Shut it down

So much of our interaction with computers in 2026 is having to come to terms with everything getting more intrusive, more annoying, more time-wasting, and generally breaking the contract between companies and their customers. As loath as I am to use a Cory Doctorow-coined buzzword, I have to admit that he nailed it with “enshittification.” But yesterday the internet made me throw a “why can’t we have nice things?!” tantrum — I finally deleted Instagram from my phone, after a couple of weeks of feeling like it was giving me psychic damage every time I opened the app. There’s been such a long, slow degradation of that platform that it took me a while to put my finger on exactly why it was bothering me so much. Eventually I realized that they’ve finally abandoned any pretense of being anything other than an advertising platform that occasionally and randomly shows you a photo from someone you might know. I actually counted, for science, and saw that the stories1 were actually 8:1 ads vs…