The Enshittification Lifecycle of Online Platforms | Hacker News Reader

The Enshittification Lifecycle of Online Platforms

kottke.org

43 pointsColinWright13 comments

The problem is that we're trying to have a public square online that's being controlled by a private company for money.

Well, they sold themselves as such. Mr Musk would have you believe that twitter IS the hypothetical town square. I'm not sure what is scarier- that he truly believes he can buy free speech itself or that he might be right.

Not only that, but investors aren’t happy with steady, consistent performance. It has to be constant financial growth at all costs. It doesn’t matter if you hollow out an over 100 year old super valuable brand into a dead worthless husk (Sears) as long as you can extract short term growth from it for the shareholders.

Only because we refuse to reign in capitalism fueled democracy, in America

The minute Wall Street gets involved, it’s done. Obsession with short term gains means you kill your golden egg laying goose to get that egg.

I don't know why Cory lumped Steam in with the rest. I found Steam to be awesome at the launch of HL2 -- they seemed to have covered all the concerns that I had about a digital game delivery service -- and I don't perceive they have deviated from that mission since.

It's especially a case of one thing not being like the others since all the examples are qualified by the phrase "the surplus is handed to shareholders". But every other example is a public company, with a vast array of public shareholders. Valve is private and, as far as I know, has >50% ownership from one person.

I feel like the argument as a whole for enshittification would be more interesting if it actually allowed for nuance rather than the rabble-rousing "all platforms are evil!" cry that it's becoming.

Does anyone know where Enshittification as a word came from? Or who created it? It seems to have entered more common use online in the last year or so. Google trends shows some use in 2004.

Cory Doctorow is credited; I couldn't easily pull the first instance.

Enshittification existed well before online platforms. Have a new/valuable service -> Build a brand -> Cut costs/quality and cash in on that brand equity

“Used to be good” is too common of a phrase, but I’ve heard it all my 40 years.

It’s one reason I don’t eat at national chain restaurants on principle. The brand was built, usually quite a while ago. The few options available for increasing profit are usually heavily at odds with human health and the kinds of things I want to put into my body.

Ran across this quote (attributed to Thomas Paine [0]) a couple of days ago:

"A thousand years hence (for I must indulge in a few thoughts), perhaps in less, America may be what England now is! The innocence of her character that won the hearts of all nations in her favor may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of that liberty which thousands bled for, or suffered to obtain, may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact. "

[0] https://thomaspaine.org/works/major-works/letter-to-george-w...

Enshittification is coterminous with commodification.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.ht...

> The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual “having” must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function. At the same time all individual reality has become social reality directly dependent on social power and shaped by it. It is allowed to appear only to the extent that it is not.

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