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I dislike repeating "enshittification" so much, but behavior like this seems to be spreading at an exponential rate. It seems like there's going to be a steady

I dislike repeating "enshittification" so much, but behavior like this seems to be spreading at an exponential rate. It seems like there's going to be a steady uptick of torrenting and Usenet as people get fed up and discover that the piracy landscape has become much more ergonomic over the last few years.

MrFoof 3y ago
Honestly, I think what I see next is not just ads, but sponsored content within the content itself. No different than YouTube. Yet then, then… we can have tiers. There can be more interesting sponsors and advertisements in the pricier subscription tiers. For the bargain tier, you get the literal 90-120 minute “advertisements” I’m aware exist on YouTube (yes, as ad breaks!) that are basically financial scams. Except on Prime they might be unskippable depending on the device you’re using. Then Bezos will have so much money he’ll need a second monocle.
- fakedang 3y ago
  Happens already. Product placements in TV shows and movies are already a thing. Even fantasy dramas like Game of Thrones :). https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/31/emilia-clarke-spills-beans-on-game-of-thrones-coffee-cup-culprit https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/31/emilia-...
  - MrFoof 3y ago
    Oh no, far worse than that. Imagine some Game of Thrones character breaking into a three minute uninterrupted dialogue on how they’re protecting their communication throughout the kingdom with XVPN.
  - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
    I know product placements have always been a bit controversial but I'm completely fine with product placements personally. I find the opposite -- sterilizing a movie of all brands -- a little more jarring even because things like coca cola or giant billboards DO exist in real life. Usually they are done in a non obtrusive (or at least satirical when they are obtrusive) way. I think my opinion would change if it was more in your face but otherwise if they can get some money from it I don't see the issue.
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > Happens already. Product placements in TV shows and movies are already a thing. This is nothing new. The Wayne's World 2 movie had a fourth-wall bending/breaking scene that made fun of this back in 1993: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjB6r-HDDI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjB6r-HDDI0 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne%27s_World_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne%27s_World_2
  - Izkata 3y ago
    Okay that's just funny given what we're commenting on: When I opened that link, a subscription popup covered half the page and I just reflexively closed it, but the title on the popup was large enough it did register as I clicked: "There's good reason not to support The Guardian". I clicked too fast to see the rest.
- flextheruler 3y ago
  Funnily enough YouTube doesn’t really display ads if browsed on mobile browsers instead of the app. I switched over completely. This is on iOS Chrome.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Oh, I always thought it was just me because I had a 6s and who could possibly want to advertise to me. Do you get ads if you watch anything from CNBC? I think that's the only channel I get ads from on my phone.
marricks 3y ago
With huge companies and VC willing to spend unlimited sums of money to get a monopoly in some segment they eventually want to milk it as much as they can, cause they killed meaningful competition. More often than not I move from one service to the next because the last service got so shitty/annoying/terrible privacy decisions that I jumped ship. The internet and tech was meant to be a wild west of ideas and options but if it ever was that was a sadly brief period.
tivert 3y ago
> I dislike repeating "enshittification" so much, but behavior like this seems to be spreading at an exponential rate. Modern-day capitalism optimizes for maximum enshittification, because there isn't enough competition to encourage any other result. Occasionally you'll have a company that does what's "supposed" to happen: provide a generally better product to gain market share against competitors, but that's rare. Pretty quickly they start responding to the same incentives as the incumbents, and enshittify their products too. Modern technology has also been a double-edge sword. It's provided consumer benefits, but has never really lived up to its potential, because "innovation" frequently means new consumer-hostile uses of the technology (e.g. pervasive communications technology means your car can now provide a middling navigation app; as well as can spy on you, sell your data, and show you ads).
WaltPurvis 3y ago
Enshittification seems redundant — shouldn't it just be shittification?
- ASalazarMX 3y ago
  Enshittification certainly is prettier, like enculturation/acculturation are prettier words than culturation. Enshittification hits the sweet spot between big word and escathological humor, and that's probably why it became viral.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yeah I'm sure other people have invented words for this phenomenon but they didn't quite hit the nail on the head like this one.
ryandvm 3y ago
Enshittification aptly describes the symptoms, but it doesn't explain the problem. The underlying issue is that enshittification is just growth induced entropy. The constant accumulation of half-baked features or user-hostile choices. Every business that is pressured by investors to grow suffers from this. It's the commercial equivalent of old age. It's why the advertising slowly increases everywhere, why Spotify can't just stay a decent app, why each new release of Windows only rearranges the ads and throws in a new version of the control panel. The cycle is inescapable: * Startup has modicum of success * Success attracts investors/cash * Cash is spent hiring "talent" * The talent has to build SOMETHING * And by definition, half of what the talent produces is BELOW AVERAGE And so it goes, the mutations increase, the telomeres shorten, and eventually the product ends up in the nursing home wishing it had spent more time just focusing on what was important.
- photonthug 3y ago
  Doesn't enshittification usually connote something done fairly deliberate and explicitly exploitative? Whereas your description makes it seem accidental or incidental.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Doesn't surprise me. The economy demands exponential growth. Companies demand exponential growth. First the force in ads, then they offer a subscription to get rid of ads, then they put ads back in and jack up the subscription price, etc etc etc...
wwweston 3y ago
> the piracy landscape has become much more ergonomic over the last few years. I've already been considering the idea of just buying my media when I want it and see how that compares to my streaming bill. I'm willing to pay for things. I think that's important. I'd just like to make sure I'm getting what I want when I buy in, and the proliferation of services has come with the likelihood that not only will the ones I have not have specific content I'm looking for, some shows aren't available at all, which means I have to buy anyway. But ads in things I'm already paying for are a new level of problem that are an expression of contempt for both the customer and the product. Streamers: it's not enough that I'm paying you for access to the content you've made or secured a right to so that I can give it my full attention? You also want to actually dilute the value of that by requiring me to divert my attention somewhere else? That's an outright invitation to media piracy. If you're going to spend your attention on something extraneous to the actual media, the digital literacy skills involved in piracy are more generally useful than an advertisement. Not to mention the satisfaction in sending a message to people who'll erode the value of their own product to bump profit margins. I might accept a price raise. Lots of streaming was probably underpriced in the first place. Add $25-50 a year to my bill and I'll keep paying for it if the value is there. But subtract from the value and I'll find a substitute.
blacksmith_tb 3y ago
It's depressing, but what's frustrating to me is that my instinct is the pricing is also just "what the market will bear" and not "advertisers would pay us $3 a month to stuff garbage in your eyeballs, so you need to match their offer". So not only is it ruthlessly milking us, it's using a false justification to do it.

MrFoof 3y ago

Honestly, I think what I see next is not just ads, but sponsored content within the content itself. No different than YouTube. Yet then, then… we can have tiers. There can be more interesting sponsors and advertisements in the pricier subscription tiers. For the bargain tier, you get the literal 90-120 minute “advertisements” I’m aware exist on YouTube (yes, as ad breaks!) that are basically financial scams. Except on Prime they might be unskippable depending on the device you’re using. Then Bezos will have so much money he’ll need a second monocle.

fakedang 3y ago
Happens already. Product placements in TV shows and movies are already a thing. Even fantasy dramas like Game of Thrones :). https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/31/emilia-clarke-spills-beans-on-game-of-thrones-coffee-cup-culprit https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/31/emilia-...
- MrFoof 3y ago
  Oh no, far worse than that. Imagine some Game of Thrones character breaking into a three minute uninterrupted dialogue on how they’re protecting their communication throughout the kingdom with XVPN.
- chrisfosterelli 3y ago
  I know product placements have always been a bit controversial but I'm completely fine with product placements personally. I find the opposite -- sterilizing a movie of all brands -- a little more jarring even because things like coca cola or giant billboards DO exist in real life. Usually they are done in a non obtrusive (or at least satirical when they are obtrusive) way. I think my opinion would change if it was more in your face but otherwise if they can get some money from it I don't see the issue.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > Happens already. Product placements in TV shows and movies are already a thing. This is nothing new. The Wayne's World 2 movie had a fourth-wall bending/breaking scene that made fun of this back in 1993: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjB6r-HDDI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjB6r-HDDI0 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne%27s_World_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne%27s_World_2
- Izkata 3y ago
  Okay that's just funny given what we're commenting on: When I opened that link, a subscription popup covered half the page and I just reflexively closed it, but the title on the popup was large enough it did register as I clicked: "There's good reason not to support The Guardian". I clicked too fast to see the rest.
flextheruler 3y ago
Funnily enough YouTube doesn’t really display ads if browsed on mobile browsers instead of the app. I switched over completely. This is on iOS Chrome.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Oh, I always thought it was just me because I had a 6s and who could possibly want to advertise to me. Do you get ads if you watch anything from CNBC? I think that's the only channel I get ads from on my phone.

marricks 3y ago

With huge companies and VC willing to spend unlimited sums of money to get a monopoly in some segment they eventually want to milk it as much as they can, cause they killed meaningful competition. More often than not I move from one service to the next because the last service got so shitty/annoying/terrible privacy decisions that I jumped ship. The internet and tech was meant to be a wild west of ideas and options but if it ever was that was a sadly brief period.

tivert 3y ago

> I dislike repeating "enshittification" so much, but behavior like this seems to be spreading at an exponential rate. Modern-day capitalism optimizes for maximum enshittification, because there isn't enough competition to encourage any other result. Occasionally you'll have a company that does what's "supposed" to happen: provide a generally better product to gain market share against competitors, but that's rare. Pretty quickly they start responding to the same incentives as the incumbents, and enshittify their products too. Modern technology has also been a double-edge sword. It's provided consumer benefits, but has never really lived up to its potential, because "innovation" frequently means new consumer-hostile uses of the technology (e.g. pervasive communications technology means your car can now provide a middling navigation app; as well as can spy on you, sell your data, and show you ads).

WaltPurvis 3y ago

Enshittification seems redundant — shouldn't it just be shittification?

ASalazarMX 3y ago
Enshittification certainly is prettier, like enculturation/acculturation are prettier words than culturation. Enshittification hits the sweet spot between big word and escathological humor, and that's probably why it became viral.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yeah I'm sure other people have invented words for this phenomenon but they didn't quite hit the nail on the head like this one.

ryandvm 3y ago

Enshittification aptly describes the symptoms, but it doesn't explain the problem. The underlying issue is that enshittification is just growth induced entropy. The constant accumulation of half-baked features or user-hostile choices. Every business that is pressured by investors to grow suffers from this. It's the commercial equivalent of old age. It's why the advertising slowly increases everywhere, why Spotify can't just stay a decent app, why each new release of Windows only rearranges the ads and throws in a new version of the control panel. The cycle is inescapable: * Startup has modicum of success * Success attracts investors/cash * Cash is spent hiring "talent" * The talent has to build SOMETHING * And by definition, half of what the talent produces is BELOW AVERAGE And so it goes, the mutations increase, the telomeres shorten, and eventually the product ends up in the nursing home wishing it had spent more time just focusing on what was important.

photonthug 3y ago
Doesn't enshittification usually connote something done fairly deliberate and explicitly exploitative? Whereas your description makes it seem accidental or incidental.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

Doesn't surprise me. The economy demands exponential growth. Companies demand exponential growth. First the force in ads, then they offer a subscription to get rid of ads, then they put ads back in and jack up the subscription price, etc etc etc...

wwweston 3y ago

> the piracy landscape has become much more ergonomic over the last few years. I've already been considering the idea of just buying my media when I want it and see how that compares to my streaming bill. I'm willing to pay for things. I think that's important. I'd just like to make sure I'm getting what I want when I buy in, and the proliferation of services has come with the likelihood that not only will the ones I have not have specific content I'm looking for, some shows aren't available at all, which means I have to buy anyway. But ads in things I'm already paying for are a new level of problem that are an expression of contempt for both the customer and the product. Streamers: it's not enough that I'm paying you for access to the content you've made or secured a right to so that I can give it my full attention? You also want to actually dilute the value of that by requiring me to divert my attention somewhere else? That's an outright invitation to media piracy. If you're going to spend your attention on something extraneous to the actual media, the digital literacy skills involved in piracy are more generally useful than an advertisement. Not to mention the satisfaction in sending a message to people who'll erode the value of their own product to bump profit margins. I might accept a price raise. Lots of streaming was probably underpriced in the first place. Add $25-50 a year to my bill and I'll keep paying for it if the value is there. But subtract from the value and I'll find a substitute.

blacksmith_tb 3y ago

It's depressing, but what's frustrating to me is that my instinct is the pricing is also just "what the market will bear" and not "advertisers would pay us $3 a month to stuff garbage in your eyeballs, so you need to match their offer". So not only is it ruthlessly milking us, it's using a false justification to do it.