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Enshittification, also known as platform decay,[1] is a way to describe the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. The
by nabla9 3y ago
Enshittification, also known as platform decay,[1] is a way to describe the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. The term enshittification was coined by Cory Doctorow in January 2023 in a blog post, later republished as an article in Wired, in which he wrote:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
- karmakaze 3y agoThe other key aspect is prioritization of profit--this is most commonly to shareholders. It can even begin before a company is publicly traded to make it look better on paper. The worst case of this I witnessed is the company preparing to go public improving the bottom line, and ultimately not doing so. The owners were stuck with the bad will and less sustainable operations. One way to combat this is to have pride in ownership, which usually only happens when the majority owner is an original founder or a descendent (and the company has the family name).