318
After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad
(www.tweaktown.com)
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
That's like how enshittification starts, "oh we're just going to paywall these features, don't worry all the old ones will be free!" And then the old parts start getting replaced by "New and improved!" Parts that also somehow need to be on the cloud and paywalled.
The old parts are literally just a basic wrapper around the most basic WPF text control. Notepad is literally the kind of app used as a tutorial for intro to coding that you can crank out in half a day.
There is no risk of it becoming proprietary or locked behind paywalls.
This is a junk, click bait, article designed to drive up hysteria cause it gets engagement. Supporting trash misinformation outlets like this is far more corrosive then adding new paid features to an existing application.