https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/norwegian-consumer-watchdog-calls-out-enshittification
Claims Hardware Deliberately Degraded After Purchase
Alongside the report, the Forbrukerrådet and 28 co-signers — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and Cory Doctorow — sent an open letter to EU policymakers on February 27, urging stronger enforcement of the Digital Markets Act and the GDPR, and pushing back against the European Commission's "Digital Omnibus" package, which the letter argued risks diluting existing consumer protections.
The collective is pushing toward the EU Digital Fairness Act, which the Commission included in its 2026 work program with a proposal expected in Q4 2026. The act is expected to target dark patterns, influencer marketing, addictive design, and unfair personalization across digital products and services.
A public consultation that closed in October 2025 drew roughly 3,000 responses in its first two weeks alone, many from gamers pushing for provisions that would prevent publishers from disabling titles consumers have already purchased — a campaign known as Stop Killing Games.
(Score: 3, Touché) by epitaxial on Wednesday March 11, @12:22PM
This made me laugh pretty good.
A day in the life of an enshittifciator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday March 11, @07:41PM (3 children)
What is that?
Oh. I see. They leave pricing out of the name to reduce anger. Its using privacy violations to figure out what the customer can afford, then increasing prices to match. Seems a recipe for infuriating customers into not buying.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/personalized-pricing-has-spread-across-many-industries-heres-how-consumers-can-avoid-it [pbs.org]
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday March 14, @09:44AM (2 children)
I had something along those lines happen to me. I was on aliexpress.com and I was on an iPhone and then used a Windows PC for the same link and it was like $.99 instead of $4.00 with $7.00 shipping (shown on the iPhone). I also found if you visit a link on aliexpress.com and revisit it will diddle the pricing until you delete all the cookies and it flips back to the lower price. Pitch black patterns.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday March 14, @02:19PM (1 child)
"New Shopper Only" $13.19 as soon as I log in its $26.40 Then in tiny print theres the estimated "import charges and est other taxes" in fine print. No thanks LOL.
It can be an expensive place to shop because they play a lot of games to "capture" the 400% markup that amazon drop shippers get. So sometimes if you invest a lot of time with multiple open tabs you can get a good deal. Sometimes they just don't feel like it and the best deal is still somehow at amazon. Historically the odds of fake products that don't work were higher on ali, etc, but now scamazon is worse than ali especially for stuff like batteries.
There's a legacy brick and mortar retail, that I think is gone now, named Kohls, and they did this a lot of stuff like this with clothing back in the day although it wasn't personalized. All their shirts are like $75 unless they're on sale today or this week or some insane rotation where it'll be like $10. It so aggravating I never shop there anymore, just buy online from Amazon.
I found an even better example. An ESP-C6 dev board for $1.73. Oops only for new customers. Once I log in its $16.42 plus an estimated $0.26 of charges and taxes which IRL always estimates low. You'll be out about $20 for this "$1.73" dev board. What do you get for your $20? "Is it legit and does it even work?" Another "fun" aliexpress feature is purchase limits. "Max 3 pcs/shopper" so you get to max out that shipping charge if you need a couple.
$0.99 for a picture of three PL-259 UHF connectors (a ham radio antenna thing). It never lists how many there are except for "pkg quantity" which is listed as 4 pcs. But get this "Max 1 pcs/shopper" so I get 3 connector ends. What if I want to make 2 or more cable at the same time? Well you don't. Precisely one of the pictures includes UG175 reducers in the photo, the other 8 or so photos do not. So does it come with the reducer kit for "thin" RG-58 coax? Who knows! I could find out by April 6th, so they promise, but IRL it always takes a few extra days. Whats it made out of? Who knows. Whats the insulator made out of? Who knows. I can buy a genuine silver plate on brass solid teflon insulator Amphenol RF for $11.49 delivered tomorrow morning and using it will be a joy and it'll just work and it'll last forever. $12 for a connector seems a bit much but as a hobby expense spending an hour trying not to get ripped off by Ali or Scamazon and then I get a wildly sup par part I need to suffer thru... but hobbies are supposed to be fun I'll just order from Digikey. Amphenol RF guarantees their connector to 1000 Vrms and 500 attach detach cycles. Spend an hour or two to avoid getting ripped off, get ripped off in three weeks anyway when it arrives for $6, maybe $7 when we're done, then have to work around using a piece of junk, or pay $12 up front and actually enjoy my hobby tomorrow morning. Hmm. Something to keep in mind is there's probably only one factory in China making these and the best go to the chicom military, next best to the USA military, then its me and industrial/commercial peeps buying name brand Amphenol parts, then the crap that failed Q/A goes to Ali instead of the recycler for "half off", but if it doesn't work, is 50% off a good deal?
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday March 28, @05:12PM
Hilarious shit! I literally had to keep wiping tears from my eyes!
THANK YOU!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A