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.
“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.