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Second 'Trudeau Mania' Takes Over Canada

"New Trudeau Mania," writes French-language Canadian daily Le Journal de Montréal on the front page of its Tuesday edition, after Justin Trudeau — son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau — led his Liberal Party to an unexpectedly sweeping victory in general elections.

Outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper conceded defeat late Monday, ending nearly a decade of Conservative party rule.

The Liberals seized a parliamentary majority with a record 184 seats and are credited with about 39.5% of the vote. Before the general elections, the party was the third political force in parliament.

"My friends, we beat fear with hope. We beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together," Trudeau said during his victory speech in his hometown of Montreal. "This is what positive politics can do."

The 43-year-old pledged to run a $10 billion annual budget deficit for three years to invest in infrastructure and help stimulate Canada's anemic economic growth, Reuters reports.

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Look At This Crap! The "Enshittification" Theory Of Why The Internet Is Broken

The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.

A photo of hands holding onto a smartphone

A person holding their smartphone

Gilles Lambert/ZUMA
Manuel Ligero

-Analysis-

The universe tends toward chaos. Ultimately, everything degenerates. These immutable laws are even more true of the Internet.

In the case of media platforms, everything you once thought was a good service will, sooner or later, disgust you. This trend has been given a name: enshittification. The term was coined by Canadian blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the inevitable drift of technological giants toward... well.

The explanation is in line with the most basic tenets of Marxism. All digital companies have investors (essentially the bourgeoisie, people who don't perform any work and take the lion's share of the profits), and these investors want to see the percentage of their gains grow year after year. This pushes companies to make decisions that affect the service they provide to their customers. Although they don't do it unwillingly, quite the opposite.

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Annoying customers is just another part of the business plan. Look at Netflix, for example. The streaming giant has long been riddling how to monetize shared Netflix accounts. Option 1: adding a premium option to its regular price. Next, it asked for verification through text messages. After that, it considered raising the total subscription price. It also mulled adding advertising to the mix, and so on. These endless maneuvers irritated its audience, even as the company has been unable to decide which way it wants to go. So, slowly but surely, we see it drifting toward enshittification.

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