If something is shitty they’ll call it shitty. Enshittification is inherently used to refer to a process of getting shittier. And 99% of the time people are referring to capitalism / corporate greed as that process.
Enshittification is inherently used to refer to a process of getting shittier.
Right, that’s the problem - that’s not what it means, but that’s what it looks like it means, and the misuse dilutes the word to be functionally useless to point out the actual and critically pressing problem is was imprudently coined for.
Again, that’s not what Cory Doctorow coined it to mean. However, the pressures that enshittify two sided marketplaces can be abstracted to general capitalist pressures that push you to squeeze profitability at every opportunity, even to the detriment of your customers.
Two sided marketplaces often have the dynamics of creating a massive sticky force that prevents competition or movement, which enables their exploitative behaviour, but non marketplace companies also find ways of creating that stickiness through other anti-competitive means, and the use that stickiness to make their products as shitty as possible to squeeze every penny they can put of people.
I think that Doctorow’s points about two sided marketplaces are extremely useful because of their specificity, they can lead directly to specific legislation, but the term of enshittification is rapidly expanding to be used more generally.
If something is shitty they’ll call it shitty. Enshittification is inherently used to refer to a process of getting shittier. And 99% of the time people are referring to capitalism / corporate greed as that process.
Right, that’s the problem - that’s not what it means, but that’s what it looks like it means, and the misuse dilutes the word to be functionally useless to point out the actual and critically pressing problem is was imprudently coined for.
Again, that’s not what Cory Doctorow coined it to mean. However, the pressures that enshittify two sided marketplaces can be abstracted to general capitalist pressures that push you to squeeze profitability at every opportunity, even to the detriment of your customers.
Two sided marketplaces often have the dynamics of creating a massive sticky force that prevents competition or movement, which enables their exploitative behaviour, but non marketplace companies also find ways of creating that stickiness through other anti-competitive means, and the use that stickiness to make their products as shitty as possible to squeeze every penny they can put of people.
I think that Doctorow’s points about two sided marketplaces are extremely useful because of their specificity, they can lead directly to specific legislation, but the term of enshittification is rapidly expanding to be used more generally.
“Rapidly” is one way to put it. It was basically instant. Like I said, it’s a bad word.