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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Ashifa Kassam

‘Another internet is possible’: Norway rails against ‘enshittification’

Man in a garage flicking through a family photo album.
The video features a man whose job is to make everyday items gradually worse – until he discovers he can do so online. Photograph: Forbrukerrådet/YouTube

The video’s opening shot shows a man hiding under a bed snipping in a hole in someone’s sock. Seconds later, the same man uses a saw to shorten a table leg so that it wobbles during breakfast. “My job is to make things shitty,” the man explains. “The official title is enshittificator. What I do is I take things that are perfectly fine and I make them worse.”

The video, released recently by the Norwegian Consumer Council, is an absurdist take on a serious issue; it is part of a wider, global campaign aimed at fighting back against the “enshittification”, or gradual deterioration, of digital products and services.

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