellyfin allows you to stream your own content regardless where you sourced it. I output the youtube videos from above in it

Sorry for the dumb question, I’ve just never understood it, but where do I get the content from? Like, do I download from an online streaming site and upload the mp4 to Jellyfin? Or is there a better way?

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 10 points 5 months ago

Personally i tend to have 3 sources

  • daily youtube videos automatically downloaded trough a script.

  • dvd’s, automatic ripping machine is a piece of software to automatically helps you rip your old physical dvds. Ive recovered some great nostalgia that can no longer be obtained otherwise.

  • whats this? A website? https://fmhy.net/ β€œFree media heck yeah” thats a weird name. It looks like a wikipedia of something, I wonder what thats all about.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 2 points 5 months ago

You can buy music from Bandcamp. You get it drm free. There may be other sites that sell music too, but Bandcamp is the one I've been using.

You can also still buy CD/vinyl and rip it yourself.

That's up to you. It can be from anywhere. You can buy DVDs and rip them, buy digital downloads, or rip DVDs from the library or friends. You can also go the piracy route and find torrents or direct downloads.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You need to host Jellyfin on your own server. For example, you can get a micro pc and attach a hard drive to it with N terabytes of your legally acquired movies and tv shows.

Getting it working right is a pain (I keep running into problems where it stops working, or the metadata is wrong, it forgets how to access the drive, and so on). You also need to ensure it has an IP address to access it from afar, and set us SSL encryption if you want secure access from afar. Expect to put aside several hours to set it up, and then several more to fix it when it breaks inexplicably days or months down the line.

Then you can connect to it from your browser directly or via the jellyfin app. Apple TV even has a jellyfin app, so I can watch from my parents' TV setup. You can set things up so that different users can access different shows even.

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[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 46 points 5 months ago (10 children)

I go outside and roll around in the grass with my dogs. There's no enshittification outside.

[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 43 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Careful where you roll around. You might roll into a warm pile of dog enshitification.

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[–] LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml 17 points 5 months ago

It's 100% happening outside as well though invasive ad placements, restriction of access to pleasant environments and underfunding of public services and property, like parks and such. It just takes much longer

[–] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Download our free mobile app to enter the park.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 5 months ago

Oh god, I hate how I feel like I could actually encounter this.

[–] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

How's your local air quality?

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

except there absolutely is. I live in what used to be a literal forest with a road through it and now its smog and tire dust the moment yoy open a door or window.

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[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

the fossil fuel industry has entered the chat

[–] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I wish I agreed with this, but every day more forests and fields are knocked down to make room for more shitty subdivisions in my area. The few farmers that have held out and still use their land on the middle of the city are heroes, but I know that within a few decades they will slowly dissappear, as the farmers die and their kids cash in on that appreciated land.

[–] macaroni1556@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

Not like farmers don't abuse and exploit the land themselves. It's just a bit more aesthetic.

[–] Nemo@midwest.social 9 points 5 months ago

Depends on the dogs, IME.

[–] exanime@lemmy.today 8 points 5 months ago

There's no enshittification outside.

Just watch out for the literal shit some irresponsible pet owners leave behind.... Other than that, this is great advice

[–] max641@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Haha.. I was waiting for this solve-all-issues-by-moving-to-cave kind of reply.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 15 points 5 months ago

I'd start with ublock origin for browser extensions, and then add more things based on what you're looking to do :)

You've already mentioned a few, but another might be to explore alternatives to the bad services and start a process to migrate over. That can look like anything from reducing your dependence on a service to moving over entirely.

ex. unfollow people and things you don't care about

[–] Wanangwa_Bamidele@thelemmy.club 12 points 5 months ago

Support indie bussiness, especially local business.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 months ago

The best tip I can give you, one that actually has an impact is, if a system sucks, don't be afraid to set up your own system.

I used to put all photos I wanted to share on DeviantArt, but that site has just got slower and overall worse the last decade.

Back in the spring of 2023 I had just got a new camera was getting more and more annoyed at dA for how slow it was.

So I decided to do it myself, I use digiKam as a photo organizer, it can create decent HTML galleries, so I use those and just built a nice HTML/CSS index page, and pop it all on a private webhost.

It is blazingly fast, I can use arrow key navigation in the galleries and it is just a fantastic experience.

And since I only really wanted a place to share my photos with friends and family it is enough for me.

I won't link it here as it contains my name.

[–] Nemo@midwest.social 7 points 5 months ago

disable JavaScript and images in your browser

stick to "publisher" sites rather than "platform" sites / Web 2.0 / social media

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Go to spacex. Steal a rocket. Live on the moon.

[–] undeffeined@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago

You mean die trying to leave earth?

[–] ahriboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago

Watch Dogs 2 eh?

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Self host as much as you can. Use smaller services when you can’t. And pay for things you don’t host yourself. If it’s free to you, it’s because you’re the product.

[–] lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

On Android, using an app like DuckDuckGo or TrackerControl is huge for protecting your data in other apps

[–] Wanangwa_Bamidele@thelemmy.club 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Duckduckgo just fetch api from google and bing. So, basically you search on Gooogle or Bing using different frontend

[–] lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 months ago

Not the search engine. The Android app has a feature called App Tracking Protection that blocks trackers in other apps, akin to PiHole, but run on the device.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I get the impression it might just be really hard to run your own search engine, so a new frontend is the best we can do.

[–] leanleft@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Essentially, It really isnt that hard.
But
A) there is no unified project for the masses.
B) it is very hard to create a universal search engine that gives you needed info for something extremely unexpected like "reggae feline flames scanner" .

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I mean a good search engine, comparable to Google. Even if the software is doable that's a lot of data that has to be scraped and stored.

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[–] logging_strict@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

duckcuckgo is obsolete. Use searx.space

[–] leanleft@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

I hear people frequently say this.

Searx is basically a proxy. If you had an actual proxy.. you would achieve the exact same benefits. Its good for making it difficult.. or extremely difficult to tie a person's real identity, directly to their search query.
Another thing that searx does is sends your query to google. This is not good for privacy. But sometimes it gives you additional results.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

reduce the enshittification

Whatever you want to buy out there, do a proper research on it.

Most definitely , there will be a review of it, be it from YouTube, blogs; there should be someone talking about it (perks of the internet)

If not, you better run.

Being an early adoptor is a recipe for disappointments.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Also be mindful that a lot of online reviews might be sponsored, thus biased. I personally do look for reviews (ideally at least 2-3 different ones), but also for opinions of users on forums and other social media.

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I was just talking about this yesterday.

My wife has a top of the line "remarkable" with upgraded storage space, she's grandfathered into that option, which is no longer available. it's now entirely monthly subscriptions, she wouldn't have had the opportunity if she weren't an early adopter.

We used to swear by "never buy iteration 1 of a generation" but today it seems that if a product is going to be successful, it's going to get degraded in iteration 2.

Textbook enshittification. Now you have to take a chance on something being good and the company sticking around, and buy in before it gets on the radar of investors.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Be veeeeeery wary of browser addons. They gain access to the data of every web page. Can monitor keystrokes, etc. so… usernames, passwords, bank accounts. How hard would it be for a developer to maliciously add code that is distributed to thousands of devices?

Pretty easy if you ask XZ

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

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