>it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms that come with them.
I don't think its "almost like", I think it "actually is", and that its intentional.
There is a perspective that is now prevalent in tech and business that users are good only as far as you can monetize them. Any concepts of respect or value outside of that have been discarded.
There used to be a sense that you needed to continue improving a product to keep charging the same or more for it. Now companies expect you to pay more every year while products are stagnating or being enshittified to extract higher profit margins on top of the increased prices they are charging.
Tech is now run by Business/Sales people, and every user is a statistic in a spreadsheet they are trying to extract the most money from for the least amount of investment.
Data collection and behaviour tracking is one side of the coin, but we really don't talk about why companies are willing to pay so much for that data or what they do with it... that's a conversation I think needs to be focused on.
I don't think its "almost like", I think it "actually is", and that its intentional.
There is a perspective that is now prevalent in tech and business that users are good only as far as you can monetize them. Any concepts of respect or value outside of that have been discarded.
There used to be a sense that you needed to continue improving a product to keep charging the same or more for it. Now companies expect you to pay more every year while products are stagnating or being enshittified to extract higher profit margins on top of the increased prices they are charging.
Tech is now run by Business/Sales people, and every user is a statistic in a spreadsheet they are trying to extract the most money from for the least amount of investment.
Data collection and behaviour tracking is one side of the coin, but we really don't talk about why companies are willing to pay so much for that data or what they do with it... that's a conversation I think needs to be focused on.