I just want to mention how VLC used to be the best player and then somehow shit happened to it.
Grievences: the video is now a separate window yey!.. Separate from the basic controls like “play”, “pause”, “skip exactly 10 seconds ahead for some reason”… The video scrollbar… ETC. Why? What idiot thought that was a good idea? I don’t understand! I’m full screen so I want to see what’s going on far ahead, not I gotta exit full screen, go to the scrollbar on the other window which will then bring the other window to the front and cover the video… Fucking stupifying of an idea!
Full screen not F11
Scrollbar… Here’s where you are, this is where you want to be! Yet!.. Well what happened in the middle? Show me what I’m scrolling through! WTF! I scroll so I can see the good parts as I am scrolling so I can drop it in the part I’m interested in! Who made that dumb decision to remove the scroll preview?
Oh… “Always on the top” lets fuck around with that! First, let’s have that setting on the main window which doesn’t include the video window. In settings for view. Yeah “always on the top” should be hidden away like that. Ok fine set the window to always on the top. Now play a video! Yey! It’s always on the top!!! As predictable as shit in a toilet! It’s the interface! You want one always on the top setting and you want it for the interface! Not for the video! Fuck the video! Nah, I’m on VLC! I want to see that play button real gud! I wanna see the scrollbar! Fuck the video! And for you, that stupidoo who wants to have the video always on the top… Let’s use the system interface. It’s fairly convenient! Cmon! Use it! Always on the top for the video window! Yey! Win! Look ma! I’m scrolling the video, which is “always on the top”! From this point to another point which I can’t see until I drop the bar there! Finally! Love to have to zoom the video real small to see that scroll bar!.. Ok next video!.. God damn! Ohh you got! You got me good! The next video is not always on the top! Great! You guys are fun! Yey! But good thing I can just go use the system “always on the top” to set my video to “just this one time on the top but not for the next video”. Love it
I can go on probably. Just wanted to share my frustration. Oh I hope they took the interface to a Russian torture camp where they keep the Microsoft teams team and they poke them in the eyeballs at random times thru the day.
Do you really think that’s the definition of that term? “something that no longer works”?
By that logic, my bike has been enshitified because it has a flat tire.
Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time.
If you are going to cooy and paste, copy and paste the entire thing.
Examples:
Academic publishing
Between 2016 and 2022 the turn over and profit margins of academic publishers increased partly due to article processing charges from open access. This has been accompanied by predatory publishers who prioritize profit over scholarly integrity. This Academic enshittification results in a scholarly system that is “overwhelmed by quantity, distorted by profit motives, and is stripped of its purpose of advancing knowledge.”
Amazon
In Doctorow’s original post, he discussed the practices of Amazon. The online retailer began by attracting users with goods sold below cost and (with an Amazon Prime subscription) free shipping. Once its user base was solidified, more sellers began to sell their products through Amazon. Finally, Amazon began to add fees to increase profits. In 2023, over 45% of the sale price of items went to Amazon in the form of various fees. Doctorow described advertisement within Amazon as a payola scheme in which sellers bid against one another for search-ranking preference, and said that the first five pages of a search for “cat beds” were half advertisements.
Dating apps
The market for dating apps has been cited as an example of enshittification due to the conflict between the dating apps’ ostensible goal of matchmaking, and their operators’ desire to convert users to the paid version of the app and retain them as paying users indefinitely by keeping them single, creating a perverse incentive that leads performance to decline over time as efforts at monetization begin to dominate.
in this case, the platform (i.e. vlc) has literally not changed. it’s essentially the same thing it’s been for going-on twenty years. there has been no updates or upgrades or changes that affect how it looks or runs. version 3.0 is like eight years old. version 2 was pretty much the same, as was version 1 before that. vlc is one of the most stable and consistent software applications on the planet.
Due to “dark patterns”, not simply due to difference of opinion on new features.
So are you starting to see the issue here, or do you think that my bike is an online platform?
Your new bike version comes with one pedal only. You see the problem?
Problem, possibly. Just not because of enshitification, since that has a very specific meaning.
So everything in that definition cant be applied to VLC, at this point … stop digging a hole …