Demerdez-vous: A response to Enshittification

There is an RSS reader that I often used in the past and have become very reliant on. I would share the name with you, but as they grew more popular, they have decided to follow the enshittification route. They've changed their UI, hidden several popular links behind multilayered menus, and they have revamped their API. Features that I used to rely on have disappeared, and the API is close to useless.

My first instinct was to find a new app that will satisfy my needs. But being so familiar with this reader, I've decided to test a few things in the API first. Even though their documentation doesn't mention older versions anymore, I've discovered that the old API is still active. All I had to do was add a version number to the URL.

It's been over 10 years, and that API is still very much active. I'm sorry I won't share it here, but this has served as a lesson for me when it comes to software that becomes worse over time. Don't let them screw you, unscrew yourself!

We talk a lot about "enshittification"these days. I've even written about it a couple of times. It's about how platforms start great, get greedy, and slowly turn into user-hostile sludge. But what we rarely talk about is the alternative. What do you do when the product you rely on rots from the inside?

The French have a phrase for this: Demerdez-vous. The literal translation is "unshit yourself". What it actually means is to find a way, even if no one is helping you.

When a company becomes too big to fail, or simply becomes dominant in its market, drip by drip, it starts to become worse. You don't even notice it at first. It changes in ways that most people tolerate because the cost of switching is high, and the vendor knows it.

But before you despair, before you give up, before you let the system drag you into its pit, try to unscrew yourself with the tools available. If the UI changes, try to find the old UI. Patch the inconvenience. Disable the bullshit. Bend the app back into something humane.

It might sound impossible at first, but the tools to accomplish this exist and are widely being used.

Check the settings.

Sometimes the escape hatch is sitting right there, buried under three layers of "Advanced" menus. On the web I hate auto-playing videos, I don't want to receive twelve notifications a day from an app, I don't care about personalization. But for the most part, these can be disabled. When I download an app, I actually spend time going through settings. If I care enough to download an app, or if I'm forced, I'll spend the extra time to ensure that an app works to my advantage, not the other way around.

Use backdoors

When that RSS reader removes features from the UI, but not from their code, I was still able to continue using them. Another example of this is reddit. Their new UI is riddled with dark patterns, infinite scroll, and popups. But, go to old.reddit.com, and you are greeted with that old UI that may not look fancy, but it was designed with the user in mind, not the company's metrics.

I also like https://lite.cnn.com

Use Tools

YouTube removed the dislike button. While it might be hurtful to content creators to see the number of dislikes, as a consumer, this piece of data served as a filter for lots of spam content. For that of course there is the "Return Youtube Dislike" browser extension. Extensions often can help you regain control when popular websites remove functionality useful to users, but the service no longer wants to support.

There are several tools that enhance youtube, fix twitter, and of course uBlock.

Final Straw.

It's not always possible to combat enshittification. Sometimes the developer actively enforces their new annoying features and prevents anyone from removing them. In cases like these, there is still something that users can do. They can walk away.

You don’t have to stay in an abusive relationship. You are allowed to leave. When you do, you'll discover that there was an open-source alternative. Or that a small independent app survived quietly in the corner of the internet. Or even sometimes, you'll find that you don't need the app at all. You break your addiction.

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In the end, "Demerdez-vous" is a reminder that we still have agency in a world designed to take it away. Enshittification may be inevitable, but surrender isn’t. There’s always a switch to flip, a setting to tweak, a backdoor to exploit, or a path to walk away entirely. Companies may keep trying to box us in, but as long as we can still think, poke, and tinker, we don’t have to live with the shit they shovel. At the end of the day "On se demerde"

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