I’m putting this in chat and not in Technology because I’m also wondering about things like clothes, appliances—basically any sort of consumer product, virtual or physical, you can think of that you feel has retained some standard of quality and has not yet been enshittified. I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified, but perhaps you disagree? Post is inspired by this video.
EDIT: coyotino correctly points out that Wikipedia isn’t a product but a service; poor word choice on my part, just trying to cast a wide a net as possible here in the hopes of making a list of “things that are still good that don’t suck.” Like I said, a wide net 🙂.
Valve
The benefits of not being publicly-traded.
They’ve begun to enshittify their reviews. Used to be almost no meme reviews, now they’re everywhere because people can get awards for them. And they of course the ability give awards require you spend money on Steam.
I used to trust “overwhelmingly positive” on games I was considering. Now I don’t. I still read some steam reviews but also reviews across the web, too.
Steam is getting close to me not treating it as the only place to buy games.
“nobody reads reviews so i’ll just say I’m gay”
“a friend of mine said he’ll buy me a GTX4090 if I get 1000 likes in this review”
And that kind of shit is listed as “most helpful”. Fuck Valve for making it hard to report that fucking shit
Apply Gabe directly to the forehead 😜
Ya, they’re not perfect. I prefer GOG over Steam due to the DRM. But Valve still has a special place in my ❤️ and they make awesome products. And also the stuff runs better on Linux generally than GOG.
I feel like the actual review quality has gone down but even if it’s a meme review people usually still use the thumb up or down to show how they really feel about the game making the overwhelming positive tag still accurate
The Steam client was sheeeeeeit at first.
And has since improved rather than losing features and locking accesses based on an arbitrary tier system?
A rare win indeed. I do tend to prioritize GOG for games now since they’re DRM-free (and Bandcamp for music purchase).
Is Bandcamp drm free?
It is, and all the artists I bought music from offered their music in lossless format (ex: FLAC) as well as more common format (ex: mp3)
That’s sweet! I’m definitely joining! Of course I want to pay for music, but I can’t stand having some black box software walled garden around something I paid for running on something I paid for. And then youtube has this terrible quality.
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Quite a lot of steam games are also DRM free, btw.
They do, but on GOG I don’t have to check.
Can’t easily download offline installers, though.
Personally, I have trouble continuing to buy from Bandcamp since they were sold to another company which promptly had a round of layoffs.
It was green though!
steam has had it built-in from the start.
Im not as active in the movie industry anymore but I always liked Blackmagic. They’re making Davinci Resolve, a really good video editor. Really generous free tier, pro version is a one-time purchase.
They’re also making affordable cinema cameras. Both of these products really shook up the industry a few years back.
I’ve been using Davinci Resolve for many years now and couldn’t recommend it more. In my opinion, some of the best software I’ve ever used or heard of.
My fusion clips keep saying Media Offline but it’s not offline! It’s right there!
Other than that it’s been great for me also.
Man I keep reading about resolve over the past year, but my 2013 computer can’t handle it. It’s very sad. It looks like such a useful program. I’ve been using shotcut instead and while it gets the job done well enough, there’s so many little nitpicks that I’ve got haha
I’m no expert in video editing and have only done it scarcely, but I do still want to plug Kdenlive for those interested in a FOSS alternative to Resolve. I don’t know how it stacks up by comparison, and I suspect it probably can’t do quite as much, but it’s still a well-made piece of software that’s been easy for me to use and more than capable of pulling off anything I’ve needed.
There is a brand of flour called King Arthur that seems pretty decent as far as brands as a general concept go. I don’t get them all the time as their stuff does tend to cost more, but I’ve found my bread machine has consistently done better with their stuff than any other flour I’ve tried (I’m not sure exactly why, what is there to get wrong with grinding flour, that would enable a significant difference in quality to exist?), they don’t seem to have gotten any worse over the time I’ve known about them, and operate as some sort of employee cooperative from what I’ve read.
I can attest to this as well. My wife makes pizza dough from scratch using King Arthur. She’s been doing so for almost 18 years now and we have not noticed a decline in its quality.
King Arthur is awesome. I also buy olive oil and einkorn flour from Jovial. Einkorn is in the ancient grain category I guess and I find more digestible than typical flour. It is a bit different tasting and to work with, so its not a straight 1 to 1 replacement however. https://jovialfoods.com/einkorn/flour/
You might not like the prices, but computer components, cpu, gpu, motherboard… keep getting better each generation, some bugs cause issues, but that’s due to trying to maximize performance, not cheeping out. 3-d printer tech. In fact, thinking about it, a lot of competitive products keep their quality. Also small brand premium products in general.
Counter-argument: A lot of computer part brands are not viewed in the best light. From Intel and their constant upgrades of sockets and recent issues with CPUs, to mobo vendors doing anti-consumer stuff, most storage(ssd/hdd) vendors hiding details or downgrading models silently to save money at consumer cost. Nvidia is still getting hate for the price increases of their GPUs, and doing other anti-comptetitive things using their dominance.
It’s not everyone but making a good choice isn’t always easy these days. Since the post mentioned brands, I’d rather hear which brsnd is doing good rather than just a “the market in general is good”.
Partial rebuttal. If you increase the power draw, you need more pins dedicated to power and ground. Without reducing functions, this needs a different footprint. They have had issues with some CPUs in the past. bugs in complex systems are basically unavoidable, its just in hardware you can’t just issue a software patch to fix it 100% with no negative effects.
Nvidia has been anti-competitive as long as I can remember. They put out dev tools that basically break games on AMD. That’s just their operating model. I don’t know that that’s enshittifying as it often makes their own product better, its just being an anti-competitive ass.
I can’t comment too much to your other points. I think some of the memory was down to the memory chip makers, not the product makers, but I can’t back that up.
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The market for vacuums seems pretty enshittified. That much plastic getting replaced every 5 years just doesnt seem that sustainable. Repairability seems to be an afterthought for a lot of the popular brands. Im looking at sebo right now, its just a heavy investment for my current situation
I’m still pretty happy with my Miele vacuum from 2018, and they seem to promise spare parts for 15 years.
I bet my model is nothing compared to what they were 20 years ago though 🤣
I’ve had a Miele for 9 years. I don’t know if anything’s changed recently, but based on my personal experience, that’s a hard recommend.
I don’t know how they are for longevity, but I’m extremely pleased with the two Shark vacuums we own. We own a bed and breakfast so they get out to heavy use.
I remember my mom always getting Sharks, but they seemed to always fail after a couple of years.
bagless is a non starter for me at this point. Im tired of the stuff i just vacuumed going airborne when I go to empty the thing out. I heard that repairability for sharks to be basically bottom of the barrel since they keep coming out with new models and stop supporting old models.
That’s why
I recently purchased a used Lenovo ThinkPad and I was really impressed with both the build quality and the amount of support documentation available. On the support page you can download a hardware maintenance manual which has diagrams and procedures for replacing most of the internal components, and the “self repair guide” page has step-by-step procedures with pictures, videos, difficulty ratings, time estimates and required tools. You don’t have to have a business account with them, prove ownership of a product, or even log in to access this information, it’s just available.
Inside the laptop most of the parts are modular, including things like the USB port, RJ45 port, and power switch, which are all on their own individual boards so that they can be easily replaced as needed. If you have some basic computer hardware knowledge and a few simple tools you can do most of these replacements.
These are field-serviceable laptops and they’re clearly designed and supported for that. You can pick up used ones (mostly resold by businesses that are upgrading) on eBay for US$200-300 (make sure you read the listing - some of them have had their hard drives removed and you have to supply your own). If you’re looking for a laptop that you can keep running for the next 5+ years, I recommend this.
Ah man, used one in my corporate life and loved it…moved away and independent and a friend gifted me her old laptop and I am happy in my little spreadsheet world at the end of the month.
What model ThinkPad? I’m fortunate enough to have an X1 Carbon 10th gen, although I think the battery life might not be as good as my older one, a 7th.
I found a T495 with a Ryzen 7 and licensed Win10 Pro on it. It’s a little dated but it’s frankly more capability than I really need in a portable computer, and the replacement parts are cheap.
What kind of battery life do you get?
3-ish hours with no throttling and the screen at full brightness, doing normal-ish web browsing and document work (not really using this for gaming). More if I let it throttle and lower the screen brightness.
I’ve had my Lenovo Legion for four years.
Great product, still works well. The only downside is how much I hate the plastic tabs you have to work open in order to get into the machine’s guts.
I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified
well that’s because Wikipedia isn’t a product, it is a free service hosted by a nonprofit. lately i find myself gravitating towards and wanting to spend money supporting nonprofit/open-source “products” like Wikipedia, because they seem like the only ones that aren’t prone to enshittification.
But to answer your main question, non-enshittified and for-profit brands that come to mind:
- Firefox
- Noctua
- Red Wing Shoes
- Coway air purifiers
- Vornado fans
I’m noticing a trend here - can enshittification apply to physical products? Certainly there have been products in the past that have dropped in quality over time, but i kind of feel like that isn’t the same thing as enshittification. Enshittification is the process by which tech companies (1) create a product, (2) offer the product at an unsustainably low price, (3) obtain venture capital to stay alive while waiting for the competition to go bankrupt, and then finally (4) raise the price on the product or otherwise monetize in anti-consumer ways to claw back the value. Most of the brands I named above are long-time physical product brands, where their brand is tied to the quality of their product. If they made the product noticeably shittier, people would just buy a different brand next time. Certainly prices have gone up over time, but that’s just inflation. I can think of brands that have kept their price in a similar range but lowered the quality of their product (apparel brands like Adidas and Levi’s come to mind), but to me, this isn’t enshittification, because it wasn’t part of some master plan. It’s just a form of shrinkflation, where the brand reduces the quality or value of the product in mostly-invisible ways to address rising costs.
I wouldn’t necessarily say Firefox. They’ve been static at best, but have definitely had their L takes, like the recent auto opt in to provide info to advertisers thing.
Like getting in bed with facebook now. That’s sort of a red flag
can enshittification apply to physical products?
I think that it can but it’s harder to do so, since physical products are usually sold as discrete units, while digital products are often sold as a continuous service. Enshittification requires you to trap users into the continued consumption of the product, even after a sharp drop of quality, and that’s easier to pull of under a continuous service.
If that’s correct physical products can be enshittified too, but that would require a different sales model than just “go to the shop, buy it”. Perhaps exploiting either subscriptions (like ink cartridges) and network effect (you need to use that product instead of a competing one because otherwise you break compatibility with what others use, and that compatibility is essential for the usage of the product).
It could also apply to degrading quality or features in replacements. Something like newer cars offering subscriptions for heated seats or extended battery range. Or leather goods switching to a lower grade.
that does make sense, and you cite two great examples. I initially thought of Apple as maybe a physical brand that hasn’t enshittified, but really they hit that network effect that you’re talking about.
I wonder if a Conway air purifier would help Mrs. Hedge with her allergies . . . ? 🤔
I have a couple based on the recommendations and testing from Wirecutter. I’m not going to definitively say it will help with allergies bc everyone’s body is a little different, but it’s definitely highly effective for filtering!
Mrs. Hedge is convinced that all air purifiers don’t work, but I’ll definitely pass that on to her and maybe it will change her mind (and even better, improve her mood during allergy season!)
My kitchen doesn’t have a vent to the outside, so I’d have to open windows to deal with any smoke or fumes from cooking. Since I got the air purifier it kicks in when I cook and cleans the air in minutes. I’ve also noticed improvements with my allergies since getting one.
Conway
Did you mean Coway? Coways are incredible, in my experience.
Disagree on Vornado.
I have bought around ten of their fans in total since 2018. Larges, mediums, smalls. 9/10 of them are rattly, half-plastic pieces of shit. I refuse to give any more money to them.
Maybe you have an older model? Go buy one of their current fans. I call it a “trash-gamble”, 50% chance of rattling fan right away, 90% chance it will rattle within the year.
I think GOG gets better and better as a place to buy games.
I’m a die-hard fan just for the DRM-free offline installers they provide, but the game selection has been consistently getting wider, to the point where many AAA games release on GOG on day one.
The deals are also generally nice.
On the other hand, games rely on Gog Galaxy for some features, and Galaxy is not available for all platforms which they sell games for (specifically, Linux).
While that sucks, it’s only some games, and AFAIK they only rely on Gog Galaxy for the multiplayer features sometimes, and maybe achievements.
I’m also still holding out hope they’ll come out with a Linux version of GOG Galaxy. For now, for my single player gaming purposes, running the games using Lutris (or Heroic, which I’ve heard is even better for this) is good enough for my Linux gaming needs.
I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified, but perhaps you disagree?
Not enshittified, but I do hate their new design. I’m assuming it’s the price I’m paying for donating in the past but clicking “I already donated” on their most recent funding campaign prior to that redesign.
Coming up with an actual answer is harder than I thought. For one, I haven’t bought anything new in several years. AFAIK, Brother laser printers are only slightly enshittified now. Does that count?
I use this to retain the old style, if that helps you.
Thanks. It does, but I hate having to use, install, and sync scripts like that (plus user script managers) to make things usable.
However, I forgot about the
useSkin=vectortrick. I’ll just remember to add that lol.
I haven’t bought anything new in several years. 👍
Lol, I’ve bought stuff but it’s either been a consumable or “new to me”.
Shelly is pretty good for smart home stuff.
I care a lot about local control, but they even have some cloud stuff if you’re into that sort of thing.
Zooz is one of my favorites for zwave gear.
I hate that Shelly only does WiFi. I’m a big fan of Zigbee and would love more options.
Sonoff has some really nice Zigbee relays that compete with some of the Shelly products.
I agree that other protocols are better, but I’ve found that zwave tends to be more stable and reliable than zigbee. And both are better than Wi-Fi. But Wi-Fi is the easiest to onboard for a beginner.
Shelly is pretty good for smart home stuff.
Haven’t heard of that. It doesn’t spy on you like all the other “smart home” tech is alleged to do? Is it open source?
As far as the local control goes, you can keep it from phoning home and it will still work. I don’t believe that the Shelly firmware is open source, but they allow you to upload custom firmware that is.
Because you can cut them off from the outside world I don’t believe it is doing the same kind of data collection externally unless you allow it to.
The new “mini” versions of their gear is harder to customize apparently but still possible, they still sell the larger versions though too that are easy to modify.
Martinelli’s apple juice
led bulbs
Sharpies
Nintendo
Lego
A24 studio
Nintendo
I wanted to debate on that but you are right. They haven’t really gotten worse, they are just doing what they always do.
Exactly. Out of the big 3, they stick to their guns of making solid hardware, great 1st party games and not gouging customers for online service.
Now if they would REASONABLY charge for their remastered games, I’d have almost nothing to complain about.
Their war against emulation will always be wrong for me. One of the causes is the price for their remaster.
not gouging customers for online service.
I find really shit that they charge extra to play N64 games when you only need the online subscription to play the SNES ones.
Everything else I’m completely fine with.
As a competitive smash player, fuck Nintendo and I can’t wait for Rivals 2 to come out
I am a bit unsure about LEGO these days. Prices are going up quite severely while the quality of the pieces (mold marks) seems to be going down. At the moment it’s not yet a problem, but it could be that these are the first signs of a degrading quality. But I also believe that LEGO customers are quite picky, so hopefully the company will change their approach if the criticisms become to wide spread.
I really hope so, because LEGO is one of my favorite things in life!
For sure they have grown in price. I haven’t noticed any degradation in quality though. I just hope their transition to more sustainable pieces doesn’t drop the quality.
Last time I was on it, Spacehey (a modern day Myspace) wasn’t enshittified. I can also say the same about InsaneJournal, but that’s most likely due to the very low amount of dedicated users on it and also because I only go there maybe once a month for an update on the completely fictional company I run, so I don’t see much of anything on there.
My Thinkpad almost turns 10 this year and I still use it. It’s still quite snappy for normal browsing and programming work on the go. Because I had 2 batteries for it that were easily switchable, the battery that I’m using now is not yet completely dead and will take me 1-2 hours of programming.
It has had its screen replaced due to someone kicking my bag and breaking the screen, and I’ve had to replace the keyboard at one point after showering the laptop in tea. But the ease with which you can replace stuff like the keyboard is awesome. The thing is definitely built to last
That’s awesome.
I’m on year #4 with my Lenovo Legion. I’m planning to buy a new one later this year to keep up with gaming tech, but I’m keeping this one to be a dedicated Linux machine for browsing and general use, with the plan being using my new machine only for gaming.
My 2016 ThinkPad E570 still runs like I just got it yesterday. I haven’t even cleaned the internal fan because I’m too much of a wuss to dismantle it and risk damage, haha. It’s absolutely phenomenal.
The battery can’t last even 2 hours, though, so I am reliant on outlets.
Decathlon, I looked at their brands and stuff like it was some low grade sport gear.
But! if you know what to look for and spend little more (don’t buy the cheapest stuff) you can get pretty good deal on some gear.
They refused to pull out of Russia when it invaded Ukraine, though, so they’re shitty in other ways.
