We all know the struggle of beloved services slowly going downhill. What’s one service, tool, or website you’ve been using for years that’s still great and hasn’t turned to crap?
Craigslist
Hasn’t changed much at all, and their app is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more–i think the only thing I wasn’t able to do in the app was clear a saved search, but there’s no bloat, no ads, don’t need an account unless you’re posting or saving searches.
The site still looks like it came right out of the late 90’s and that’s all it needs to be
There is currently an amazing amount of top-quality, open source, design and development software: Blender, Godot, Inkscape and Krita, for instance.
That’s different, those are open source projects, not walled off paid service from companies
My local ISP. They are not a monopoly, they are local only, they provide fiber and great customer service. You call and they answer instantly, they don’t treat you like an idiot when you call. They don’t restrict anything and you have unlimited data. It’s very simple.
Last month T-mobile bought them after years of great service so I expect the enshittification to come any day now, but so far nothing has changed.
I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who loves their ISP since the early days of transitioning from 56K modems.
Are we using the colloquial definition* or the definition of the person who coined the term?
*“Stuff I don’t like”
Not sure if they qualify as “services,” but discogs, rateyourmusic and genius are holding up fairly well. IMDB is also pretty good, still.
I swear I ran into a problem with IMDb having some basic stuff like “what has this actor been in recently” stuck behind their IMDbPro paywall at some point in the last couple years.
But I just went and checked a few movies and shows, can’t seem to replicate that issue anywhere.
I either hallucinated it, or they rolled back the enshittification after seeing a drop in traffic, not sure
They toyed around with moving things in and out of public. I’m not sure i’ve seen the what else get chained off, but for a while you coudn’t get much information about anyone. That’s when I started using Wiki
A bit more niche, but I’d say Roll20 for online TTRPG’s. It has quirks, absolutely, but it has gotten better overall and is free with optional paid plans that offer good benefits which are not necessities.
Opalstack for webhosting.
PiHole
Linux
It just keeps getting better and more polished.
I think Linux enshitifcation will happen when Linus Torvalds is no longer the benevolent dictator. I assume bigtech would add more DRM crap for more usecases etc, regular (unintentional) userspace breaking for desktop users since development would be focused for server/cloud computing etc.
Well thankfully FOSS allows anyone to fork anything, so I imagine there will always be decent distros out there.
There’s still danger here. While anyone can fork, it’s painful and work-intensive. A well-funded actor could fork something useful, add a bunch of features the community wants, and do a shitty job of committing back. Once most of the community stops using the old stuff and the devs go back to their lives, we can lose control of useful stuff.
Stuff like when Signal enshittifies. It has enough inertia and spin up cost that the forks barely see any traffic.
We need to protect Linus at all costs.
Agnostic:
- VLC
Windows:
- TotalCommander (Android too!)
- Irfanview
Mac:
- A better finder rename
- Daisy disk
- Iterm2
Actual paid services? Basically only Steam.
FOSS is the only software you can count on to not start nickel and diming you once the subscriber count starts to level out.
Steam
30% markup. Predatory currency conversion policies. Recent scandals with Steam censoring games on behest of Australian Right nuts groups.
You missed 3 times in a row.
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The 30% cut thing has been industry standard since the dawn of time. Valve goes out of its way to make exceptions to this rule down to 10% in cases of very high volume but everyone only talks about the 30 since thats all they hear about. Only an Epic Games apologist would parrot this as a talking point. Plus, developers are not getting nothing for that 30%, especially games that use Valve’s Steam networking services. Unlike Microsoft and Sony who also take 30% cuts, Valve doesn’t charge $10,000 per game patch to have someone review and approve it to be published.
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The regional pricing goes both ways. There was literally a game recently users were complaining about NOT getting it because the publisher opted out or something, where the regional pricing would have made the game affordable but in USD (Valves country of origin and therefore default), it was exhorbitantly priced. And this one wasn’t even Valve’s fault.
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Valve did not censor games directly on behest of the Australian nutjobs, they fought back against them pretty hard, but Valve is ultimately beholden to the payment processors (who they also pushed back on). Once Visa and MasterCard started threatening to pull services, Valve was put in a “comply or die” situation. If they didn’t do as they were told they wouldn’t be able to accept money with anything but Stripe or Bitcoin. They literally lost Paypal as a payment option over this fight.
I think its very dishonest of you to frame these points as enshittification. This term means the intentional degradation of a product or service for the sole motive of increasing profits. For point 1, the whole industry literally started off like that. For point 2, it was literally an attempt at equity (valve may not get the deltas correct but in some countries they’re losing money on games). And for point 3, you might be able to argue it but ultimately it wasn’t for profits so much as it was survival.
If you wanted to shitsling at Valve, you should have mentioned how Valve invented lootboxes in TF2 and then exacerbated the issue in CS:GO/CS2, releasing that awful plague onto the industry.
Only an Epic Games apologist would parrot this as a talking point.
Why are you trying to offend me? I didn’t call you names, why are you doing that?
but ultimately it wasn’t for profits so much as it was survival.
Visa and Mastercard aren’t the only available payment options in Steam. Yielding to them was for profit.
Survival? Steam has enough profit to create it’s own payment processor and make it popular.
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Local library
i been to some that don’t have books
Those are called blockbusters and have been gone for some time.
Plz, bro.
Where can I haz shares?
Need lambo.
7zip and VLC.
Kiseido Go Server (KGS)
If KGS’s UI looks like it hasn’t been updated in 20 years, that’s because it’s already perfect. There’s no ads, it’s purely functional, it does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. If you click on “KGS Plus” you have the option to spend money on lectures given by human pros. Otherwise it’s completely free, and it’s still an active go server that’s been around forever.
Is that where Sai played the Meijin
Based on time of the anime’s development, and of course the fact that it is japanese, more likely IGS was the thought process at that time. KGS was the standard in america… but not the primary choice for China/Japan.
