Cory Doctorow coined a new word – a neologism – which I think is rather ugly and vulgar so while it will definitely put off some people e.g. me, it does get the job done.
The word is “enshittification”. He first used it in 2021 in a blog about TikTok. But the concept is older than that.
According to Chat GPT, back in 2007 in “iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive era”, an academic called Mark Andrejevic came up with the phrase “digital enclosures” to describe how
“formerly open and participatory digital spaces are increasingly privatized and surveilled. Just as physical enclosures in history turned common lands into private property, “digital enclosures” refers to the way corporations capture user activity, attention, and data within proprietary platforms. Once inside these enclosures, users’ behaviors are tracked, commodified, and used to generate profit—often without meaningful control or benefit to the users themselves”.
Well, it has been happening here on WordPress and is the reason I am going to leave.
Soon.
Here’s why
I began using WordPress in April 2004 and I have since published 679 blogs using it.
In the beginning – within a week or so of blog number one appearing – a friend let me know that ads for porn sites and gambling were appearing next to my blog, or maybe they were even interwoven into it. I can’t remember.
The only way I could stop the ads appearing was to pay to go ad-free. I thought it was a bit of a cheek that a blog about online child protection should have to pay to avoid ads that put children in danger but there you go. It’s a funny old world. I have also paid annually for a couple of other things that came along later and made blogging or doing stuff with blogs easier.
But what I liked most about WordPress was how easy it was to edit or correct text. There have been loads of blogs of mine that went up with typos or spelling mistakes or, on re-reading, I realised the English was a little clumsy. I don’t think I have ever done a rewrite that changed the sense, factual basis or the opinions I expressed in the blog. I was simply paying the price of not having an editor, or do I mean sub-editor?
Back to the main point
A couple of years ago WordPress introduced a new way of editing. I hate it. It is not as intuitive or in any way easier to use than the original, which they have rebranded as the “Classic Editor”. However, although it was a bit fiddly it was not difficult to go back to the original form.
Not any more
Now, plug-ins which work as a “Classic Editor” are available and are “free” but to use any of them you have to upgrade to a WordPress Business Plan. So not “free” at all.
A Business Plan costs US$480 per annum and as far as I can tell that is on top of what I already pay to avoid ads etc. US$480 is not a huge sum of money but I deeply resent being compelled to hand it over in this way. So I won’t.
This is a perfect example of “enshittification”. They draw you in with free stuff or easy to use stuff then, when you’re hooked, they downgrade the quality or change the programme so you have to pay to get what you had and liked in the first place.
Maybe because of my age or the length of time I have been here I am more resistant to change but it is hard to imagine even an eighteen or twenty year old will regard such things as anything other than sharp practice. Which is what they are.
OK. I know all the clichés – there is no such a thing as a free lunch, somebody somewhere is paying for it, if you’re not paying you’re product, but I don’t have to like it or just shrug my shoulders and endure it.
My plan is to move to Substack. You will still be able to subscribe at zero cost and what I will do for some time is write and publish the substantive blog on Substack then publish a blog with the same title on WordPress but the only content will be a link to the Substack blog.
You don’t have to do anything now
Desiderata 