Bricking refers to making the device a brick, as in it doesn’t work anymore. At all. You don’t “brick” features.
Okay, I see what you mean. Do you know or can you suggest a different word for this? Mine would be something like paywalling: “paybricking”, but even I don’t think it’s good. “sub-brick-tion”?
IMHO, this wreaks of enshittification, so the word I would suggest is “enshittify” or something similar.
It most definitely is, I just want to have different words for hardware that is made obsolete. This isn’t even planned obsolescence IMO, this is something else. A function that seemingly has nothing to do with a live service (in similar products) is getting taken out and exchanged for something most people (presumably) don’t want. This is a scam and people should be refunded. Also Amazon should be punished severely for something like this.
They are taking functionality away and hiding it behind a paywall. This is pretty despicable behavior. They should get an award for it. Any consumer road shows that have a Dunce Award?
Just based on the Kindle my kid had that you had to pay to stop it being an ad platform, I can’t fathom the incentive to buy anything hardware wise in the Amazon space. You buy a thing and it’s still sitting there being a portable billboard because ‘fuck you we can’.
Planned obsolescence.
Shitty fucking business model, Bezos.
But it’s still working. People are still buying.
It’s like a drug. I don’t understand why ads are so enticing to mega corps. Why burn dollars worth of real customers and brand clout to chase pennys worth of hypothetical eyeball time?
Because the shareholders want a quick return on their investment, so short term profit