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Top-level
 Enshittification relies on *unlimited* twiddling (by platforms), and a general *prohibition* on countertwiddling (by platform users). Enshittification is a form of fishing, in which bait is dangled before different groups of users and then nimbly withdrawn when they lunge for it. Twiddling puts the suppleness into the enshittifier's fishing-rod, and a ban on countertwiddling weighs down platform users so they're always a bit too slow to catch the bait. 11/ 6 comments
As with every question of technology, the issue isn't twiddling *per se* - it's who does the twiddling and who gets twiddled. A worker armed with digital tools can play gig work employers off each other and force them to bid up the price of their labor; they can form co-ops with other workers that auto-refuse jobs that don't pay enough, and use digital tools to organize to shift power from bosses to workers: https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to 13/ Take #ReverseCentaurs. In AI research, a #centaur is a human assisted by a machine that does more than either could do on their own. For example, a chess master and a chess program can play a better game together than either could play separately. A *reverse* centaur is a *machine assisted by a human*, where the machine is in charge and the human is a meat-puppet. 14/ Reverse centaurism is the 21st Century's answer to #Taylorism, the pseudoscience that saw white-coated "experts" subject workers to humiliating choreography down to the smallest movement of your fingertip: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust While reverse centaurism was born in warehouses and other company-owned facilities, gig work let it make the leap into workers' homes and cars. 16/ The 21st century has seen a return to the #CottageIndustry - a form of production that once saw workers labor far from their bosses and thus beyond their control - but shriven of the autonomy and dignity that working from home once afforded: https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d The rise and rise of #bossware - which allows for remote surveillance of workers in their homes and cars - has turned "#WorkFromHome" into "#LiveAtWork." 17/ |
Gregory's Server
Nowhere do we see twiddling's impact more than the "#GigEconomy," where workers are misclassified as contractors and put to work for an app that scripts their every move to the finest degree. When an app is your boss, you work for an employer who docks your pay for violating rules that you aren't allowed to know - and where your attempts to learn those rules are constantly frustrated by the endless back-end twiddling that changes the rules faster than you can learn them.
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