- Microsoft removes guide on converting Microsoft accounts to Local, pushing for Microsoft sign-ins.
- Instructions once available, now missing - likely due to company’s preference for Microsoft accounts.
- People may resist switching to Microsoft accounts for privacy reasons, despite company’s stance.
The most important part of this is:
We make our happy little bubble here to be outraged in. The world at large carries on without caring. Just in the past few years, there’s been the Reddit API change, the WhatsApp ToS change, the YouTube dislike button removal, etc etc. A small minority (like us) complains endlessly. The rest of the world shrugs and accepts enshitification.
People have accepted that they’ll never have privacy, that they dont own the products they purchase (physical or digital), that not only do they not control their technology but fundamentally their technology controls them, that every few years they’ll have to replace their devices or the manufacturer stops supporting them, people own nothing and are happy.
People don’t know and don’t care. Privacy isn’t an issue on anyone’s mind (just like climate wasn’t 20 years ago). People don’t know or care about digital media ownership issues.
People know, they see their digital media being removed from them and they know that their devices spy on them. Everyone talks about it yet nobody cares.
I disagree. I think it’s more helplessness than apathy.
I don’t approve of all the spying, but I don’t “own” any congress critters, so what can I do? I can’t even opt out of the spying by cancelling my Internet plan and smashing my phone – there’s still tracking through CCTV, face recognition, license plate scanners, etc. I’d have to move to some remote middle of nowhere and live as a subsistence farmer – and even on the way there, I’d be thoroughly tracked. There’s no escape, it’s like we’re all in a giant digital cage.
Accepted isn’t the right word. I think consumers “voting with their feet” just isn’t that relevant when it comes to these issues. This model of thinking works when it’s about the product offering. Bad product? Too expensive? Demand dwindles.
But the issue doesn’t directly impact the product offering, consumers won’t “vote with their feet” in significant numbers. Worker exploitation? People will still buy cheaper clothes. Oil money dictatorships? Cheap luxury airlines. Privacy invasion? But all my friends are on there. I could go on.
The self-correcting market model is flawed. For these issues, strong government intervention is needed. It’s possible that a competitor comes along and they’re able to capture the market, but that will only happen with a superior product offering. But not because of different TOS or whatever people don’t consider part of what they’re buying.
Finally, someone gets my point. Capitalism inherently makes products worse and more expensive, the flaw in your argument is you think it can ever be contained.