Today’s links Meatspace twiddling: Cyberspace may never evert, but it can certainly prolapse. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Colophon: All the rest. Meatspace twiddling (permalink) “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…Pluralistic: Meatspace twiddling (26 Mar 2024)