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"Enshittification" is not a hard word. It's describes itself: "En-" to make, "shit" bad, "-ification" the process of; in sum the process of making something bad
by MrRadar 3y ago
"Enshittification" is not a hard word. It's describes itself: "En-" to make, "shit" bad, "-ification" the process of; in sum the process of making something bad. I think everyone understands that the products and services they use daily are getting worse and now they have a word to describe that experience. I think that by basing itself on the mild swear "shit" it actually distances itself from academic jargon or other fancy words to try to be something that is closer to the common person.
- bee_rider 3y agoI think it is a more specific thing that just “things get bad.” Lots of tech services start by giving things away, or providing services for cheap/free unsustainably, and then start making unpopular moves when the free money dries up and they have to become profitable. It is sort of like a subset of anticompetitive behavior (dumping) but done by a small player using investor funds instead of a large company throwing weight around. Or in a field where the “cost” is something nebulous like ads, so it is harder to actually spot. A weakness of the name is that it invites the broader definition, I think. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification
- hnreport 3y agoI suppose the polite version of the word would be Entropy.
- ludocode 3y agoEnshittification not just making a product bad, and it's not just rent seeking. It's more than any of those things. It's about making a product worse than it needs to be, by terrible pricing and ad infestation, in order to recoup the investment of years of underpricing to capture the market and kill competitors. This is exactly what Unity has done.