I see it referenced constantly here, not quite as much on Reddit. I know what it means, but just wondering why such the popularity over on this side of the fence?
Cause it’s one big part of why the Fediverse and Lemmy exist in the first place.
We wouldn’t need all this decentralization overhead if centralized sites were trustworthy and focussed on serving their users. The fact that they are not is what leads to privacy violations and enshittification, hence why people created the Fediverse and why we are here (at least most of us I presume).
It’s the reason we are all here…
Because most people on lemmy are here because of it.
Because the Fediverse itself is a response to enshittification.
This is it exactly. We simply have too many examples of why we cannot trust millionaire maniacs with running a platform…
People here are far more likely to be anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, pro-privacy, etc. those groups all circle the same kind of Cory Doctorow/Matt Stoller/Luddite world where the word enshittification became popular.
I think a lot of people also misuse the word and use it as a catch-all for companies doing something they don’t like.
Raising prices is not enshittification, that’s inflation.
Not paying employees well is not enshittification, that’s under-compensation.
YouTube putting more ads in their videos including when the video is paused isn’t enshittification that’s… wait no that is enshittification.
Enshittification refers to offering the same service (often free, or at least with an option to pay more) but making it worse in order to squeeze you onto a paid (or higher paid) tier of service. This sounds good to shareholders but ultimately it alienates their customers and often leads to a company dying.
catch-all for companies doing something they don’t like.
Yes.
But it screws up entire markets:
new platforms offer useful products and services at a loss, as a way to gain new users. Once users are locked in, the platform then offers access to the userbase to suppliers at a loss, and once suppliers are locked-in, the platform shifts surpluses to shareholders.
So, it
-
gives users a warped sense of what they deserve by giving away a costly service, and running competitors out of business.
-
Then it puts a stranglehold on suppliers by holding users hostage.
-
Then it fucks everybody by extracting value for shareholders.
By this metric youtube is not enshittification to some extent. They are a household name and not some weenie startup.
It being ineffective is a necessary part of it, in my opinion.
-
Enshittification refers to offering the same service (often free, or at least with an option to pay more) but making it worse in order to squeeze you onto a paid (or higher paid) tier of service
It doesn’t have to be a paid service, it can also refer to (and usually does) a two-sided market. For example, a site with free users and advertisers. The platform first gains a critical mass of users, then they switch to focus more on the paying advertisers to increase value for shareholders. Over time, the main focus becomes the advertisers.
I understand it to mean the general life cycle of corporations: first valuing users, then shareholders, then themselves, then dying. A quote from Doctorow:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
By that definition, everything you described is a likely consequence of enshittification (paying employees less, charging more, more ads, etc.). But the word itself refers to how the company’s values shift over time.
This seems similar to Wall Street’s “profits must increase every quarter” approach. Once a business gets somewhat popular, Wall St. types start sniffing around and offer to take it public. Once public, Wall St. wrings more profits out of the business every quarter until service/products collapse and customers flee elsewhere.
Exactly. Whatever product or service a business provides, once it goes public, the primary goal becomes profit–everything else is secondary and subject to removal if it promotes the primary objective. Shareholders don’t care about the long-term viability of the business–once it peaks, they’ll sell and move on. Basically a financial swarm of locusts.
Basically a financial swarm of locusts.
Egads. Perfect anology. I’m going to steal that one. Thank you!
At a certain point, a company’s primary product becomes its stock. Share buybacks, short term gains, etc become the strategy. The goal is no longer to create value for customers, but to create value for shareholders.
At a certain point, a company’s primary product becomes its stock.
That’s a very concise point. Thank you for this insight.
Raising prices is not enshittification, that’s inflation.
No, it’s price gouging.
I’d guess because since reddit accelerated it’s enshitification, the people who really cared about it moved to lemmy. The people who didn’t care as much stayed behind. So the people over here care about it much more.
Sorry, this is the third incorrect “it’s” that I read today, and if I don’t point out it should be “its” I’m going to explode.
I’m sorry good sir have a nice day.
Scratching an itch about its it’s usage today. /j Have a nice day! :)
Here’s some chaos English for others to read if they had not done so. Yes, it’s about pronunciation but possibly still relevant.
Its not that big of a deal
That’s what they said at the start of enshittification. Spelling and grammar actually do fucking matter and I don’t care who hates me for my opinion this time
I just couldn’t couldn’t help myself from replying to them** with another incorrect use of its.
Uhoh I think I’m having another stroke
A man should choose he’s words carefully
It is enshitification!
It’s itshittification.
*it’shittification
I think it’s happening more and more in the tech industry - one theory I heard was that rising interest rates meant companies couldn’t just take out loans that were practically free money, so they’re cracking down on monetizing every nook and cranny.
Reddit was no exception. Many of us left this thing we once loved because of it, and came here. So on top of industry trends, there’s a huge selection bias among us Lemmings.
Spot on imo.
I’m new here but I’m here precisely because of the enshittification of Reddit.
Honestly though, now that I think about it, a huge chunk of my digital experience has been enshittified. Technology and software that used to wow me still wows me at the surface but frustrates me at my core. Some UI elements and design seem outright hostile.
Maybe I’m just misremembering the past or was more patient back then. Reddit certainly has enshittified though.
I mean at least when it comes to design it was shit in the past cause either it was being done by people who didn’t know much about design or it was something new and people didn’t know what would be a good design for it. Now it’s shit cause making it shit in certain ways let’s companies make more money.
Because Lemmy is one attempt to do the exact opposite. Seems pretty obvious to me.
Also, Cory Doctorow’s troll army is working full time.*
*(Just joking but I refuse to do the sarcastic cute S thing)
So you wrote a whole sentence instead? 💀
It’s not about effort - it’s a matter of aesthetics.
You’re damn right I did.
I saw him live at Defcon without knowing who he was. I really liked his talk. Defcon itself was shit though.
I see it referenced constantly here, not quite as much on Reddit.
It’s a fairly new term.
Reddit is bots and AI, and hasn’t been trained on new words.
Reddit is inside the walls of enshittification. Reddit kowtows to the techbro narrative. Dissenting voices do appear there as they aren’t a full blown censorship. By and large the reddit userbase has historically been in aligned with big tech.
Selection bias. There’s plenty of overlap between the groups of people who know about it, care about it, use FOSS, use Lemmy etc. It’s basically a prominent characteristic of the stereotypical Lemmy user. We’re still a small and surprisingly homogenous group of people. If Lemmy ever grows like Mastodon, you’ll begin to see more diversity.
There’s also something you could call the “fish out of water” bias. If you’re not LGBT, you’ll suddenly notice how many LGBT people there are on Mastodon. If you’re not into ML, you’re going to notice the people who are.
Because it’s happening literally in every facet of society
Literally mentioned
Removed by mod
Capitalism, specifically late stage capitalism.
We need to stop the corporate obsession of “green line go up and no go up means worse than down reeeee” mentality. Essentially late stage capitalism where green line still needs to go up but wages have stagnated
I believe people hope it will stop the intentional degradation of products… it’s a natural process where products are solid to develop a reputation, people buy/use the product and recognize its quality, use grows, the company cuts back as much cost as possible (with quality suffering), in order to grow, or in some case even just start to make (Uber, Amazon) profit. The growth plan often includes this step either for continual operation or as part of a plan to pay for a buy out.
If the enshittified product manages to become entrenched, people have to use the lower quality product. The real step we need to take is to assume most big product pushes are temporarily good, and drop them when it’s convenient. If the growth model isn’t sustainable, it will lose favor.
It lets ppl describe late capitalism without using those words or even knowing that’s what they’re describing.
Were stuck Don’t Look Up style in a cycle of trying to find a way to explain and enumerate the things happening around us without pointing to their precursors even when we remember them from our own lives and experiences.
This is the correct answer. These “things are getting worse” terms are on the right track, but they don’t describe why things are getting worse.
Class-based systems like feudalism and capitalism have overarching rising and falling phases, and in the late phases, exploitation of our labor increases drastically as the ruling classes fight over a declining surplus. This has rippling effects to every other aspect of society, from how hard we’re forced to work, to the degradation of media, art, politics, etc.
You also made me think of this relevant quote by Lenin:
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
Exactly this. It is not new, it’s just a form of rent seeking.
