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How is this not the same? It sounds exactly like I understand enshittification. Literally: > First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users t

• c4mpute 3y ago
  I see the difference in that "enshittification" is what the platform owner does. "Glossification" is what the users do. Of course both are closely related. To elaborate, with an example: ebay has once been a platform to find things non-professional people would sell from their attic on the cheap, as an auction. Then professional sellers came in, first with auctions (either more expensive ones, or by using sockpuppet accounts to drive up the bid). That was glossification. ebay then of course went through enshittification, with fixed-price offers, selling preferred spots, etc. But interestingly, they currently seem to try to revert some of that, because glossification and enshittification affect their bottom line, so now non-commercial sellers get zero fees and their own classifieds' platform
  • CM30 3y ago
    Yeah, they're two related yet distinct issues. Take Medium or Quora for example. The whole 'login to view any content at all' issue would be enshittification, since its the platform owners trying to screw over users for their own benefit. The flood of low quality, crappy articles and answers by people trying to make a quick buck would be this other phenomenon, since its the users trying to make a buck at everyone else's expense.
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  They are definitely related. The social media 'enshitification' is a subset of all tech/industry 'enshitification' Think the Doctorow 'Enshitification' was more broader than just social media, and was all technology, even non-social apps eventually turn bad as the goals switch from being focused on the user and providing value, to corporate greed trying to extract money from the user.
  • philipov 3y ago
    Isn't enshittification simply the business cycle? It's describing in detail the why of the bust portion of the cycle.
    • dahwolf 3y ago
      It's an annoying word in itself, and yes, it's simply business as usual in startup land. Invest aggressively at a loss to accelerate growth, then later monetize, if you get that far. Can't we do better? Have a stable business, organically growing and profitable from the start? No. Tech is winner takes all. You need to be first and grow the fastest or somebody else will.
• ben_w 3y ago
  My understanding is that enshittification is much more general (though perhaps this is just linguistic drift); an organisation that has done a hard thing, but now has to justify its continuing existence and expense coming up with things nobody needs and which add zero or negative value. This can be rent extraction (literal or metaphorical, no matter where on that spectrum advertising goes); and also it can be feature creep, mission creep, scope creep, bureaucratic bloat.
  • Gibbon1 3y ago
    My accountant mom introduced me to the term goodwill which is an intangible asset. It's basically the extra value over assets minus liabilities. It's based on brand loyalty, established customer relations, etc. MBA culture promotes the idea that it's advantageous to burn a companies goodwill to boost a couple of quarters earnings. MBA's love to do that because it's easy and MBA's are fundamentally lazy and incurious and will jump ship before it plays out.
  • john-radio 3y ago
    Yeah, I used to call enshittification "Black and Deckering".
    • jack_riminton 3y ago
      Interesting comparison, do you mean this because B&D now come up with things people don't need?
      • Angostura 3y ago
        I think they were a brand known for fairly high quality equipment that had a good reputation. They capitalised on their brand by producing increasingly inferior products
        • salawat 3y ago
          This is called "cashing out the goodwill of the brand". A steady decrease in quality of output while optimizing for minimum inputs in seek of alpha. A.k.a Welching. Gettin' the juice out.
• Frost1x 3y ago
  I'd say in one case it's a strategic corporate tactic: you intentionally build something to attract people with the understanding that you'll slowly boil and eventually gouge them if you're successful, peeling away freedoms and adding fees in some form. In the other case, it seems like something is a victim of its own success. A product or service becomes so successful it draws attention of the lifeless leeches of society who swoop in to try and acquire and/or exploit it knowing there's opportunity there. There was no strategic plan to do this (other than the fact all leeches are drawn to blood as an inevitability). Also, in many cases, exploitation occurs from user space: we don't own this thing, only have the abilities of everyone else using this thing, but there's a lot of potential money there so how do we grab some?