cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/30783421
It’s as if humanity is dying off. They don’t want to see you in person so physical addresses are being withheld from contact pages. I now must dig into the privacy policy or ToS to find an address. It’s really a shitshow because whoever handles privacy requests could be entirely outsourced to someone who has nothing to do with an org.
It boils down to nannying. They don’t even want to enable people to write snail-mail letters – which is king for escaping enshitification and the digital transformation.
I notice that many companies don’t even provide an email address or phone number on their contact page anymore. You can only reach them by something like online chat or a support ticket.
I wonder if a good pushback is to lodge open data requests. Of course, only if the website is government run and the gov has a usable open data law.
Some “accessibility” policies are popping up in the US and EU which are intended to ensure blind people can still function. I’m not blind but I’m tempted to file accessibility complaints whenever they push a GUI CAPTCHA.
When email is withheld, I’ll do an MX lookup on their domain and see that it points to Microsoft or Google, in which case I refuse to use the contact form because I believe those traverse their email. Sometimes the MX lookup reveals barracuda or some email firewall which masks what they use. So having transparency in the shitter exacerbates the need for snail mail.
Oh yeah. Been going on for years. Its a real problem. When I apply for jobs I keep a record that the unemployment office required when I was receiving benefits. It includes address. I feel like I have to be a hacker to get the addresses. I avoid ones without one because quite frankly it makes you wonder if they are scams. I can’t phathom society working very well without in person options unless we have a system where social safety nets are given to any citizen and if for any reason its going to be denied or withheld that physical people come and verify. We need to flip the systems and make processing assume legitamacy and require massive checking before doing any blocking.
