Categories
Letters

Old Hosting Service’s Cancellation Form Doesn’t Work (so now I post it publicly)

New pricing structure fails to reflect the actual costs of service. While I lack insider knowledge, I have noticed suspicious declines in quality. Combined with these unjustified price hikes this suggests the true reason is something more troublesome: recent acquisition by predatory investors. These practices disgrace modern commerce and our society at large; I am eager to avoid them whenever possible. That was why I came to this host in the first place. Another lamentable example of the much-discussed “enshittification”, I suppose.

Ostensibly this concerns web hosting — and yes, it may be futile to say anything more — but this situation exemplifies a pervasive and perverse economic condition: wealthy decision-makers *pathologically* incapable of satisfaction. So-called “Affluenza” currently lacks clinical treatment, yet as a mental impairment it is profoundly harmful. When we consumers tolerate exploitative pricing and degraded products, we not only support compulsive greed, we contribute to its further harms. The ill-gotten wealth inevitably leads to abandonment of mundane standards like fairness, good faith, temperance, and accountability. It empowers those so afflicted to use our money for ever worsening misconduct. This is common. This is tragic. This is morally indefensible. And it does not matter if it’s web hosting today — another day it may be housing, government, infrastructure, or human lives. The only standards they will respect are those we force upon them. Here then is my frail line in the sand: this time, the rich jerks won’t get my piddling money.

Collective actions are necessary… however small. We fight enshittification whenever we can. No support for WHG, EIG, or any entity prioritizing their own gains at the expense of literally everything else. We fix this when we stop indulging broken people with more money than sense. One day maybe they’ll wake up and see what they’ve been doing.

Categories
Glot-glot

Pulling a Switch

Ha! You didn’t even notice it, but something has definitely changed. GLOT is different. Believe it or not, you’re not reading this the same place as you would’ve been last week.

Server’s changed. After the seamless file copy from the old to the new, the nameserver pointers repropagate, and no one’s the wiser. Like *that*.

It’s their own dumb fault. I’d been hosting homepie.org with Lunarpages for four years and had few problems. Of course this year I’m a little strapped for cash, but since they were running a discount on hosting for two years, I was planning on taking them up on it (long-term planning, y’see?). $118 is a chunk o’ change, but this internet thing is important to me. So I asked for it as a gift. In fact, I asked my host if there was some sort of “gifting page” I could send people to. By way of response, they charged my card the $118. Oops.

Long story medium, I got it back, then a couple days later had an unannounced auto-renewal at the normal $95 yearly rate, canceled my service, canceled my card, had the charge go through anyways, negotiated the lengthy cancellation process, had to accept paying them for the domain fee… somewhere along the way a friendly girl named Lynae suggested that I just pack up and put all my stuff on her server. She’s using nowhere near the “unlimited space” or “unlimited bandwidth” provided for in her hosting plan, and she’s not quitting the internet anytime soon. So yeah. We’re just that much closer now. It’s even better than sharing a bedroom, I say. Wasn’t even that hard. Like pulling a switch.

Welcome to the new, cheaper, more convenient, same old Glot.