Spocha's notepad

First of all, was this all part of the plan? The enshittification thing?

It's like many tech giants simultaneously sensed an imminet tipping point in either user or shareholder patience in 2023 and decided to ditch functionality all together to scavenge any remaining profits off their platforms. I'm still wondering if self-destruction has been a part of the buissness model in these products all along. Or did external factors, like the pandemic or Musk grabbing Twitter lead to a disrupt? Did Web2.0 have a preset estimated end date, like my shitty printer?

More importantly, do reputation or legacy stop being important once you're powerful enough? Or do you just change your brand name and trust that everyone will forget?

I took down my accounts on Twitter the day before they ended up changing names to X, and haven't regretted it once. One less source of annoyance. Since it's been a rainy summer I also made the infuriating effort to untangle from the Google eco-system. Went back to Mozilla stuff, with DuckDuckGo as deafult search engine. Protonmail for e-mail, drive, etc. Things are working again. Adds are being blocked. My Firefox browser window has a deep purple banner with tiny animated stars now; very nice. You can definitely improve your experience with a bit of conscious work.

I've been thinking a lot about what to do about my presence online, entering the new year. My excitement about social media has steadily declined over the years to the point of barely making any sound. I wasn't on Instagram to be constantly sidetracked by random videos being thrown at me. I was there to see what my friends and fellow creators were up to. Then there's also that other creepy thing that the big tech companies are doing.

Like feeding their users' data into their own semi-hushy generative AI projects.

I don't know the intricacies of everything, but I know that my desire to share pictures on social media just... isn't right now. I might just upload art on my website and throw out a link when there's anything new instead. And maybe table at fairs and conventions more often. I'm starting a blog, because sometimes I also crave to write, but on top of everything else, having to cut up text into microblog threads or adjust in other ways to cookie cutter social media formats is simply too much of a headache. I want my own place.

So, new year, new beginnings, right? I'll figure something out. In other news I'm back freelancing for the time being, but I no longer have a studio. More on that later. I'm off to climb the local debris heap-turned-into-a-hill to watch fireworks with friends in a few hours. Happy new year everyone!