I found a Reddit thread called "What's the biggest scam in tech that has become widely accepted?" and thought I'd read it for five minutes.
Anyway, I live there now.
It's one of those threads where people start out mildly annoyed and, within three scrolls, everyone has collectively decided that printer ink is a war crime.
Fair.
Printers are basically tiny administrative demons with Wi-Fi.
But the comment that really got me was about terms of service update (you know the one). The little box pops up and says something cheerful like, "We've updated our terms. Click accept to continue."
Which sounds reasonable until you realize your two options are:
- Accept.
- Stop using the thing your entire life now depends on.
Email. Photos. Bank app. Calendar. School portal. Work files. That one app you downloaded in 2018 and are now apparently spiritually bound to.
[why does my lightbulb need an account]
The button says "accept," but the energy is very much, "Get in the van."
And I think that's why people are so irritated. Not every update is evil. Some updates are probably important (after all, legal departments need hobbies too)!
So much of modern tech has mastered the art of pretending we have choices while stealthily removing all the good ones.
You can cancel, technically, but only after seven screens, a password reset, a guilt-trip message, and a final button that says, "Are you sure you want to lose all your progress and disappoint your ancestors?"
You can opt out, technically, but the setting is deeply hidden in a basement drawer under "advanced preferences," guarded by a dropdown menu named Kevin.
You can read the terms, technically, but they are only 41 pages long and written in the emotional tone of a parking ticket.
This is where I started thinking about deceptive patterns, which are design tricks that push people into choices they might not have made otherwise. Hidden cancellation buttons, confusing opt-outs, pre-checked boxes, and those pop-ups that ask whether you want 10% off or whether you "hate saving money," which is such a weird little hostage note from a candle company.
No, Bethany. I don't hate saving money, I just came here to look at a vase.
The whole thread felt like a museum of tiny betrayals. Subscriptions that used to be one-time purchases, paid services that now have ads, apps that used to do one useful thing and now want to become a "platform." Devices that require an account before they will perform their humble household purpose.
I do not need a relationship with my toaster.
Somewhere in the middle of this, I remembered Cory Doctorow's hideous and perfect word: enshittification. I hate saying it, but I respect it deeply. It describes the way digital things often start out useful, then slowly get worse and worse as the company shifts more and more value away from users and toward itself.
Once you learn the word, you start seeing it everywhere: search results, streaming services, social platforms, and apps that "improve" themselves by moving the only button you use and adding an AI assistant named Milo.
[Seriously, fuck off, Milo]
The thing I can't stop thinking about is how small the trust leaks are. It's literally a hundred tiny moments where a company teaches you that your preference don't actually matter all that much:
- A hidden fee.
- A hard-to-find unsubscribe button.
- A product that gets worse after you've already built it into your life.
- A friendly email that says "we're making things better," when you know with every cell of your being they are about to make things incredibly more annoying.
We keep using the product, though, because finding a replacement is a nightmare and we are all exhausted. That's the part brands seem to be keenly aware of, and extorting it wherever possible.
The only likely fix is a collective mass exodus of the brands and apps in question… any volunteers to coordinate the cause??