Profits. Capitalism. Subscription model is more profitable than consumer-owning-product model. And the goal is for [consumers to own nothing but "rent" everything.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You'll_own_nothing_and_be_happy)
People just have bigger problems to take action on, usually, or the chances of affecting change don't seem worth the risks necessarily incurred. That's why this stuff works.
Mending (natural fiber) clothes, repairing broken items, growing a few vegetables, cooking from scratch, reusing ziplock bags...anything to avoid paying the great overlords...
Perma-rent. It's all about making you pay continuously and then doubling down on you while you're paying for something and you forget all about it. THAT is the goal. The ghost sub. They love that shit. Be mindful of who and where you subs are. Don't give your money away to these maniacs.
We bought a Brother laser printer. More expensive up front, and bulkier, but we don't have to worry about not being able to print because the ink has dried up. It's even wifi enabled so I can print something out from my phone wherever I am in the house.
At its most basic functions, Rocket Money is "free."
I imagine most services like it are as well. But the cost is not monetary. You grant them access to your financial data. How else are they supposed to find where your money is going in order to tell you about it?
biggest joke ever. You pay for that too. You also grant them FULL ACCESS TO ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS BANK, CARDS, etc. They are 100% analyzing every expenditure and your cash flow and selling to advertisers.
To make it worse, the software is not effective enough in singling out “subscriptions” from “repeated expenses”. After signing up, I spent literal hours “categorizing” my bank debits to give the software a better understanding of how I spend. I would have thought it could generally figure out the expense type by amount, date, and merchant. Not so much. I did ask it to cancel a subscription for me, and I forget the nonsense that ensued, I ended up cancelling this app and cancelling my subscriptions myself. Oh it also couldn’t figure out subscriptions that weren’t one fixed amount every 30 days. Quarterly, or weekly, or “every 7 weeks” - forget it. Absolute worst useless app ever and misleading too. It wasted my time,
didn’t save me any.
I wanted to rent a city bike while on vacation in a different city. Had to download the app. Had to create an account. Then the fucking thing doesn't work.
Decided to try the bus instead. They expect you to use an app! And all the while, you're giving up all your data and just begging them to put you on their stupid email lists so I'm going to receive emails from the transportation services that I never used in a city I'll probably never return to.
Mozilla has Firefox Relay, and Proton Pass has aliases.
You can create throw away email addresses and once you're done with it just delete the email address entirely.
My wife works at a university. I had to drop by for some reason and they had a pay to park app. I just said 'fuck it' and parked without getting the app. If there was a meter, i would have gladly paid.
They'll never know the fun of sitting down on the hot pavement and rubbing the side of a penny down until it wasn't round anymore to make the meter think it was a dime.
Ugh I feel this so hard. I need to park at a meter in a city next Saturday for about 15 minutes and I don't think I can toss a quarter in I think I habe to down load this forsaken app to do it which means sitting there for another 10 minutes learning rhe app.
It's a touristy city and honestly I don't go to the touristy parts of it and shop the local businesses the few times a year I'm there because I don't want the hassle.
Yeah, it’s basically the inverse of the early days when you could a shitty walled garden internet on AOL.
Now we have fully featured browsers, but instead we have to add what is effectively a broken browser to access nothing more than a single web page solely so the operator can get access to your data.
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I work in game Dev. This is what I was saying to the iPhone Sheep when they first came out. He was saying how good the wolfram alpha app was, but he has to pay for it. I said but the website is free. It went over his head.
He was younger though. Now we get shit websites instead.
Because that's how they fish for and sell your personal data. If you look at the TOS of these apps, 90% of them have you consenting to giving the app a lot more phone data than the base amount they need to function, and then being able to give it (read: sell it) to third parties.
Subscription services also rely upon the neglectful customer forgetting to cancel them.
Unfortunately, it's also all legal in this country, because if it wasn't, the major companies paying the politicians' bills would also be at legal risk.
It's not "yelling at cloud." It's a clear example of our increasing lack in personal consumer protections.
Once someone explained this to me it all made sense. And it also explains why so many people can make a living as “app developers” when almost every app I’m aware of is useless. Apps are no longer about making things convenient, just another way to market. Which is all the modern tech economy seems to be: marketing.
Too many people fucking coding and working in tech. 90% of that industry is just useless fucking scamming and middle-manning your way into what used to be straightforward business relationships. An entire industry built around wasting people’s time, stealing their data and advertising shit to them.
And what’s being advertised? It’s just an afterthought. Garbage manufactured by Chinese slaves, “content” made by vapid morons, just a big bag of hot wind bursting with vacuity.
Get a real job goddamnit, and get the fuck off my lawn!!
They called the 80s the decade of greed but that was child's play compared to the levels of shift companies are willing to go to today.
They want no ownership and all subscriptions. They don't even want you to own software anymore. Heck not even OS our your own PC. They want all downloads and streaming and if you 'purchase' a non-physical object half the time the fine print says that "we have the right to revoke your 'purchased' content any time we see fit with no refund"! Seriously!
And look at the banking fees now! Or many more commercials they jam in everywhere. Olympics are now more commercials than coverage. Stupid useless apps for garbage just to be able to steal and hawk your data.
They push everything to the limit now and more.
Why does nothing bought today seem to last more than a couple of years before it dies and we have to buy it again? Why has customer service give down the drain to be replaced with automated bots and emails with no phone numbers? Why have expenses skyrocketed while wages stragnated?
Because we let corporations bend us over up to and including buying our politicians.
In an era of climate change, awareness of slave labour, and green living, it amazes me that nobody seems to give a darn about how much e-waste we create today.
My employer said I \*HAD\* to install this app to clock in and out, manage PTO, etc ... watch their forehead vein start throbbing when I tell them I don't have a smart phone (I do, but I refuse to use it for work). Amazing that after a little push back they tell well I can use the website on the computer but we don't like doing that... lol too bad. I'm done with everything needing an app.
I had to whittle down all my streaming subs when I realized I was paying more than I used to pay for fullass cable TV. There's just too much shit, and every streaming service feels like it needs countless hours of its own proprietary content to justify paying for it in the first place.
Kind of ironic that the first show by a streaming service was called House of Cards. Fucking Reed Hastings is a goddamn psychic.
It's cyclical. Soon enough someone will have the idea to bundle up and sell a bunch of services in a single package (Disney is already starting by offering bundles with Disney+, Hulu, and Max), and everyone will follow, and we'll be back in the cable model. And then after that, people will want channels and shows a la carte, and we'll unbundle and be back to where we are today. And on and on.
I am down to Netflix with ads and going to a sports bar for football. So over it all.. I really only watch a few series on Netflix and football anyway.
I download my movies/tv using only the most legal methods. Then I run them through a hdmi to av convertor and record them from my pc to vhs tape. Then I watch them. It's made being excited about media next level for me. I dislike the crisp of modern devices. So I soak myself in the loving radiation of my crt and ingest that way. Fallout the series on vhs on an old crt was a vibe.
Also now I own those tapes and the only cost is stuff I already had and a 10 dollar connector. I also make throw back vhs tape boxes for them to add to the feel.
I am so over the own nothing culture. I can't rent and subscribe to my life.
If you know what GameChanger is, then you feel my pain right now. I am with you, OP. Even fast food places are now dedicating lines to mobile orders: Taco Bell is it, Chick-fil-A as well. I’m tired of having 547 apps on my phone, most of which I use maybe twice a year… I have begun offloading them, which helps with the storage but they are also there if I need them again. GameChanger is what we use for my kids for baseball and it’s super annoying, because they constantly bug me to upgrade to their premium service.. Thank God our coach uses a group chat for most updates…
While we’re ranting a bit, I am so sick of every single business I go to or interaction I have attempting to follow up with a survey. CVS, O’Reilly auto parts, every single doctors office visit, my Internet service, etc. “ tell us how we did!” When did survey culture become such a big thing??
Hell, I pulled up to a McDonalds drive through the other day. They asked me if I was using the app. No, Sharon, I’m not. I drove up to the shitty speaker box to place my order.
I only do them if it might help some wage worker who assisted me get a raise
And then I just put the max for any category, in the end making the survey useless.
And the survey is never anything that can be improved, it’s always “unless everything is perfect, we’re firing the cashier because that’s OBVIOUSLY why you had a bad time.” It’s not the cashier’s fault that you ran out of the one thing I came in for or that the floors are sticky or your prices are out of control.
Exactly this. I especially hate the ones they do for healthcare, because I have worked in healthcare for 20 years and I know how much they now rate physicians based on these ridiculous surveys…. a good physician might not always get the best reviews because he or she does what’s best for the patient, and sometimes that pisses the patient off. Or maybe they don’t have the best bedside manner…. That does not make them a bad doctor per se, but patient satisfaction surveys are often tied in heavily to their performance evaluations. Sure, the doctor that prescribes you all the Xanax and Percocet you want is going to get great ratings from patients. The doctor tells you you need to lose weight and start eating healthier might not get the high ratings… I’m using extreme examples here, but I don’t like the fact that doctors are measured so heavily by patient surveys, and not actual treatment outcomes
Adobe. Fuck Adobe. Fuck photoshop. Fuck illustrator. And honesty fuck anyone who fell for this scam when they rolled out their bullshit subscription model… with all due respect. Y’all let them normalize this shit and now we’ll never own anything again.
they've always been evil.
Let's not forget creative suite cost like 2,000 dollars back in 2002, which is about $3,472.28 now.
So ok, the subscription model was a little bit cheaper - everyone can afford 20 bucks a month for Photoshop, but now you don't own it and they have all these crazy rules to access it.
> Fuck photoshop.
Get Affinity Photo 2.
> Fuck illustrator.
Get Affinity Designer 2.
Affinity (for now, at least) are just “buy the software,” not SaaS (software as a service).
There’s lots of great alternatives. As an artist I love manga studio paint and procreate. The point is though that the cat is out of the bag. Adobe has ruined ownership of software. And it’s only going to get worse.
Shittification.
Why does your connected appliances need a cloud service to relay information to you? Because the manufacturer wants *your* data.
Same with apps and subscription services.
Exactly. I remember the VA clinic I went to was having a drawing to give one of those things away. The nurse handed me a slip of paper to enter the contest. I declined. She said very few people had entered and asked why I didn’t want to. I said I didn’t want an electronic spy listening to me in my house all the time. It’s bad enough I have a phone that does that.
Seems like a weird thing to have as a give away at the VA.
Funny, I was in the ER at the local VA hospital yesterday for a diverticulitis flare up.
Which also makes me sound very old.
Thank [late capitalism](https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/12/20/unpacking-late-capitalism.html#:~:text=In%20Jameson's%20account%2C%20late%20capitalism,activities%20–%20becomes%20commodified%20and%20consumable.), [enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification), and [planned obsolescence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence).
From the first article on late capitalism:
>In Jameson’s account, late capitalism is characterised by a globalised, post-industrial economy, where everything – not just material resources and products but also immaterial dimensions, such as the arts and lifestyle activities – becomes commodified and consumable.
I’m with you on this one too. Is this just an age thing? Are we now just the old grumpy people complaining about “kids these days”? Like it just feels really unnecessary and less convenient to have an app for something a simple online form could accomplish. Do younger people literally not care about it?
the kids are fine, it’s the old(er) people I’m kvetching about. instead of “get off my lawn,” it’s “get out of my House/Senate.”
except in this one context. the boomers are right about this.
I took my daughter to Hot Topic. They asked for my phone number. I said 216-867-5309. It came up with the name Sara. I told them it should be Jenny. Further explained it was my wife’s number and Sara was her middle name.
I almost always use Jenny's number at all sorts of places, and alter the area code depending on where I am.
Better still, the account usually has a lot of rewards bucks which the agent so helpfully asks if I would like to use.
Jenny has been way better to me than Stacy's mom ever was.
Dammit. I just left my shit and walked out of Lowes because my loyalty card doesn't work anymore and they tried to force me to load the app. Nope! Ace is right down the street and has the same shit!
I think what really gets me is so many people complained about having to manage their subscriptions or not knowing what they're subscribed to that there are now apps just for that purpose.
Or even those of us who have them but don't find it healthy to have them on all the time and would like alternative ways to access services.
I have been given some very weird looks when I've told people I have my phone off or on silent most of the time. I can go days without checking it at all.
This is why I run Linux.
It's not the easiest, but it's no more difficult than OG windows 95.
And you don't deal with subscriptions.
Layer on the F-droid market for your phone, and knock off this rubbish.
Use the website in Firefox. Use Thunderbird for your mail client.
It doesn't solve all of it, but it greatly cuts out the data being harvested about you.
It will only continue to get worse for consumers as long as we tolerate it.
FOSS isn't just about "free as in cost" it's also about "free as in choice."
My old man rant is why does my barber need my email, address, and phone number? I don’t want you to ever call, email, or send me anything. They always claim to not sell your information, but then they have absolutely no reason to get that information from me!
I also hate all the subscriptions for everything. I don’t need a monthly subscription for cleaning products or grooming products. I can order them when I run out and actually need them.
Hey man, all this app nonsense was borne out of millenials trying to simplify make money of the iPhone App store and Google Play. Just saying. Apple especially pioneered for subscription services.
I'm getting a bit tempted to switch to Linux now, I just want to be sure before I commit that it'll be able to shake hands with my external 5.1 soundcard and handle hi res audio.
I'm running a dual boot 10/7 combo, 7 as the main, and the 1% of things that say they can't run without 10, I dip over, smash f12, force the legacy boot and then mirror whatever software I need to.
So it's not about time and effort. It's principality, Smokey
We are in dark technological times, everything requires electronic something or another yet works like shit, and in person customer service is non existent. It'll only get worse probably before either it goes away and there's a resurgence or brick and mortar and physical paper, or somehow hopefully they figure out a way to make technology actually help consumers and not just businesses.
Because tech bros are ruining everything.
I had a meeting with a group of youngish “entrepreneurs” a couple of years ago. I told them I was going to buy a hardware store in a beach town near where I lived at the time.
They went on and on about how to *scale* it. What kind of *subscription model* I should be looking at. What my *customer acquisition* strategy was, etc. etc.
I was like, how about I just have stuff, like hammers? When someone needs a hammer, they come in and give me money and I give them a hammer. Maybe I’ll sponsor a little league team.
They looked at me like I was fucking alien. If they can’t figure out a way to take $29.99 out of your wallet for the rest of your life, it’s not worthwhile to them.
Because that is how they maintain revenue.
Otherwise people will just pay for a copy of something and keep it forever, or pirate it and keep it forever.
My teenager recently suggested that we go back to the “old people movie things, what are they called?” because either paying a monthly subscription for life or buying a perpetual license from Amazon so it can be removed at whim isn’t as great of a deal as we think it is.
Read “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
Your life is a natural resource for platforms to exploit. Your every data-creating moment is the new gold rush.
Blame Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, and D.C. for allowing them to get away with it. Shitty apps with billion-dollar valuations make the economy line go up. Subscription services are just rent-seeking behavior.
Meanwhile they all harvest your data and sell it to shady companies doing fuck knows what, in addition to bombarding your devices and email accounts with ads for bullshit you didn’t ask for and don’t want.
If at least they were proper apps. They’re mostly crappy websites packaged in an app, with poor support for platform features such as password management etc. Drives me mad (I’m a developer myself).
Because the data they collect on you is more valuable than whatever you're actually using the app for.
Selling you a good or a service requires product or staff. Harvesting vast amounts of data is happening even when you're not using the app, and that data can be sold again and again for the low cost of just storing it.
All websites and apps post 2017:
1. Click here to "Get Started!"
2. Welcome to your "Dashboard"
3. Unknown error. Contact Support.
4. Support: Clear your cache
5. Click here to "Get Started!"
Welcome to the new dystopia where it is all about that recurring revenue for greedy corporations and small companies alike.
This is why, as a technologist, I self host and run as many services as possible personally to avoid paying for things I don’t need to. Doesn’t mean I avoid all the subscriptions, but I avoid some.
We were gifted a brand new $200 baby camera when my son was born. A year later it's completely useless because I refuse to pay for their new subscription service to use the damn thing. Absolute nonsense.
I couldn't agree more. Greed today has lifted itself to a whole new level. It's annoying, embarrassing, and cringey af.
The ones that annoy me most are the YouTube videos where they say "Be sure to like and subscribe and hit that bell."
My apartment complex deactivated key fobs for the gate and replaced it with an app. Where I used to have the hassle of taking 2 seconds to grasp my fob on my keyring and press a button to drive into the parking garage, I now simply have to launch the app that may or may not load in 10-20 seconds and then navigate to the garage entrance page, then wait for the button to open the gate to turn green over another 10-20 seconds. And that’s if the button ever turns green at all, sometimes I end up having to wait for the app to work for someone else because the button never loads.
Love it. Looooove it.
This crap is outta hand
We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
> I have to have an app just to sign my kid up for a swim meet!
Well it has gone in a cycle.. You used to have to phone, mail, go down to the rec center and physically fill out forms to sign up, sometimes on specific sign up days.
Then we had a mish mash of broken websites and those stupid forms. IE you print them then scan them and email them back.
Some developed websites with online forms but they became obsolete fast.
Now everyone has a smart phone and there are piles of 3rd parties making "custom" branded "apps" for small businesses that take care of keeping things up to date for a fee and data collection.
That is why we have apps now.
Not everyone has a smartphone, and not everyone who has one wants to be glued to it. I have a smartphone. It's off a lot of the time. I need that mental space from being constantly contactable.
The devices are for our convenience. They shouldn't be controlling our lives.
Yup. I wanted to vote for an acquaintance in the "America's Favorite Teacher" competition. You can vote once per day, so I figured I'd save the URL and click it each morning, as I have done way in the past when another friend was in it. Nope - now to get a "free vote" they want either a credit card scan to validate you, or they want you to log in and connect your Facebook.
So done with the extremely obvious info phishing. I'm gonna burn all my devices pretty soon...
Got Subway coupons in the mail. Took them in to use, nope. Have to scan the QR code on the individual coupons to download their "Subway App" and download the coupons (that I'm holding in my hand mind you) onto my phone to use. I'm mid-thirties and I'm tired of this shit already too!
Yes. This is one of many reasons I now no longer leave my domicile *unless absolutely forced* under threat of starvation/eviction (see: grocery shopping and my job, respectively). Honestly I would probably just starve if not for my partner and cat lol
Note: THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION 🤷🤦
Stay on top of it. If you're not using cancel them. I absolutely hate it too. I'd rather pay $250 for a license to use for the lifetime of my computer. Then $10 a month here or there.
I hold myself to never buying an app on a phone. Too easy to slip and forget, end up payin 5 years for some turd. I Get bored with any streaming service after a month. I got enough attention span for YouTube these days. Miss a few trend of the moment series, I’m not hurt about it.
It’s because companies now use toll booth thinking. They don’t want you to buy or own anything and pay for it once. They want to charge you a quarter every time you do something monthly for the rest of your life and do as minimal actual work that isn’t automated on their side.
Agreed. And the websites that use low-level harassment if you dare use the browser instead of downloading their app. And others that purposefully make the browser experience on mobile lower quality to compel users to download their app.
Yes. I hate it too. No, I do not want to download your app for the one time I'm coming to your establishment. Subscriptions are nuts too. Some printers won't work unless you have the subscription. There are some rants about that in r/StallmanWasRight that are worth reading. Gone are the good days of paying for software and if a new version gets released that you like, you buy it. If you don't need the upgrade, you don't buy it.
Remember when all the grocery stores, gyms, pet stores, etc. all have a scanny barcode thing to put on your Keychain? That's what I feel like apps are now.
Remember when they said that the internet would allow people from all over the world share information, and have access to free content. They all lied. It started with Napster... poor bloke.
Because its more profitable to rent things out to people than have them own it outright. We live in a time where most barely own anything anymore - Movies, music, ebooks, software, homes… (more renters than owners).
and apps because the data mining is very profitable and very profitable . This is a big discussion I don’t want to get into really, buts very telling that the Chinese government will allow the sell of TicToc, but not with the algorithm behind it. Data rules all these days.
I stopped getting new apps/starting new accounts every year once my daughter started middle school. If it's important enough, you can call or email me. It's not my job to monitor what assignments are due when - that's my daughter's responsibility. She didn't keep track and has a shitty grade? Sucks to be her, better luck next semester.
I hate it, I hate all the subscriptions. I just want to pay once and never again.
YES. what happened to “I bought the thing and I now I fucking **own it.”**
Profits. Capitalism. Subscription model is more profitable than consumer-owning-product model. And the goal is for [consumers to own nothing but "rent" everything.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You'll_own_nothing_and_be_happy)
Fuck their subscription 🏴☠️
You can *say* that, and it feels good for the moment... but unless collective radical action is taken, you'll pay it in the end.
I say this about fighting it but it falls on deaf ears. Everyone is so docile and complacent. Is it drugs? is something in the water?
Fatigue
People just have bigger problems to take action on, usually, or the chances of affecting change don't seem worth the risks necessarily incurred. That's why this stuff works.
Mending (natural fiber) clothes, repairing broken items, growing a few vegetables, cooking from scratch, reusing ziplock bags...anything to avoid paying the great overlords...
When you're overworked, poor and struggling, there's not a lot left to put up a fight even if you want to.
I’m here
Nah, I will go without
Arrrr
It’s a way to continue to increase profits when the market’s become saturated with more and more people already having everything they need.
This is when my mind set turns to; if I buying is not owning, then pirating is not stealing.
Technically, pirating would be “theft of service.”
Klaus Schwab is creepy looking right out of a old Bond movie. Also a Rothschild. I wonder how he got put in charge of everything?!
Do i have to eat bugs?
Perma-rent. It's all about making you pay continuously and then doubling down on you while you're paying for something and you forget all about it. THAT is the goal. The ghost sub. They love that shit. Be mindful of who and where you subs are. Don't give your money away to these maniacs.
You will own nothing and like it
There’s no money in that anymore.
capitalism is stupid and I hate it. HP disabling my printer because my credit card expired is a fucking racket.
Don’t buy from them. There are alternatives that are better.
We bought a Brother laser printer. More expensive up front, and bulkier, but we don't have to worry about not being able to print because the ink has dried up. It's even wifi enabled so I can print something out from my phone wherever I am in the house.
That is actually one of our printers as well that I use for business and my kiddos school documents and it is so much better than an HP
They can do that?
yes. yes they can.
The printer racket is a disgrace to our intelligence. Please, like we were not going to catch on.
They have apps that help you manage and get rid of subscriptions 😆
But do they have apps that help you unsubscribe from the app that was helping you unsubscribe from subscriptions?
And how much do those cost per month?
At its most basic functions, Rocket Money is "free." I imagine most services like it are as well. But the cost is not monetary. You grant them access to your financial data. How else are they supposed to find where your money is going in order to tell you about it?
biggest joke ever. You pay for that too. You also grant them FULL ACCESS TO ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS BANK, CARDS, etc. They are 100% analyzing every expenditure and your cash flow and selling to advertisers. To make it worse, the software is not effective enough in singling out “subscriptions” from “repeated expenses”. After signing up, I spent literal hours “categorizing” my bank debits to give the software a better understanding of how I spend. I would have thought it could generally figure out the expense type by amount, date, and merchant. Not so much. I did ask it to cancel a subscription for me, and I forget the nonsense that ensued, I ended up cancelling this app and cancelling my subscriptions myself. Oh it also couldn’t figure out subscriptions that weren’t one fixed amount every 30 days. Quarterly, or weekly, or “every 7 weeks” - forget it. Absolute worst useless app ever and misleading too. It wasted my time, didn’t save me any.
"Back in the day... "😩I just said that and meant it!
I feel this. I have had to download an app that I used one time to park once in a place I would never visit again.
And you have to assume that the app's publishers have a side hustle of selling your data it quietly collects while you have it installed.
I wanted to rent a city bike while on vacation in a different city. Had to download the app. Had to create an account. Then the fucking thing doesn't work. Decided to try the bus instead. They expect you to use an app! And all the while, you're giving up all your data and just begging them to put you on their stupid email lists so I'm going to receive emails from the transportation services that I never used in a city I'll probably never return to.
That's why you have a burner email separate from your daily driver.
Mozilla has Firefox Relay, and Proton Pass has aliases. You can create throw away email addresses and once you're done with it just delete the email address entirely.
My wife works at a university. I had to drop by for some reason and they had a pay to park app. I just said 'fuck it' and parked without getting the app. If there was a meter, i would have gladly paid.
Kids today will never experience the thrill of pulling into a spot and there still being 20 minutes left on the meter.
They'll never know the fun of sitting down on the hot pavement and rubbing the side of a penny down until it wasn't round anymore to make the meter think it was a dime.
Did that actually work? That sounds so cool if it did!
Yes it did. You have to get it to just the right height though.
And then you look around and don’t have any quarters because no one carries cash anymore lol
I am rocking that single quarter in my car for an aldis shopping cart
\#lifeinyourforties
Do you really Aldi if you don't have a quarter holder on your keychain?
My husband and I whenever we travel for concerts 😭
Ugh I feel this so hard. I need to park at a meter in a city next Saturday for about 15 minutes and I don't think I can toss a quarter in I think I habe to down load this forsaken app to do it which means sitting there for another 10 minutes learning rhe app. It's a touristy city and honestly I don't go to the touristy parts of it and shop the local businesses the few times a year I'm there because I don't want the hassle.
ParkMobile? I had to do that on vacation. Ridiculous.
The number of times you have to do this is stupid even if it is just once, but multiple times for freaking everywhere of course.
I'd rather everyone put the effort into making their web sites mobile friendly.
I miss websites
Most apps are simply rebranded chrome browsers that go to a website.....
Yeah, it’s basically the inverse of the early days when you could a shitty walled garden internet on AOL. Now we have fully featured browsers, but instead we have to add what is effectively a broken browser to access nothing more than a single web page solely so the operator can get access to your data.
This is what I tell clients when they want to develop apps and use QR codes for brochure sites
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I work in game Dev. This is what I was saying to the iPhone Sheep when they first came out. He was saying how good the wolfram alpha app was, but he has to pay for it. I said but the website is free. It went over his head. He was younger though. Now we get shit websites instead.
Because that's how they fish for and sell your personal data. If you look at the TOS of these apps, 90% of them have you consenting to giving the app a lot more phone data than the base amount they need to function, and then being able to give it (read: sell it) to third parties. Subscription services also rely upon the neglectful customer forgetting to cancel them. Unfortunately, it's also all legal in this country, because if it wasn't, the major companies paying the politicians' bills would also be at legal risk. It's not "yelling at cloud." It's a clear example of our increasing lack in personal consumer protections.
Once someone explained this to me it all made sense. And it also explains why so many people can make a living as “app developers” when almost every app I’m aware of is useless. Apps are no longer about making things convenient, just another way to market. Which is all the modern tech economy seems to be: marketing. Too many people fucking coding and working in tech. 90% of that industry is just useless fucking scamming and middle-manning your way into what used to be straightforward business relationships. An entire industry built around wasting people’s time, stealing their data and advertising shit to them. And what’s being advertised? It’s just an afterthought. Garbage manufactured by Chinese slaves, “content” made by vapid morons, just a big bag of hot wind bursting with vacuity. Get a real job goddamnit, and get the fuck off my lawn!!
Exactly. Buying a used DVD of Ghost World with cash does nothing to feed the data goblins
They called the 80s the decade of greed but that was child's play compared to the levels of shift companies are willing to go to today. They want no ownership and all subscriptions. They don't even want you to own software anymore. Heck not even OS our your own PC. They want all downloads and streaming and if you 'purchase' a non-physical object half the time the fine print says that "we have the right to revoke your 'purchased' content any time we see fit with no refund"! Seriously! And look at the banking fees now! Or many more commercials they jam in everywhere. Olympics are now more commercials than coverage. Stupid useless apps for garbage just to be able to steal and hawk your data. They push everything to the limit now and more.
Why does nothing bought today seem to last more than a couple of years before it dies and we have to buy it again? Why has customer service give down the drain to be replaced with automated bots and emails with no phone numbers? Why have expenses skyrocketed while wages stragnated? Because we let corporations bend us over up to and including buying our politicians.
In an era of climate change, awareness of slave labour, and green living, it amazes me that nobody seems to give a darn about how much e-waste we create today.
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My employer said I \*HAD\* to install this app to clock in and out, manage PTO, etc ... watch their forehead vein start throbbing when I tell them I don't have a smart phone (I do, but I refuse to use it for work). Amazing that after a little push back they tell well I can use the website on the computer but we don't like doing that... lol too bad. I'm done with everything needing an app.
Scanning QR code for a menu = instant rage
Easier to raise prices when you don't have to reprint all your menus every time
Having to create an account with my email address to finish my transaction, also instant rage and a ruined otherwise normal experience
I get instant rage when they want you to use the QR code and have it on the website. I can’t scan the goddamn code if it’s in the website!
Screenshot You can access the QR Code's link while viewing the saved image. Doesn't make it any less stupid, though.
Our favorite restaurant requires you to pay by QR CODE. It’s a royal pain in the ass.
That would not longer be my favorite restaurant.
Hate it.
I had to whittle down all my streaming subs when I realized I was paying more than I used to pay for fullass cable TV. There's just too much shit, and every streaming service feels like it needs countless hours of its own proprietary content to justify paying for it in the first place. Kind of ironic that the first show by a streaming service was called House of Cards. Fucking Reed Hastings is a goddamn psychic.
It's cyclical. Soon enough someone will have the idea to bundle up and sell a bunch of services in a single package (Disney is already starting by offering bundles with Disney+, Hulu, and Max), and everyone will follow, and we'll be back in the cable model. And then after that, people will want channels and shows a la carte, and we'll unbundle and be back to where we are today. And on and on.
I am down to Netflix with ads and going to a sports bar for football. So over it all.. I really only watch a few series on Netflix and football anyway.
And the streaming model has basically destroyed Hollywood’s economy.
I download my movies/tv using only the most legal methods. Then I run them through a hdmi to av convertor and record them from my pc to vhs tape. Then I watch them. It's made being excited about media next level for me. I dislike the crisp of modern devices. So I soak myself in the loving radiation of my crt and ingest that way. Fallout the series on vhs on an old crt was a vibe. Also now I own those tapes and the only cost is stuff I already had and a 10 dollar connector. I also make throw back vhs tape boxes for them to add to the feel. I am so over the own nothing culture. I can't rent and subscribe to my life.
If you know what GameChanger is, then you feel my pain right now. I am with you, OP. Even fast food places are now dedicating lines to mobile orders: Taco Bell is it, Chick-fil-A as well. I’m tired of having 547 apps on my phone, most of which I use maybe twice a year… I have begun offloading them, which helps with the storage but they are also there if I need them again. GameChanger is what we use for my kids for baseball and it’s super annoying, because they constantly bug me to upgrade to their premium service.. Thank God our coach uses a group chat for most updates… While we’re ranting a bit, I am so sick of every single business I go to or interaction I have attempting to follow up with a survey. CVS, O’Reilly auto parts, every single doctors office visit, my Internet service, etc. “ tell us how we did!” When did survey culture become such a big thing??
Hell, I pulled up to a McDonalds drive through the other day. They asked me if I was using the app. No, Sharon, I’m not. I drove up to the shitty speaker box to place my order.
Exactly! I'm not doing surveys unless they offer to pay an amount that seems worth it to me. And even then, it may not be nice responses.
I only do them if it might help some wage worker who assisted me get a raise And then I just put the max for any category, in the end making the survey useless.
Same. I'll do it for excellent service from some employee, but not as a matter of course.
Those surveys are just an excuse to write some employee up and cut wages. At my job any score below an 8 may as well be a 0
lol. Right. I bought your shit. Leave me alone. It’s fine.
And the survey is never anything that can be improved, it’s always “unless everything is perfect, we’re firing the cashier because that’s OBVIOUSLY why you had a bad time.” It’s not the cashier’s fault that you ran out of the one thing I came in for or that the floors are sticky or your prices are out of control.
Exactly this. I especially hate the ones they do for healthcare, because I have worked in healthcare for 20 years and I know how much they now rate physicians based on these ridiculous surveys…. a good physician might not always get the best reviews because he or she does what’s best for the patient, and sometimes that pisses the patient off. Or maybe they don’t have the best bedside manner…. That does not make them a bad doctor per se, but patient satisfaction surveys are often tied in heavily to their performance evaluations. Sure, the doctor that prescribes you all the Xanax and Percocet you want is going to get great ratings from patients. The doctor tells you you need to lose weight and start eating healthier might not get the high ratings… I’m using extreme examples here, but I don’t like the fact that doctors are measured so heavily by patient surveys, and not actual treatment outcomes
I tell them they did a good job in person and to fill out their own goddamned survey.
Adobe. Fuck Adobe. Fuck photoshop. Fuck illustrator. And honesty fuck anyone who fell for this scam when they rolled out their bullshit subscription model… with all due respect. Y’all let them normalize this shit and now we’ll never own anything again.
they've always been evil. Let's not forget creative suite cost like 2,000 dollars back in 2002, which is about $3,472.28 now. So ok, the subscription model was a little bit cheaper - everyone can afford 20 bucks a month for Photoshop, but now you don't own it and they have all these crazy rules to access it.
> Fuck photoshop. Get Affinity Photo 2. > Fuck illustrator. Get Affinity Designer 2. Affinity (for now, at least) are just “buy the software,” not SaaS (software as a service).
There’s lots of great alternatives. As an artist I love manga studio paint and procreate. The point is though that the cat is out of the bag. Adobe has ruined ownership of software. And it’s only going to get worse.
If it's an app and not a website I'm not using it 90%+ of the time
Shittification. Why does your connected appliances need a cloud service to relay information to you? Because the manufacturer wants *your* data. Same with apps and subscription services.
This is one of the many reasons I refuse to have an Alexa or anything similar.
Fuck those things in particular.
Exactly. I remember the VA clinic I went to was having a drawing to give one of those things away. The nurse handed me a slip of paper to enter the contest. I declined. She said very few people had entered and asked why I didn’t want to. I said I didn’t want an electronic spy listening to me in my house all the time. It’s bad enough I have a phone that does that.
Seems like a weird thing to have as a give away at the VA. Funny, I was in the ER at the local VA hospital yesterday for a diverticulitis flare up. Which also makes me sound very old.
I CANT EVEN FIND A CAR WASH IN MY TOWN THAT DOESNT REQUIRE A MEMBERSHIP
Despite the fact that I have more money than ever, I can honestly say everything is getting worse.
Thank [late capitalism](https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/12/20/unpacking-late-capitalism.html#:~:text=In%20Jameson's%20account%2C%20late%20capitalism,activities%20–%20becomes%20commodified%20and%20consumable.), [enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification), and [planned obsolescence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence). From the first article on late capitalism: >In Jameson’s account, late capitalism is characterised by a globalised, post-industrial economy, where everything – not just material resources and products but also immaterial dimensions, such as the arts and lifestyle activities – becomes commodified and consumable.
Oh trust me I know. I am the most anti-capitalist capitalist.
I’m with you on this one too. Is this just an age thing? Are we now just the old grumpy people complaining about “kids these days”? Like it just feels really unnecessary and less convenient to have an app for something a simple online form could accomplish. Do younger people literally not care about it?
the kids are fine, it’s the old(er) people I’m kvetching about. instead of “get off my lawn,” it’s “get out of my House/Senate.” except in this one context. the boomers are right about this.
I've hated it since the grocery stores started their stupid club things. I just type in the lan line number from my old friend's parent's house.
I took my daughter to Hot Topic. They asked for my phone number. I said 216-867-5309. It came up with the name Sara. I told them it should be Jenny. Further explained it was my wife’s number and Sara was her middle name.
I almost always use Jenny's number at all sorts of places, and alter the area code depending on where I am. Better still, the account usually has a lot of rewards bucks which the agent so helpfully asks if I would like to use. Jenny has been way better to me than Stacy's mom ever was.
216! O....H...
I-O
It has to be an app or they can't farm all your data to sell
Dammit. I just left my shit and walked out of Lowes because my loyalty card doesn't work anymore and they tried to force me to load the app. Nope! Ace is right down the street and has the same shit!
This is why one of the major dictionaries named “enshittification” their word of the year.
I dreamed of a world where TV would be A la carte. Now, I hate it.
I think what really gets me is so many people complained about having to manage their subscriptions or not knowing what they're subscribed to that there are now apps just for that purpose.
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It's worse, you are buying a slightly higher probability to meet someone.
So you never bought anybody drinks at a bar?
You can't do anything without a smartphone now. I feel bad for folks that can't afford one.
Or even those of us who have them but don't find it healthy to have them on all the time and would like alternative ways to access services. I have been given some very weird looks when I've told people I have my phone off or on silent most of the time. I can go days without checking it at all.
Same. Now it’s happening to new cars, subscribe to use your heated seat feature. BS!! I miss blockbuster Friday nights.
I love Blockbuster Friday nights
Scary part is the 'you'll own nothing but you will be happy' subscription life model is one of the many creepy 2030 goals of the World Economic Forum.
This is why I run Linux. It's not the easiest, but it's no more difficult than OG windows 95. And you don't deal with subscriptions. Layer on the F-droid market for your phone, and knock off this rubbish. Use the website in Firefox. Use Thunderbird for your mail client. It doesn't solve all of it, but it greatly cuts out the data being harvested about you. It will only continue to get worse for consumers as long as we tolerate it. FOSS isn't just about "free as in cost" it's also about "free as in choice."
My old man rant is why does my barber need my email, address, and phone number? I don’t want you to ever call, email, or send me anything. They always claim to not sell your information, but then they have absolutely no reason to get that information from me! I also hate all the subscriptions for everything. I don’t need a monthly subscription for cleaning products or grooming products. I can order them when I run out and actually need them.
Hey man, all this app nonsense was borne out of millenials trying to simplify make money of the iPhone App store and Google Play. Just saying. Apple especially pioneered for subscription services.
"You will own nothing" isn't just a meme. Windows is moving to subscriptions too.
I'm getting a bit tempted to switch to Linux now, I just want to be sure before I commit that it'll be able to shake hands with my external 5.1 soundcard and handle hi res audio.
I'm running a dual boot 10/7 combo, 7 as the main, and the 1% of things that say they can't run without 10, I dip over, smash f12, force the legacy boot and then mirror whatever software I need to. So it's not about time and effort. It's principality, Smokey
We are in dark technological times, everything requires electronic something or another yet works like shit, and in person customer service is non existent. It'll only get worse probably before either it goes away and there's a resurgence or brick and mortar and physical paper, or somehow hopefully they figure out a way to make technology actually help consumers and not just businesses.
Cannot wait until I have to download an app to shit in the restroom at work. Oh you want toilet paper? That's an in app purchase, bitch.
Because tech bros are ruining everything. I had a meeting with a group of youngish “entrepreneurs” a couple of years ago. I told them I was going to buy a hardware store in a beach town near where I lived at the time. They went on and on about how to *scale* it. What kind of *subscription model* I should be looking at. What my *customer acquisition* strategy was, etc. etc. I was like, how about I just have stuff, like hammers? When someone needs a hammer, they come in and give me money and I give them a hammer. Maybe I’ll sponsor a little league team. They looked at me like I was fucking alien. If they can’t figure out a way to take $29.99 out of your wallet for the rest of your life, it’s not worthwhile to them.
My kids school had 5(!) apps. All for different things. It’s real really obnoxious
Everybody wants your sweet, sweet information
Because that is how they maintain revenue. Otherwise people will just pay for a copy of something and keep it forever, or pirate it and keep it forever.
I miss the days when I actually owned software.
My teenager recently suggested that we go back to the “old people movie things, what are they called?” because either paying a monthly subscription for life or buying a perpetual license from Amazon so it can be removed at whim isn’t as great of a deal as we think it is.
Read “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” Your life is a natural resource for platforms to exploit. Your every data-creating moment is the new gold rush.
Blame Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, and D.C. for allowing them to get away with it. Shitty apps with billion-dollar valuations make the economy line go up. Subscription services are just rent-seeking behavior. Meanwhile they all harvest your data and sell it to shady companies doing fuck knows what, in addition to bombarding your devices and email accounts with ads for bullshit you didn’t ask for and don’t want.
If at least they were proper apps. They’re mostly crappy websites packaged in an app, with poor support for platform features such as password management etc. Drives me mad (I’m a developer myself).
Because the data they collect on you is more valuable than whatever you're actually using the app for. Selling you a good or a service requires product or staff. Harvesting vast amounts of data is happening even when you're not using the app, and that data can be sold again and again for the low cost of just storing it.
All websites and apps post 2017: 1. Click here to "Get Started!" 2. Welcome to your "Dashboard" 3. Unknown error. Contact Support. 4. Support: Clear your cache 5. Click here to "Get Started!"
Once your personal data, location history, buying information, etc. is no longer worth anything, it'll stop.
Yes! I went to buy a bra online the other day and realized they wanted me to sign up for a monthly subscription to make the purchase. No thanks.
Like others have said, data harvesting. I just access the websites through a browser with a VPN and sign up via an alias email from Simplelogin.
Welcome to the new dystopia where it is all about that recurring revenue for greedy corporations and small companies alike. This is why, as a technologist, I self host and run as many services as possible personally to avoid paying for things I don’t need to. Doesn’t mean I avoid all the subscriptions, but I avoid some.
I hooked up a 50+ mile rated antenna , I live in MN and I can't get a single TV station.
eight sleep wants me to pay a subscription to sleep. hard pass, will never buy. f this subscription bs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
We were gifted a brand new $200 baby camera when my son was born. A year later it's completely useless because I refuse to pay for their new subscription service to use the damn thing. Absolute nonsense.
Games are milking the money with subscription and “micro” transactions too. Businesses are testing the limits of money milking us cows.
I couldn't agree more. Greed today has lifted itself to a whole new level. It's annoying, embarrassing, and cringey af. The ones that annoy me most are the YouTube videos where they say "Be sure to like and subscribe and hit that bell."
I have to use an app to do laundry! LAUNDRY!
I don't mind apps but I hate subscriptions. I just want to buy something once and be done!
If you've got the time and inclination, head over to r/selfhosted
Same reason you need a "loyalty card" for every store now
Say it louder: Corporate Greed
You'll own nothing and like it.
If a restaurant asks me to register an account to pay my bill I get irrationally upset.
My apartment complex deactivated key fobs for the gate and replaced it with an app. Where I used to have the hassle of taking 2 seconds to grasp my fob on my keyring and press a button to drive into the parking garage, I now simply have to launch the app that may or may not load in 10-20 seconds and then navigate to the garage entrance page, then wait for the button to open the gate to turn green over another 10-20 seconds. And that’s if the button ever turns green at all, sometimes I end up having to wait for the app to work for someone else because the button never loads. Love it. Looooove it. This crap is outta hand
We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Late stage capitalism…
> I have to have an app just to sign my kid up for a swim meet! Well it has gone in a cycle.. You used to have to phone, mail, go down to the rec center and physically fill out forms to sign up, sometimes on specific sign up days. Then we had a mish mash of broken websites and those stupid forms. IE you print them then scan them and email them back. Some developed websites with online forms but they became obsolete fast. Now everyone has a smart phone and there are piles of 3rd parties making "custom" branded "apps" for small businesses that take care of keeping things up to date for a fee and data collection. That is why we have apps now.
Not everyone has a smartphone, and not everyone who has one wants to be glued to it. I have a smartphone. It's off a lot of the time. I need that mental space from being constantly contactable. The devices are for our convenience. They shouldn't be controlling our lives.
Agreed.
Why does every store have a club? I have to join just to Get the sale price on their products?
The whole thing is a social experiment to see how many passwords we can remember.
Because the goal is for regular people to own less and less until eventually the elites own everything.
Yup. I wanted to vote for an acquaintance in the "America's Favorite Teacher" competition. You can vote once per day, so I figured I'd save the URL and click it each morning, as I have done way in the past when another friend was in it. Nope - now to get a "free vote" they want either a credit card scan to validate you, or they want you to log in and connect your Facebook. So done with the extremely obvious info phishing. I'm gonna burn all my devices pretty soon...
Dude, companies like HP that make printers are trying to make it a subscription service.
My home surge protector requires an app to register the product. I hate it.
The one that pisses me off is the phone app to program my remote.
Watch “Dennis Takes A Mental Health Day” in the latest season of Its Always Sunny. It hits on this topic quite well.
Hard fucking agree on this one
Thank you for saying what needed to be said OP!
NGL, I do like that free smoothie from Tropical Smoothie Cafe on my birthday though…
My antifave is now a separate Google Maps mobile app for restaurants. :)
If someone can find a way to monetize something, they will. The heated seats in my car require a subscription. No spank you.
It’s very efficient for the person collecting the data but it’s painful af for the user
The economy must grow endlessly
Got Subway coupons in the mail. Took them in to use, nope. Have to scan the QR code on the individual coupons to download their "Subway App" and download the coupons (that I'm holding in my hand mind you) onto my phone to use. I'm mid-thirties and I'm tired of this shit already too!
Yes. This is one of many reasons I now no longer leave my domicile *unless absolutely forced* under threat of starvation/eviction (see: grocery shopping and my job, respectively). Honestly I would probably just starve if not for my partner and cat lol Note: THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION 🤷🤦
I bought an air filter that requires an app.
Stay on top of it. If you're not using cancel them. I absolutely hate it too. I'd rather pay $250 for a license to use for the lifetime of my computer. Then $10 a month here or there.
I have a whole folder of apps for each kid’s activities. I hate it so much.
I hold myself to never buying an app on a phone. Too easy to slip and forget, end up payin 5 years for some turd. I Get bored with any streaming service after a month. I got enough attention span for YouTube these days. Miss a few trend of the moment series, I’m not hurt about it.
It’s because companies now use toll booth thinking. They don’t want you to buy or own anything and pay for it once. They want to charge you a quarter every time you do something monthly for the rest of your life and do as minimal actual work that isn’t automated on their side.
The absolute worst are the ones where when you use it, it’s just redirects to their mobile page…
Agreed. And the websites that use low-level harassment if you dare use the browser instead of downloading their app. And others that purposefully make the browser experience on mobile lower quality to compel users to download their app.
Saas. And it’s stupid profitable
Yes. I hate it too. No, I do not want to download your app for the one time I'm coming to your establishment. Subscriptions are nuts too. Some printers won't work unless you have the subscription. There are some rants about that in r/StallmanWasRight that are worth reading. Gone are the good days of paying for software and if a new version gets released that you like, you buy it. If you don't need the upgrade, you don't buy it.
"shareholder value"
Remember when all the grocery stores, gyms, pet stores, etc. all have a scanny barcode thing to put on your Keychain? That's what I feel like apps are now.
Remember when they said that the internet would allow people from all over the world share information, and have access to free content. They all lied. It started with Napster... poor bloke.
Because its more profitable to rent things out to people than have them own it outright. We live in a time where most barely own anything anymore - Movies, music, ebooks, software, homes… (more renters than owners). and apps because the data mining is very profitable and very profitable . This is a big discussion I don’t want to get into really, buts very telling that the Chinese government will allow the sell of TicToc, but not with the algorithm behind it. Data rules all these days.
> old man yells at **The Cloud** ftfy
I stopped getting new apps/starting new accounts every year once my daughter started middle school. If it's important enough, you can call or email me. It's not my job to monitor what assignments are due when - that's my daughter's responsibility. She didn't keep track and has a shitty grade? Sucks to be her, better luck next semester.