The trouble with "enshittification", apart from the misuse of the word everywhere, is that platforms don't start off "good/useful" and then "enshittify". They start off as skinner boxes that give out rewards and end up as skinner boxes that have stopped giving out rewards. It is very silly to believe that the skinner box in its initial state is benevolent.
@datarama It's very rambly and quite poorly defined to begin with - in a generous interpretation it (sometimes) presents it as a premeditated plan, but also more often seems to present it as a later-stage choice, or a "dial" or spectrum that can be adjusted.
In the most trivial sense it just a neologism for the cycle of first (in effect) giving away VC money to gain a userbase and then trying to turn that userbase into profit (by doing bad things). But we knew this already surely.
@tomw I mean, it was obviously the business model behind Facebook. People were saying so even back when they'd just launched.
I think the word gets overused, but I also think it's good that people are getting angry about it, and I think having gotten a word to describe it has helped that. (even when they're getting angry about the "wrong" definition: when tech drowns the world in shit.)
@datarama Yeah, mostly I think it's under-theorised and a lot of people have latched on to it but use it to mean something like "big tech sucks now" - Google doesn't work, Facebook is full of crap content - which is a thing but isn't quite what I think it was aiming for
@tomw I feel like, you are right, when talking about social media, but I think there are platforms that actually start out as useful and become worse and worse. Amazon, e.g., used to be really useful. (It kinda is still useful, but trying to find a good product there is a mess.) I would not say, delivering a book that I ordered is "giving out rewards".
@uncanny_static Yes, in the case of Amazon it's more like taking a gradually increasing slice of the pie for themselves – in terms of product quality, worker conditions, squeezing sellers to pay for ads, etc. It's all trading away quality, ethics and price for profitability. But, since it was loss-making for many years, that was always the plan – even if they didn't plan the specifics at the beginning.
@tomw I have two issues with that. First, enshittification does not placate beginning platforms as benevolent, just as user focused (which they are, to attract usage). Second, the term is (to my understanding) coined from the user perspective. That is, they don't enshittify, they get enshittified. It's important to distinguish between the product/platform and the Company behind it. From my view, platforms get enshittified by their owning companies, which reduces to just an observation of time.
@tanepiper@DJGummikuh I hadn't seen your post here! People are all over the internet every day talking about enshittification... and about 1% of them are even using it in the original meaning that I'm lightly critiquing here
@tomw@DJGummikuh Yes I think Doctorow's original meaning is the absolutely correct one, but I think it is a word that can be expanded to mean "to be shat on"
Essentially it's a sludge from shit decision making higher up - someone makes a choice and now you have to shovel twice as hard to counter the flow of crap from it.
Clearly lots of people just find it a catchy word that means... well... just means "(becoming) shit". But I don't find that a useful addition to the language.
I saw a guy yesterday using the term "national enshittification" to refer to the government doing bad policies and it's just... come on. If people like invented words so much, maybe we can invent a few more?
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