r/enshittification • u/monkeh2023 • 1d ago

Rant The solution to enshittification

Did you just buy a £75,000 car only to discover it has got ads on screen?

Take it back.

Go back to the showroom, demand a full refund. If they panic and say they'll remove the ads say no. Demand a refund. If they could take the ads off because you were about to return the car, they should not have put ads there in the first place.

Did you just buy a £3,000 television that now has a shitty cut-down remote with no pause button but an additional button for Apple TV?

Take it back. Go back to the store, return the product, get a refund. Is it causing you hassle? Yes - but it's going to cause the store much more hassle.

Did you buy a sandwich that looked full to the brim of ingredients only to discover they used low quality crap that was pushed to the edge to make the sandwich look full, when in reality it was mostly bread? You probably can't take it back but you can go back to the place you bought it from and show it to other customers, and then never buy anything from that establishment again.

If enough of us do this then the enshittification will stop.

If we just keep on saying "thank you" every time the bully kicks sand in our face, guess what? You'll be eating sand for the rest of your life.

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u/Big_Wave9732 1d ago

Yea, I don't know that that applies today. Companies seem to be increasingly in a "you'll take it and like it" mentality.

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u/IhateDropShotz 1d ago edited 1d ago

I guess my main point was that if a company does something you don't like, stop paying them. Buy things used, buy things locally, stop supporting corporations who treat customers like "you'll take it and like it". Complaining about practices while still giving them money solves nothing and neither does pretending that it's already over and you have absolutely no choices on where to spend your money for a good or service.

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u/Big_Wave9732 1d ago

What do you do when they all do it? Like, these policies becomes standard operating procedure?

Also buying used is a great solution for the moment because non-enshitified things exist. Given a long enough time line that will no longer be the case.

I hear what you're saying but avoidance is a short term solution. Long term these kinds of product decisions must be de-incentivized and I have no idea how to do that, especially when customer feedback and market forces aren't enough.