this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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I can't speak for how other people browse, but when I come across an article with a paywall, I tend to say "eh, it wasn't that important anyway" and leave. Or if it really is important, I'll search for the title and try to find the information on a site without a paywall.
If there ends up being a "browser wall", I'll certainly do the same thing. No article/web app is so important or unique that it's worth quitting my preferred browser (Firefox) and switching to something I like less.
But what's scary to me, as a Firefox user, is that Chrome & Safari are so extremely dominant. If companies are forced to choose between supporting Chrome (60% share), Safari (20% share), or Firefox (3% share), it's clear that Firefox users will run out of sites to use pretty quickly.
Right, if this sort of browser wall thing happens (which, the doctrine of enshittification seems to dictate that it probably will), and it can't be spoofed or worked around. Alright, I'm seeing the issues here. Thanks for chiming in with your thoughts. This is a huge deal, if it goes in this sort of direction.
Who's seeing a pattern here?
YouTube and other platforms increasing ads Meta being Meta Twitter becoming X Reddit fucking API and the platform itself Now, Google coming up with their policies
Are we entering an era where we are silently being forced into becoming customers to these big monopolies, and being under constant surveillance?
Like what the fuck do they want, they already control every fucking thing, what more they want still? What they try to commodify still?
It's the entshitification of the internet which if you follow Doctorow you already know about. It seems to be spreading to non-web properties now too like obviously cars are trying to lock things behind subscription services.
I think there is a silver lining here and that is federated tech like this site is finally getting some attention as a real alternative to reddit/twitter/etc. Even better would be some real extreme trustbusting as a reaction from our governments but seeing as that would hurt their investments I'm not holding my breath.