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Geopolitics

Syrian Rebels Claim 200 Dead In Chemical Attack, Government Denies

REUTERS, SKY NEWS(UK), SANA(Syria)

Worldcrunch

DAMASCUS — Two Syrian opposition groups claim that government forces launched rockets with poison gas Wednesday morning in an attack they say killed more than 200 people in a rebel-held area near Damascus, Reuters reports.

Syrian officials denied the claims on state television, calling the allegations “completely baseless.” And state news agency Sana reports a source as saying the reports are false and were intended to distract UN chemical weapons inspectors, who arrived in the country Sunday.

Since the conflict began two years ago, both the rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have accused each other of using chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin.

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Map: Wikipedia

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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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