additional explanation of the concept, if wanted
@sharan An explanation from my perspective, in the hopes that multiple descriptions might help to understand it better:
The idea behind a Ulysses Pact is pretty much that you accept that you are fallible, almost treating your future self like an adversary of sorts.
Often in the form of "I'm going to be tempted in the future, so I should make decisions now that I can still foresee the problem, in such a way that I remove that possibility for when I get tempted."
An example from my personal experience would be to burn bridges ahead of time, by making myself extremely unlikeable to eg. capitalists who might try to tempt me out of being activist in the future, by being very loudly anticapitalist.
So the common properties of these pacts are basically:
1. Right now, you are not yet tempted.
2. But you foresee that you will be in the future, in some situation you are likely to end up in.
3. So you take steps today to deliberately sabotage that future situation today, in a way you cannot (easily) undo later, locking yourself into your commitment.
additional explanation of the concept, if wanted
@sharan To relate it back to the article: in that case, the pact being described is to sabotage your own ability as a service operator, to enshittify things in the future when an investor demands it.
And sabotage it to such a degree that if you were to do so anyway, users would immediately notice, get pissed, and walk away. Meaning the investor probably won't even ask you to, because they realize this too.
