I've recently learned that escaping enshitification is actually really easy. When I was younger I would use FOSS (free and open source software) because I usually couldn't afford anything else. Back then the paid options were usually significantly better than the unpaid options so when I finally got money I started using the paid stuff and completely forgot that Foss existed.
If you don't know why Foss is awesome its not just that its free. Open source software has a huge set of advantages. Most software is proprietary meaning that its code cannot be viewed by other people. Open source softwares code can be viewed by everyone and people can contribute their own code to make it better. Open source is often more secure than proprietary because more people have more eyes on it and more people have contributed to it's security. Its also easy to know how much privacy you have with every software because you can read the code. No more "trust me bro I'm not harvesting and selling your data" you know if they are collecting and selling because the code is publicly available.
In the last two months I have been switching almost completely to Foss. I was worried at first because when I stopped using Foss over 10 years ago the average Foss software was genuinely worse than the paid proprietary alternative. Thankfully things have really come full circle. 90â„… of the software I have tried in the last 2 months works better than the proprietary alternative and is 100â„… less obnoxious.
So here is a list of every Foss software I have tried and recommend. There is way more than this available. This list is just what I have used and like personally. Anyone can feel free to add and we can turn it into a master list. Please just take these as a place to start and do your own research to see if these softwares will work for your use case before you fully ditch your proprietary software.
Operating systems
Graphene os: android alt. Security and privacy focused. The most secure and private smartphone currently available.
Linux mint: easy to use linux, 100â„… better than windows.
Pop!: The Linux distro you should use if you have nividia hardware and want to play games using said hardware. Very intuitive and easy to use.
Kubuntu: Ubuntu Linux with KDE desktop. This is the linux distro one I am currently using and I don't have any plans to jump ship again. Better than windows and better than Mac. The companion app for your phone makes life soooo easy. Its pretty and easy to customize to a ridiculously granular level. No fucking notes.
Kindle jailbreak- ko reader: use jailbreak to free your kindle from the tyranny of the bezos. It will download ko reader which is a Foss OS that has every fucking feature you always wished kindle had and let's you read whatever the fuck you want, and have whatever the screensaver you want (no more ads!). Soooo fuck amazon and use this. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.
Linux FOSS: (some available on windows and android as well)
Calibre: Foss desktop eBook library. Packed with features. You will want to use this with koreader to make managing your kindle easy.
Manuscript: skrivner alt. Does absolutely everything I need.
Bitwarden: password manager (use a keepass fork if you want self hosted)
Next cloud: private google drive and cloud alternative that you can self host if you want but it's not required. App available
Proton VPN: to the best of my knowledge it is the only Foss no log VPN you can get. You can pay for higher speeds. App available
Quad9dns: free encrypted DNS provider. App available.
News software:
Use any Foss RSS reader and for the love of god stop getting news from social media. Take control of your feed!
Apps (I only know for android)
Fdroid: great app store to find Foss android apps and download them.
Antennapod: you can get all of your podcasts fetched to one feature rich app via RSS feed. No need to rely on spotify or music steaming services.
Openreads: it's good reads but private and 100â„… stored locally. No amazon, no social media aspect, it just tracks your reading, you can import your good reads but if you want to import from storygraph you have to make a good reads burner account, import to good reads, then import to openreads. The menus Navigation on this one is a bit cumbersome but honestly good reads app is worse.
Newpipe: YouTube frontend that let's you have YouTube subscriptions, watch YouTube in the background, and blocks all ads, without logging in to YouTube. You will want to use this one with a VPN set to Canada (or any other country) so YouTube doesn't keep blocking it in order to force you to sign in. But even with that extra step its worth it for the privacy and the lack of ads.
Proton mail: one of 2 more private gmail alts. But you should note that email cannot be 100â„… anonymous or private.
I think that's it. There are still a lot software varieties I am slowly finding.
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The most ENSHITTIFICATION-PROOF way to get the Enshittification audiobook, ebook and hardcover is to pre-order them on my Kickstarter! Help me do AN END RUN around the AMAZON/AUDIBLE AUDIOBOOK MONOPOLY and DISENSHITTIFY your audiobook experience in the process.
Just as Martin Niemöller's "First They Came" has become our framework for understanding the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, so, too is Wilhoit's Law the best way to understand America's decline into fascism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
In case you're not familiar with Frank Wilhoit's amazing law, here it is:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
The thing that makes Wilhoit's Law so apt to this moment – and to our understanding of the recent history that produced this moment – is how it connects the petty with the terrifying, the trivial with the radical, the micro with the macro. It's a way to join the dots between fascists' business dealings, their interpersonal relationships, and their political views. It describes a continuum that ranges from minor commercial grifts to martial law, and shows how tolerance for the former creates the conditions for the latter.
The gross ways in which Wilhoit's Law applies are easy to understand. The dollar value of corporate wage-theft far outstrips the total dollars lost to all other forms of property crime, and yet there is virtually no enforcement against bosses who steal their workers' paychecks, while petty property crimes can result in long prison sentences (depending on your skin color and/or bank balance):
Elon Musk values "free speech" and insists on his right to brand innocent people as "pedos," but he also wants the courts to destroy organizations that publish their opinions about his shitty business practices:
https://www.mediamatters.org/elon-musk
Fascists turn crybaby when they're imprisoned for attempting a murderous coup, but buy merch celebrating the construction of domestic concentration camps where people are locked up without trial:
https://officialalligatoralcatraz.com/shop
That stuff is all easy to see, but I want to draw a line between these gross violations of Wilhoit's Law and pettier practices that have been creating the conditions for the present day Wilhoit Dystopia.
Take terms of service. The Federalist Society – whose law library could save a lot of space by throwing away all its books and replacing them with a framed copy of Wilhoit's Law – has long held that merely glancing at a web-page or traversing the doorway of a shop is all it takes for you to enter into a "contract" by which you surrender all of your rights. Every major corporation – and many smaller ones – now routinely seek to bind both workers and customers to garbage-novellas of onerous, unreadable legal conditions.
If we accept that this is how contracts work, then this should be perfectly valid, right?
By reading these words, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. This indemnity will survive the termination of your relationship with your employer.
I mean, why not? What principle – other than "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" – makes terms of service valid, and this invalid?
Then there's binding arbitration. Corporations routinely bind their workers and customers to terms that force them to surrender their right to sue, no matter how badly they are injured through malice or gross negligence. This practice used to be illegal, until Antonin Scalia opened the hellmouth and unleashed binding arbitration on the world:
There's a pretty clever hack around binding arbitration: mass arbitration, whereby lots of wronged people coordinate to file claims, which can cost a dirty corporation more than a plain old class-action suit:
Of course, Wilhoit's Law provides corporations with a way around this: they can reserve the right not to arbitrate and to force you into a class action suit if that's advantageous to them:
Or take the nature of property rights themselves. Conservatives say they revere property rights above all else, claiming that every other human right stems from the vigorous enforcement of property relations. What is private property? For that, we turn to the key grifter thinkfluencer Sir William Blackstone, and his 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England":
That sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.
Corporations love the idea of their property rights, but they're not so keen on your property rights. Think of the practice of locking down digital devices – from phones to cars to tractors – so that they can't be repaired by third parties, use generic ink or parts, or load third-party apps except via an "app store":
A device you own, but can only use in ways that its manufacturer approves of, sure doesn't sound like "sole and despotic dominion" to me.
Some corporations (and their weird apologists) like to claim that, by buying their product, you've agreed not to use it except in ways that benefit their shareholders, even when that is to your own detriment:
Apple will say, "We've been selling iPhones for nearly 20 years now. It can't possibly come as a surprise to you that you're not allowed to install apps that we haven't approved. If that's important to you, you shouldn't have bought an iPhone."
But the obvious rejoinder to this is, "People have been given sole and despotic dominion over the things they purchased since time immemorial. If the thought of your customers using their property in ways that displease you causes you to become emotionally disregulated, perhaps you shouldn't have gotten into the manufacturing business."
But as indefensibly wilhoitian as Apple's behavior might be, Google has just achieved new depths of wilhoitian depravity, with a rule that says that starting soon, you will no longer be able to install apps of your choosing on your Android device unless Google first approves of them:
Like Apple, Google says that this is to prevent you from accidentally installing malicious software. Like Apple, Google does put a lot of effort into preventing its customers from being remotely attacked. And, like Apple, Google will not protect you from itself:
When it comes to vetoing your decisions about which programs your Android device can run, Google has an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Google, after all, is a thrice-convicted monopolist who have an interest in blocking you from installing programs that interfere with its profits, under the pretense of preventing you from coming to harm.
And – like Apple – Google has a track record of selling its users out to oppressive governments. Apple blocked all working privacy tools for its Chinese users at the behest of the Chinese government, while Google secretly planned to release a version of its search engine that would enforce Chinese censorship edicts and help the Chinese government spy on its people:
Google's CEO Sundar Pichai, personally gave one million dollars to Donald Trump for a seat on the dais at this year's inauguration (so did Apple CEO Tim Cook). Both men are in a position to help the self-described dictator make good on his promise to spy on and arrest Americans who disagree with his totalitarian edicts.
All of this makes Google's announcement extraordinarily reckless, but also very, very wilhoitian. After all, Google jealously guards its property rights from you, but insists that your property rights need to be subordinated to its corporate priorities: "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
We can see this at work in the way that Google treats open source software and free software. Google's software is "open source" – for us. We have the right to look at the code and do free work for Google to identify and fix bugs in the code. But only Google gets a say in how that code is deployed on its cloud servers. They have software freedom, while we merely have software transparency:
Big companies love to both assert their own property rights while denying you yours. Take the music industry: they are required to pay different royalties to musicians depending on whether they're "selling" music, or "licensing" music. Sales pay a fraction of the royalties of a licensing deal, so it's far better for musicians when their label licenses their music than when they sell it.
When you or I click the "buy" button in an online music store, we are confronted with a "licensing agreement," that limits what we may do with our digital purchase. Things that you get automatically when you buy music in physical form – on a CD, say – are withheld through these agreements. You can't re-sell your digital purchases as used goods. You can't give them away. You can't lend them out. You can't divide them up in a divorce. You can't leave them to your kids in your will. It's not a sale, so the file isn't your property.
But when the label accounts for that licensing deal to a musician, the transaction is booked as a sale, which entitles the creative worker to a fraction of the royalties that they'd get from a license. Somehow, digital media exists in quantum superposition: it is a licensing deal when we click the buy button, but it is a sale when it shows up on a royalty statement. It's Schroedinger's download:
The plaintiffs insist that because Amazon showed them a button that said, "Buy this video" but then slapped it with licensing conditions that take away all kinds of rights (Amazon can even remotely delete your videos after you "buy" them) that they have been ripped off in a bait-and-switch.
Amazon's defense is amazing. They've done what any ill-prepared fifth grader would do when called on the carpet; they quoted Webster's:
Quoting Webster’s Dictionary, it said that the term means “rights to the use or services of payment” rather than perpetual ownership and that its disclosures properly warn people that they may lose access.
People are increasingly pissed off with this bullshit, whereby things that you "buy" are not yours, and your access to them can be terminated at any time. The Stop Killing Games campaign is pushing for the rights of gamers to own the games they buy forever, even if the company decides to shut down its servers:
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
I've been pissed off about this bullshit since forever. It's one of the main reasons I convinced my publishers to let me sell my own ebooks and audiobooks, out of my own digital storefront. All of those books are sold, not licensed, and come without any terms or conditions:
https://craphound.com/shop/
The ability to change the terms after the sale is a major source of enshittification. I call it the "Darth Vader MBA," as in "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further":
Look, I don't think that personal consumption choices can fix systemic problems. You're not going to fix enshittification – let alone tyranny – by shopping, even if you're very careful:
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a connection between the unfair bullshit that monopolies cram down our throat and the rise of fascism. It's not just that the worst enshittifiers also the biggest Trump donors, it's that Wilhoit's Law powers enshittification.
Wiloitism is shot through the Maga movement. The Flu Klux Klan wants to ban you from wearing a mask for health reasons, but they will defend to the death the right of ICE brownshirts to run around in gaiters and Oakleys as they kidnap our neighbors off the streets.
Conservative bedwetters will donate six figures to a Givesendgo set up by some crybaby with a viral Rumble video about getting 86'ed from a restaurant for wearing a Maga hat, but they literally want to imprison trans people for wearing clothes that don't conform to their assigned-at-birth genders.
They'll piss and moan about being "canceled" because of hecklers at the speeches they give for the campus chapter of the Hitler Youth, but they experience life-threatening priapism when students who object to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians are expelled, arrested and deported.
Then there's their abortion policies, which hold that personhood begins at conception, but ends at birth, and can only be re-established by forming an LLC.
It's "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" all the way down.
I'm not saying that bullshit terms of service, wage theft, binding arbitration gotchas, or victim complexes about your kids going no-contact because you won't shut the fuck up about "the illegals" at Thanksgiving are the same as the actual fascist dictatorship being born around us right now or the genocide taking place in Gaza.
But I am saying that they come from the same place. The ideology of "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" underpins the whole ugly mess.
After we defeat these fucking fascists, after the next installment of the Nuremburg trials, after these eichmenn and eichwomenn get their turns in the dock, we're going to have to figure out how to keep them firmly stuck to the scrapheap of history.
For this, I propose a form of broken windows policing; zero-tolerance for any activity or conduct that implies that there are "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
We should treat every attempt to pull any of these scams as an inch (or a yard, or a mile) down the road to fascist collapse.
We shouldn't suffer practitioners of this ideology to be in our company, to run our institutions, or to work alongside of us. We should recognize them for the monsters they are.
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