3 ms·

Enshittification

28 points by janandonly 3y ago

seeknotfind 3y ago
This may not be in the dictionary, but it's an English word with a common prefix and suffix. If we consider English to be an agglutinative language or have agglutinative parts, this is just a rarely used form of a word, and I wouldn't think a second about using it in a general context. Trying to reserve it in this specific context of platform decay I think probably won't stick and I don't get why it's a headline or has a whole Wikipedia article
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  It's already not sticking, it's already used to whine about any kind of change, any redesign on HN. One imagines an old folk's home where people cry "enshittification" every time a wall is painted in a different color. Platform Decay is four syllables, Enshittification is six. The reason it's used, when a more precise word would be shorter, is precisely because it appeals to a general anxiety about change.
  - fargle 3y ago
    are you all essentially complaining about the enshittification of the term "enshittification"?
  - botalert 3y ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
cs702 3y ago
Maybe it's just the inevitable Nash Equilibrium of every privately-owned social network, once growth starts slowing down? I mean, early on, while the focus is on acquiring new customers, the overriding goal is to delight them. Everyone is excited and happy. Later on, as the focus shifts to monetization, the overriding goal is to extract as much value as possible without angering customers into leaving. By the end, everyone is feeling like a cog in an impersonal machine.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  "Maybe"? I think it's pretty clear that's exactly it. Capitalism demands constant growth. Any company will reach a point where they've achieved maximum market saturation, where anybody who would ever use your product is now using it. But profits must continue to go up! So you have to find ways to monetize. You either start inserting ads (and redesign the site to make sure you see the ads!), or start charging money. Often the second option involves making the default experience shitty while making the paid option equivalent to the previous standard. Whatever the method, it doesn't matter. The line must go up, even as daily active users remains sideways or even down!
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    And realist in me says that after they start charging money they will add ads too.. As that will make more revenue...
  - dpc_01234 3y ago
    It's not really about capitalism. In capitalism capital is producing value and owners get rewarded. How is destroying a platform making tons of money capitalism? The whole thing is caused by "shortermism" & "managerialism". The group dynamics are such that the company is not really owned by anyone in particular that would be attached and interested in its long term profitability, only by very distributed shareholders or entities interested only in very short term profitability, hoping to flip it in a matter of weeks. The power over company is in the hands of managers which also all are interested only in the most short term goals like their bonus or getting promoted.
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      > In capitalism capital is producing value and owners get rewarded. Define "value". Capitalist apologists will swear up and down that it's about creating value for customers. That is, creating something that people will want to buy/use. I think that's incredibly naive and idealistic. The goal is simply to get rich (and for some, being in the top 10 riches in the world isn't enough). Producing something consumers will buy/use is nothing more than a means that must be optimized for maximum profit. Corporations will reduce value to customers when it results in greater profits. > How is destroying a platform making tons of money capitalism? Because it creates more profits, and that's all capitalism is. Maximizing profits. That's really it. It really is that simple. Call me cynical if you'd like. > The whole thing is caused by "shortermism" & "managerialism". IMO, those are by-products of capitalism. Create short-term profits at the cost of long-term profits and bail out after you've made your money and let someone else hold the bag. If anybody cared about long-term profits, then earnings reports would be every 3 years rather than every 3 months.
naikrovek 3y ago
I HATE how much Cory Doctorow I see on the internet. it's been like this for 20+ years. This man is well motivated, is doing good work for common people and doing his best to advance the things that need advancement. fantastic. one thing, though. he is easily the most annoying person on earth, to me. instinctually I go against what he is doing because of it. why does the most annoying person on the planet, according to me, get to coin terrible words like this? there are already so many other words that mean the same thing, and "things getting worse" has been a topic of discussion for everyone on earth at some point or another, going back as far as human speech. but this guy just gets to make up words which suck and everyone loves it? fuck this guy, I'm turning evil. if C.D. were 1% palatable I would be behind him, but he's not. can't we find someone who doesn't rub me raw to coin words? this guy gets to coin terrible words and give me two plus decades of full-time activism fatigue and I get downvoted on the shitty orange website for having this opinion.
- wtp1saac 3y ago
  honestly don’t get this take. it’s a perfectly catchy word, and i find most of doctorow’s writings on the subject of capitalism’s destruction of the internet to be pretty accurate. what particular things about him are so unpalatable you would be willing to support anti-consumer practices (“turning evil”) to spite him? I assume you’re probably kidding for exaggeration, but still it’s not clear to me what is that offputting about him.
  - verdverm 3y ago
    I agree with GP. It's not so much what he says but how he says and promotes it.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    It's always going to be a touchy subject, a lot of people will see attacks on Doctorow as a denouncement of his ideas. Most people probably agree with what he has to say, just in simpler terms with less sensationalist framing. His use of manufactured phrases like "enshittification" already puts him on the back heel, while his other contemporaries have written licenses or software that spoke for itself. Cory Doctorow didn't do anything wrong, he just hasn't reached the levels that a lot of people were hoping he'd reach. I'm with the GP comment too, Doctorow's writing feels less prescriptive and more rhetorical. I'm almost worried it does more harm than good, at this point.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
This started as a subsection of the Cory Doctorow wiki article, does it really need its own with a growing list of random 'examples'? Similar thoughts in this comment: > On the whole I feel that the article gives undue weight to the term 'enshittification', and reads to me like an advert for the work of the journalist that created it, and this isn't the purpose or function of Wikipedia And its future may come into question: > It has been proposed in this section that Enshittification be renamed and moved to Platform decay.

28 points by janandonly 3y ago

This may not be in the dictionary, but it's an English word with a common prefix and suffix. If we consider English to be an agglutinative language or have agglutinative parts, this is just a rarely used form of a word, and I wouldn't think a second about using it in a general context. Trying to reserve it in this specific context of platform decay I think probably won't stick and I don't get why it's a headline or has a whole Wikipedia article

amadeuspagel 3y ago
It's already not sticking, it's already used to whine about any kind of change, any redesign on HN. One imagines an old folk's home where people cry "enshittification" every time a wall is painted in a different color. Platform Decay is four syllables, Enshittification is six. The reason it's used, when a more precise word would be shorter, is precisely because it appeals to a general anxiety about change.
- fargle 3y ago
  are you all essentially complaining about the enshittification of the term "enshittification"?
- botalert 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

cs702 3y ago

Maybe it's just the inevitable Nash Equilibrium of every privately-owned social network, once growth starts slowing down? I mean, early on, while the focus is on acquiring new customers, the overriding goal is to delight them. Everyone is excited and happy. Later on, as the focus shifts to monetization, the overriding goal is to extract as much value as possible without angering customers into leaving. By the end, everyone is feeling like a cog in an impersonal machine.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
"Maybe"? I think it's pretty clear that's exactly it. Capitalism demands constant growth. Any company will reach a point where they've achieved maximum market saturation, where anybody who would ever use your product is now using it. But profits must continue to go up! So you have to find ways to monetize. You either start inserting ads (and redesign the site to make sure you see the ads!), or start charging money. Often the second option involves making the default experience shitty while making the paid option equivalent to the previous standard. Whatever the method, it doesn't matter. The line must go up, even as daily active users remains sideways or even down!
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And realist in me says that after they start charging money they will add ads too.. As that will make more revenue...
- dpc_01234 3y ago
  It's not really about capitalism. In capitalism capital is producing value and owners get rewarded. How is destroying a platform making tons of money capitalism? The whole thing is caused by "shortermism" & "managerialism". The group dynamics are such that the company is not really owned by anyone in particular that would be attached and interested in its long term profitability, only by very distributed shareholders or entities interested only in very short term profitability, hoping to flip it in a matter of weeks. The power over company is in the hands of managers which also all are interested only in the most short term goals like their bonus or getting promoted.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > In capitalism capital is producing value and owners get rewarded. Define "value". Capitalist apologists will swear up and down that it's about creating value for customers. That is, creating something that people will want to buy/use. I think that's incredibly naive and idealistic. The goal is simply to get rich (and for some, being in the top 10 riches in the world isn't enough). Producing something consumers will buy/use is nothing more than a means that must be optimized for maximum profit. Corporations will reduce value to customers when it results in greater profits. > How is destroying a platform making tons of money capitalism? Because it creates more profits, and that's all capitalism is. Maximizing profits. That's really it. It really is that simple. Call me cynical if you'd like. > The whole thing is caused by "shortermism" & "managerialism". IMO, those are by-products of capitalism. Create short-term profits at the cost of long-term profits and bail out after you've made your money and let someone else hold the bag. If anybody cared about long-term profits, then earnings reports would be every 3 years rather than every 3 months.

naikrovek 3y ago

I HATE how much Cory Doctorow I see on the internet. it's been like this for 20+ years. This man is well motivated, is doing good work for common people and doing his best to advance the things that need advancement. fantastic. one thing, though. he is easily the most annoying person on earth, to me. instinctually I go against what he is doing because of it. why does the most annoying person on the planet, according to me, get to coin terrible words like this? there are already so many other words that mean the same thing, and "things getting worse" has been a topic of discussion for everyone on earth at some point or another, going back as far as human speech. but this guy just gets to make up words which suck and everyone loves it? fuck this guy, I'm turning evil. if C.D. were 1% palatable I would be behind him, but he's not. can't we find someone who doesn't rub me raw to coin words? this guy gets to coin terrible words and give me two plus decades of full-time activism fatigue and I get downvoted on the shitty orange website for having this opinion.

wtp1saac 3y ago
honestly don’t get this take. it’s a perfectly catchy word, and i find most of doctorow’s writings on the subject of capitalism’s destruction of the internet to be pretty accurate. what particular things about him are so unpalatable you would be willing to support anti-consumer practices (“turning evil”) to spite him? I assume you’re probably kidding for exaggeration, but still it’s not clear to me what is that offputting about him.
- verdverm 3y ago
  I agree with GP. It's not so much what he says but how he says and promotes it.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  It's always going to be a touchy subject, a lot of people will see attacks on Doctorow as a denouncement of his ideas. Most people probably agree with what he has to say, just in simpler terms with less sensationalist framing. His use of manufactured phrases like "enshittification" already puts him on the back heel, while his other contemporaries have written licenses or software that spoke for itself. Cory Doctorow didn't do anything wrong, he just hasn't reached the levels that a lot of people were hoping he'd reach. I'm with the GP comment too, Doctorow's writing feels less prescriptive and more rhetorical. I'm almost worried it does more harm than good, at this point.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

This started as a subsection of the Cory Doctorow wiki article, does it really need its own with a growing list of random 'examples'? Similar thoughts in this comment: > On the whole I feel that the article gives undue weight to the term 'enshittification', and reads to me like an advert for the work of the journalist that created it, and this isn't the purpose or function of Wikipedia And its future may come into question: > It has been proposed in this section that Enshittification be renamed and moved to Platform decay.