The whole capitalist infrastructure is designed for corporations to fully exploit profitability to the most extreme possible result. Sure, we can blame capitalism, which is a useless activity. In fact, it’s a harmful stance because blaming capitalism artificially puts solutions out of reach.
Within this capitalist system we are stuck with, can you blame the corporate enshitifiers? Again, same problem. Doing so puts the solution out of reach as corporations who work for their shareholders (not you) laugh all the way to bank.
It’s our fault. We have control and we squander it. You don’t have to solve CAPTCHA puzzles. You don’t have to switch to the clearnet every time a website blocks Tor. You don’t have to send a message to a GAFAM recipient. It’s because spineless pushovers fail to stand up for themselves and solve CAPTCHAs, tolerate cookie walls, and do whatever dance the corps force on us. We need more people to get a constitution and stop licking boots.
Corporations are doing their job (profiting). We are not doing our job. As consumers, it is OUR job to reject the garbage and ensure that we don’t make enshitification profitable.
Each of these options depends entirely on what you need as an individual. Do you need to solve a Captcha so you can use a specific website? Maybe, maybe not. Some of those choices may be optional, some may be essential, some may be essential to taking your life down a specific path that’s important to you.
It’s the same as the argument for switching to Linux. Can a lot of people switch to Linux and continue to do what they need to do with their computers? Absolutely. Can everyone? No. But they can use a service like 0patch to keep getting security updates to older versions of Windows after their EOL. Is Libreoffice going to be a good solution for people who need a note-taking app that auto-syncs to cloud storage without having to manually save or wait between timed saves and who need the same text available across multiple devices? Probably not, but there are alternatives to google docs that might work. There isn’t always going to be a better option, and sometimes the most anti-corporate option isn’t going to be the best option, but some shift where possible is better than no shift anywhere.
Prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t actually fit isn’t an answer to the problem any more than being annoyed at whatever corporation that’s enshittifying their product.
And while we’re here, a brief word about the broadening of the term enshittification. I’ve seen a lot of people insisting that enshittification only be used to apply to social media or to web services or digital products, but that really doesn’t capture its full potential. If people are using the term enshittification to refer to their favorite body wash swapping to cheap ingredients after they do an IPO, or to the phenomenon of new washing machines breaking down inside a year when their parents still have one from the 80s that works great, that’s not a bad thing. The sanctity of the word retaining its original application isn’t important (and isn’t how language works), it’s the awareness that the word brings that’s important. If people are realizing that the companies they help bring to prominence are developing a habit of raking back value as soon as they have the opportunity, that’s something we should want to see.
“Need” is a very slippery word here. Countless conveniences are described as a “need” by addicts of convenience. You might say you /need/ to fill the CAPTCHA required by the unemployment office, when in fact you think you “need” to not spend the time it takes to do a paper application. Tim Wu’s Tyranny of Convenience essay gives a good perspective on this. We don’t need the conveniences that we think we need.
That’s not to say real needs don’t manifest, but people’s ability to make the distinction is dodgy for sure. Luckily one person solving a CAPTCHA unavoidably for a true need is not going to be a significant enabler in the grand scheme of things if people generally refuse such garbage.
Boycotts, for example, do not require everyone to participate. There is a critical mass by which if the threshold of rebels mounts, it will cause change that even benefits the pushovers. In a lot of situations, we would only need 10% or so of users to have a constitution and to honor it.
Boycotts need not suit everyone. We just need a notable number of consumers with willpower and discipline to turn things around.