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Google fucked a whole generation with Chromebooks, and now they're fucking the next generation with AI
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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You seemed to miss their argument. Those were the standard in 1995, before OSes had really integrated the internet. Haivng a floppy disk, discarding wifi, and having drivers auto-loaded/discovered automatically (or not needed at all) are independent developments. Even when Chromebooks started becoming standard: using drivers from physical disks were rare, Windows could automatically find and update drivers (how well, eh), WiFI existed and was faster than most internets. You could install Linux and it would mostly work, provided your hardware wasn't too new.
The actual argument chromebooks are contributing to tech illteracy because, they're:
Organizations buy these devices because they're cheap (than cost), lock them down, and those locked-down devices become the only computer for most students. While it's technically possible to install Linux, these users can't: it's not their devices: the organizations bought them because they were cheap and easily locked down for kids. If these are their main device, and they not allowed (either technically or by policy) to install another OS: where will they learn tech literacy? Not on their phone, not on their tablet, and not on their school-issued laptop.
They've been locked into a room and people wonder why they don't know how to interact outside. You're arguing that the room today is better than the one in 1995. That's true, that doesn't change the argument:
Universities were already locking down their PCs in the 90's, at least those with competent IT departments - BIOS password, locked boot menu, Windows 2000 with restricted user accounts. If you don't do that, your every PC will have 15 copies of Counter Strike and a bunch of viruses in one week.
Chromebooks (and laptops in general) are way cheaper now than PCs were back then, so again, you need to buy your own and install a proper OS, the situation did not really change.
You need to make up your mind on what time period you're trying to use. 90s? 2000? Before you were talking about Windows 95.
But notice, you're talking about universities: we're talking about children under 18. Those computers were not as locked down. That has changed from the 90s. The security of the 90s (especially before TCP/IP was standard) was different than 2000-2010 security, which was different than 2010s+ security. Yet, you're trying to claim it hasn't changed? That's so inaccurate it's laughable.
Even in the Linux world, Pre-IP vs Slow Internet vs Fast Internet vs Post-sudo security models have changed a lot. I'd be skeptical of anyone trying to argue that the security and lockdown of these computers has not changed in 30 years. Is that your argument? If not, why did you start with "Windows 95?"
And? People still get viruses. People still install games if they can. The tools to do that on PCs are far better at trying to stop those than 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. Chromebooks are even more effective than those tools at locking them down to be unusable.
Before: if you wanted to do work at home, you or your family had to buy a computer. Kids (might) need to convince their parents to do experiments, but it was far easier to do that to convince a school administration.
Today? What families have a "family computer?"
Kids get a phone, they might get a tablet, and if they get a computer, its the school one. The need for a family computer has basically gone. All of the computers are locked down. Google happens to make locked down OSes for their replacements: Chromebooks, Phones, and Tablets. Yet, according to you, the requirements hasn't changed. Yet, from a child's perspective: they'll probably never get the opportunity to play with a non-locked down computer.