Draft:Enshittification

Enshittification is a neologism coined in 2022 by journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow (1971–) describing the process by which products and services decline in quality over time. The concept itself was described earlier in 2018 as "crapification" by Yves Smith and by Maureen Tkacik in 2019, both regarding the Boeing Company. Doctorow has described the process as follows:

“”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.

The concept however is perhaps much older than these writers suggest. Brian Merchant in describing the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution (~1750-1850) as it impacted Luddites and the cottage industries of Britain:

“”…once a labor-saving technology is invented and released into a capitalist environment, it will be exploited to maximize profits — if it works well enough, and even sometimes when it doesn't. Modern economic history is littered with examples of entrepreneurs taking an existing technology, improving or standardizing it, and combining that technology with exploitative labor practices to turn it into a market success.

During the Industrial Revolution, workers in the cottage industries complained about the poor quality of factory-made textiles compared to their own, and displaced workers were forced to choose between destitution and poorly-compensated grueling factor work. Complaints about this that were sent to Parliament were dismissed out-of-hand since Parliament was not democratic until 1832 with the Reform Act of 1832.

Examples

Arguably, some of these examples started out as shit but not shitty enough for most people to care (Facebook's beginning as an espionage project, Reddit's dark corners), but nonetheless became even shittier over time.

Google

Google's AI Overview's self-pwn from the search of "enshittified google" on October 24, 2024. "Al search chatbot: Google is developing an AI search chatbot that will show users what it thinks they should see, rather than what they ask for." The result was removed a few days later for this search.

External links

• The Internet is starting to Break - Here's Why. — Mrwhosetheboss