Blonging for Freedom/ Automation Impediment

Blonging for Freedom ? ~ ⁂ *

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Have you ever spent hours on a so-called customer service call, and come out with the feeling that it was not worth it? Or fighting a web site or a phone app to cancel a service or get a problem fixed, while feeling like the designers of those interfaces meant for you to prefer to be doing something else, anything else whatsoever?

I'm sure it's not an accident. If you and all other customers were to succeed in your claims, that would cost the business dearly. It costs less to place barriers between your and your successful claims. Even if some persist and get it, it still costs less. And the feeling that it was not worth it makes you less likely to undertake it ever again.

Now, what if we had a way around this?

Surely if there's technology for them to automate their defenses against our claims, we should also be able to use that technology to automate our attempts to get our claims addressed.

Digital voice assistants may have seemed like part of the solution. However they're named, you may ask them to purchase something for you, or to get you some information, and if they're meant to do these jobs, they'll likely spare you from some unpleasant interactons.

Now, helping them with sales promotes their profit, whereas helping you with customer service claims would make it a cost center. I haven't interacted with these assistants, but my guess is that they won't help you with the latter.

These tools are controlled by masters other than the users, so they will serve those masters, not the users.

Surely enterprising developers have already thought of using the power of bullshit generators to fight fire with fire.

If you're placed on hold for long periods, or have to face infinite voice menus, maybe a Sloppy Patient Agent could stand in for you, listening, waiting, and even interacting on your behalf, while you go relax peacefully on a spa or something?

If there's a painful web interface or a sucky app, maybe a Sloppy Patient Agent could go about clicking on buttons and waiting for responses and escalating back to you as needed?

It doesn't beat having a documented API or a standard protocol so that both parties can automate their ends without any fuss, but it could be quite an improvement over the insufferable state of enshittified affairs imposed on us. If only...

Surely someone on their side thought of that as well.

So they guard their websites with ever harder CAPTCHAs that require you, a dehumanized human made their servant, to endure the whole process, if it as much as looks like you might be trying to automate something on your end. Don't normalize CAPTCHAs: they're there to impede your automation!

They make their TRApps available exclusively on locked down systems that won't let you take control and install programs that could help you automate these painful interactions. They conspire to impede your automation!

They have even made it a felony for you to try to work your way around these access controls, and forced such self-defeating legislation onto nearly all countries through threats of tariffs and trade "agreements" that involved threats of tariffs.

Their undisclosed motto seems to be "automation for me / but nor for thee / unless the automation / also serves me." It sucks to be the "thee" in this picture, doesn't it?

Well, thanks to Trump, the threats of tariffs have become reality for many countries.

Instead of retaliating by also shooting ourselves in the pockets (ouch!), how about pressing your democratic legislatures, if you have any, to repeal those self-defeating laws pushed through threats, so as to allow local businesses to develop solutions to break down the Automation Impediments and bring useful automation to everyone's reach?

Or, if you're an enterpreneur in Brazil, that AFAICT has resisted the push for legislation anti circumvention of exploitative business models, get in touch for us to talk about our first-mover advantage, shall we?

So blong,