4 ms·

It is interesting how "enshittification" just happens because of scale.

estearum 3mo ago
People are really not curious enough about bureaucracy. We complain literally our entire lives about "bureaucracy" and all the bad outcomes it produces. But I've met literally no one who thought "hmm... if there's this emergent phenomenon across virtually every single large-scale human endeavor... and that phenomenon seems to systematically produce undesirable outcomes... at the cost of billions of dollars or millions of lives... maybe I oughta inspect this phenomenon more closely!"
- Turskarama 3mo ago
  People have been told for so long that private companies are more efficient than government that they have started to simply believe it, as if the problems of large scale organisation aren't universal.
  - hkt 3mo ago
    Some cracks have emerged in that, at least in the UK. Trains, water companies, etc, all used as solid examples of private sector waste and extractiveness.
    - graemep 3mo ago
      Most people attribute that entirely to greed or monopoly rather than to it being a result of scale. IMO its all three. More importantly politicians and the civil service still believe that the private sector is automatically efficient and that bigger is better. Not a UK only problem either.
- rixed 3mo ago
  "Bureaucracy" has been an entire field of study for more than a century at that point. But WMF is not bureaucracy any more than the FIFA is bureaucracy. It is curruption; That of the stated ideals of the origin: non profit, decentralisation and democracy.
  - estearum 3mo ago
    Maybe so, but the linked article doesn't even allege, much less prove that.
inigyou 3mo ago
This is called the Iron Law of Bureaucracy
- estearum 3mo ago
  Which as your article points out, is as easy to solve as reading The Mythical Man-Month. That's why it's an Iron Law. It's easy to remove! Also, as you point out, it's actually the same as money laundering, which is an actual crime. So as it goes, every large organization is committing massive scale organized crime (to their own detriment, oddly enough), but they can stop doing so by just reading The Mythical Man-Month.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
    - estearum 3mo ago
      You started the thread accusing a non-profit of actual organized crime, and then linking to (someone else's?) words, implying they endorse your claim, when it doesn't. Not a time to flex the guidelines amigo. Maybe a time to clarify what you meant when you accused a bunch of people of a crime?
tekla 3mo ago
Yes. everyone kinda sucks in their own ways. Mostly not enough to matter in their lives, but in large groups, the suck adds up.
Gigachad 3mo ago
Enshitification doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice to sacrifice quality and integrity for short term profit. There are plenty of large products and companies that haven’t gone this way.
glenstein 3mo ago
I don't think of non profit bloat as enshittification. Enshittification is gradual reduction in quality of a user facing service over time that used to be trusted. Here it's just a matter of (arguably) inefficient spending as fundraising had increased but I don't think there's any rollback in services.
neilk 3mo ago
Another word whose usefulness has been degraded to just mean “bad behavior by an organization”. With “enshittification”, Doctorow meant something specific, where a platform rises to popularity by serving its users, then betrays those users to its business partners to make more money, then finally betrays even those business partners to keep most of the value for themselves. Anyway I guess Doctorow brought this on himself by choosing a word that’s fun to say but isn’t clear about what it refers to.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Doctorow approved the generic use. He said he never meant for "enshittification" to only ever refer to the platform lock-in pattern. It refers to any way that things get worse on purpose.
  - ameliaquining 3mo ago
    If that's really the case, people should stop using the term as though it has explanatory power.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]

People are really not curious enough about bureaucracy. We complain literally our entire lives about "bureaucracy" and all the bad outcomes it produces. But I've met literally no one who thought "hmm... if there's this emergent phenomenon across virtually every single large-scale human endeavor... and that phenomenon seems to systematically produce undesirable outcomes... at the cost of billions of dollars or millions of lives... maybe I oughta inspect this phenomenon more closely!"

Turskarama 3mo ago
People have been told for so long that private companies are more efficient than government that they have started to simply believe it, as if the problems of large scale organisation aren't universal.
- hkt 3mo ago
  Some cracks have emerged in that, at least in the UK. Trains, water companies, etc, all used as solid examples of private sector waste and extractiveness.
  - graemep 3mo ago
    Most people attribute that entirely to greed or monopoly rather than to it being a result of scale. IMO its all three. More importantly politicians and the civil service still believe that the private sector is automatically efficient and that bigger is better. Not a UK only problem either.
rixed 3mo ago
"Bureaucracy" has been an entire field of study for more than a century at that point. But WMF is not bureaucracy any more than the FIFA is bureaucracy. It is curruption; That of the stated ideals of the origin: non profit, decentralisation and democracy.
- estearum 3mo ago
  Maybe so, but the linked article doesn't even allege, much less prove that.

inigyou 3mo ago

This is called the Iron Law of Bureaucracy

estearum 3mo ago
Which as your article points out, is as easy to solve as reading The Mythical Man-Month. That's why it's an Iron Law. It's easy to remove! Also, as you point out, it's actually the same as money laundering, which is an actual crime. So as it goes, every large organization is committing massive scale organized crime (to their own detriment, oddly enough), but they can stop doing so by just reading The Mythical Man-Month.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
  - estearum 3mo ago
    You started the thread accusing a non-profit of actual organized crime, and then linking to (someone else's?) words, implying they endorse your claim, when it doesn't. Not a time to flex the guidelines amigo. Maybe a time to clarify what you meant when you accused a bunch of people of a crime?

tekla 3mo ago

Yes. everyone kinda sucks in their own ways. Mostly not enough to matter in their lives, but in large groups, the suck adds up.

Gigachad 3mo ago

Enshitification doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice to sacrifice quality and integrity for short term profit. There are plenty of large products and companies that haven’t gone this way.

glenstein 3mo ago

I don't think of non profit bloat as enshittification. Enshittification is gradual reduction in quality of a user facing service over time that used to be trusted. Here it's just a matter of (arguably) inefficient spending as fundraising had increased but I don't think there's any rollback in services.

neilk 3mo ago

Another word whose usefulness has been degraded to just mean “bad behavior by an organization”. With “enshittification”, Doctorow meant something specific, where a platform rises to popularity by serving its users, then betrays those users to its business partners to make more money, then finally betrays even those business partners to keep most of the value for themselves. Anyway I guess Doctorow brought this on himself by choosing a word that’s fun to say but isn’t clear about what it refers to.

inigyou 3mo ago
Doctorow approved the generic use. He said he never meant for "enshittification" to only ever refer to the platform lock-in pattern. It refers to any way that things get worse on purpose.
- ameliaquining 3mo ago
  If that's really the case, people should stop using the term as though it has explanatory power.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]