Enshittification Nation

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Actually Useful

Ariel Butters and AJ Weaver

13 episodes

1 day ago

Why do so many once-beloved internet platforms end up toxic, predatory, and unusable? In an age where tech giants have monopolized our attention, privacy, and livelihoods, how can individuals claw back some agency? Every other Thursday, Actually Useful co-hosts Ariel and AJ talk with creators of radically useful consumer tech to explore what it takes to build and protect the loveliest parts of the internet. If you’re exhausted by parasitic products and feel trapped in an ecosystem of unethical, undelightful tech, this one’s for you.

Technology

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Enshittification Nation

Actually Useful

53 minutes 53 seconds

1 month ago

Enshittification Nation

Ariel, AJ, and Producer Josh are finally all together for a very anticipated episode: we’re digging into Cory Doctorow’s new book, Enshittification. We talk about who really owns your shoelaces, how Amazon controls the price of everything you buy everywhere you buy it, and what happens when the company you rent your eyeballs from runs out of business. In Falcon Mode, we discuss how to build a low-tech book swap with like-minded readers.

Links:

- Cory Doctorow’s new book, Enshittification

- What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life, New York Times guest essay

- Jeremy Carrasco’s absolutely crazy experiment with YouTube Shorts trained on Cocomelon

- Brian Merchant’s crowdsourced project, AI Killed My Job

- Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing

- Kagi (our favorite search engine)

- The Kids on the Night Shift, the New York Times article about child labor on US poultry farms

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at heyactuallyuseful@gmail.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).