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Geopolitics

Tunisian Opposition Leader Shot Dead Outside His Home

TUNISIALIVE, MOSAïQUE FM (Tunisia), BBC NEWS (UK) , AFP

Worldcrunch

TUNIS - Chokri Belaid, a senior leader in Tunisia "s left-leaning opposition Democratic Patriotic party, was shot dead as he was leaving his house in Tunis.

"My brother was assassinated. I am desperate and depressed," Belaid's brother Abdelmajid Belaid told the Agence France Presse news agency.

[rebelmouse-image 27086250 alt="""" original_size="600x600" expand=1]

Chokri Belaid - Photo: Rais67

After being shot in the neck and in the head, Belaid was rushed to Ennasr clinic in Tunis, the news website tunisialive reports .

No one has yet taken responsability for the shooting, and the motives of the murder remain unclear. BBC News notes that Chokri Belaid was a prominent secular opponent of Tunisia's moderate Islamist-led government , and just this past Saturday Belaid had accused "mercenaries" hired by the Ennahda party of carrying out an attack on a Democratic Patriotic meeting.

Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, of Ennahda, quickly condemned the attack, calling Chokri Belaid’s assassination "a crime against Tunisia" on the news radio station Mosaïque FM .

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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 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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