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Sources

Singapore Looks To Curb Deadly 'Falling Maids' Epidemic

THE STRAITS TIMES/ CHANNEL NEWS ASIA (Singapore)

SINGAPORE – "Since January, there have been nine fatalities, compared to four cases in 2011 and eight in 2012," reports the Straits Times.

Is the newspaper talking about car accidents or bird flu? No, that's the number of maids that have died from falling out of a building while they were cleaning the exterior of office or apartment windows.

Following the recent spate in accidental falls, Singapore's Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has ruled that foreign domestic workers are not allowed to clean outside windows.

According to Channel News Asia, employers failing to comply risk a fine of $3900-$7800 and six to 12 months in jail. They can also be permanently barred from employing a foreign domestic worker.

In Singapore, like in Hong Kong or Dubai, it is quite common to look up and see a silhouette dangling out of high-rise window, with a rag in hand or hanging laundry.

The maids –hailing from poorer Southeast Asian countries– are paid from $170 to $270 a month, depending on experience and nationality, and usually work seven days a week.

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Ideas

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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