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Enshittification is a very special kind of worsening. Enshittification is the transformation of a platform from serving its users to serving MBAs and middle ma

• nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Cory does use "enshitification" to mean a specific bait-and-switch tactic in which companies offer a free product for years, corner a market, and then abuse their trapped user base. It's sassy. But specifics are most useful in writing that has durability as well as aesthetic power. People reading in 10 years won't necessarily get what "enshitification" means. Instead I prefer to talk about: Hijack. It's pretty common for BigTech to take over a company or service and hold it hostage. Sabotage. The deliberate breaking of standards, dumbing down of information, reduction of capabilities. Most often when BigTech interacts with an existing system it leaves it much worse of functionally. Betrayal. Quite simply BigTech is treacherous. Whatever faith or loyalty long-standing users have the company will sell them for a dime, break promises, lie and steal whatever data they like. And we could go on with many timeless names for harms perpetrated by these aggressive and socially derelict companies - but my point is that it pays to pause for a moment and think about the deeper nature of the harms to find the best word for what's really happening.
• svilen_dobrev 3y ago
  it's about kind-of watering-down any value and substituting it with something "free"-beer-like (but for which you "pay" giving away your kidneys. or kids)