3.3 KiB
Update Culture
Update culture is a negative trend in capitalism in which developers of a (typically bloated) program or similar product create frequent modifications called "updates" and force users to keep consuming these "updates", e.g. by deprecating or neglecting old versions, dropping backwards compatibility (e.g. Python) or by downright forcing updates in code. This is typically manifested by a familiar message:
Your software is too old, please update to the newest version.
In software this process is a lot of times automatized and known as autoupdates, but update culture encompasses more than this, it's the whole mentality of having to constantly update one's software, hardware and other products. It is similar to consumerism but more about constant modifications masked as "cool updates" rather than replacement of physical products.
A typical example are web browsers or proprietary operating systems that strive for bloat monopoly.
The updates are usually justified by "muh security" and "muh modern features". Users who want to avoid these updates or simply can't install them, e.g. due to using old incompatible hardware or missing dependency packages, are ridiculed as poorfags, idiots and their suffering is ignored. In fact, update culture is cancer because:
- It is a huge security risk. The developer, whoever it is, has the power to remotely push and execute any code at any time to the devices of many users. In fact this can be seen as the definition of backdoor. This is not just an issue of proprietary software, there have been many FOSS projects pushing malware this way (look up e.g. the projects that targeted malware at Russians during the Russia-Ukraine war).
- It kills freedom. E.g. with the example of web the constant meaningless updates of JavaScript and addition of "features" eliminates any small competition that can't afford to keep up with the constantly changing environment. This is why we have no good web browsers.
- It is a form of software consumerism, even if the updates themselves are gratis, they always come at a cost such as potential unstability, requiring new hardware, forcing installing more dependencies, required learning to use the new version, or even dropping of old features and malicious code in the updates.
- It is dangerous, updates regularly break things, and there are cases where a lot depends on software running smoothly.
- The security justifications are lies: a true concern for security would lead to unbloating and creating a minimal, stable and well tested software. Update culture in fact constantly pushes newly created vulnerabilities with the updates which are only better in not having been discovered yet, i.e. relying on security by obscurity. This creates an intentionally endless cycle of creating something that will never be finished (even if it well could be).
- It is bullshit effort, wasting human work and creating an intentionally high maintenance cost. Humans, both users and programmers, become slaves to the software.their