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I disagree. To me the piece is about enshittification as Doctorow defined it. It's not just a UX change that the author doesn't like but rather a UX change desi
by troyvit 3y ago
I disagree. To me the piece is about enshittification as Doctorow defined it. It's not just a UX change that the author doesn't like but rather a UX change designed to gain short-term profits for its investors at the expense of its users (both readers and librarires).
Overdrive sacrificed its usefulness to its users to gain market-share with libraries, and it's achieved 95% penetration there. Now it's paring back functionality for libraries, hiding features that might enable them to leave their platform, and using its monopoly advantage to force them to pay more for features that were previously free and easy to use. The most apparent reason it's doing this is because it was bought by a notorious investment firm with a long history of squeezing as much money out of their acquisitions as possible before leaving them to die.
That seems to support the original definition pretty well. I agree that the word does a disservice to its definition.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>a UX change designed to gain short-term profits for its investors at the expense of its users (both readers and librarires). that doesn't make sense because Overdrive seems to be a private company working with the government to provice a service. It was described as already having a monopoly before this feature change. It has no financial incentive to make things worse, not for money nor market share. This sounds more like Hanlon's Razor to me.