Hacker News Reader

Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

Only Cory seems 1,000 more pragmatic. And although he's often a hypocrite¹ and I'll roll my eyes very hard every time I read the word "enshittification", I admire that his goal was to create a "shovel-ready" book with actionable advice and look forward to reading it.

¹ https://imgur.com/a/TAltXUf

View on HN

> and I'll roll my eyes very hard every time I read the word "enshittification"

Why? It seems like a good description that accurately describes the behavior and is reasonably obvious on first reading.

It's a horrible name. It obviously implies that something is being made shitty, but it fails to say what or how. "Enshittification" could just as easily mean "the process by which your computer fan gets clogged with dust" or "the process by which rice loses vitamins when you cook it too much". It's like calling it "bad stuff" except with more profanity.

As a web user of 26 years, it describes precisely what happens.

How would a word itself contain its own definition of what or how? If you take the word "corruption" which is similar you can see that is implies something is being made more corrupt, but it fails to say what or how.

I can't see how enshittification is any different. Enshittify, like corrupt needs to have a definition at some point.

Those two definitions could work only in a special context and wouldn't be adopted as a widely known word. Cory's definition, though, can work so, because it is a coined term for an important sociological phenomenon.

About including the essence of meaning into the word, I would propose 'entrapment'. But "enshittification" seems to be a special choice for conveying derogation and evoking attention to the discussion - so called dysphemistic and emphatic swearing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity#Types), and this goal might be more important for the author than that of making the word's meaning obvious from word itself. If 'enshittification' catches on, it will be able to be considered as worthy of attention anyway, and one won't need to use word's lexical clarity to judge its importance.

> And although he's often a hypocrite¹

This is "POSSE" (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere) as explained in [1]:

> The "pluralistic" in my Pluralistic strategy is twofold. First, I practice "POSSE" (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere). That is, while my posts appear as threads on Twitter and Mastodon, and as articles on Medium and Tumblr, the permalinks for each post live on my own site, which I control.

I thought you were talking about this [2] but there is a very good reason that he explains here [3] or by listening to the audiobook (which can also be heard here on his podcast [4]).

[1]: https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5RWTPR7/

[3]: https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-...

[4]: https://ia801507.us.archive.org/18/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podca...

There's a difference between DRM and selling your stuff.

There's a difference between DRM and using copyright law to the fullest.

Thinking the line is between loading your stuff with user-hostile malware and giving it away is precisely the kind of thing the user-hostile malware camp would want people to believe: "We have to spy on users and destroy their machines because the alternative is not compensating artists! We stand with SAG-AFTRA so install Denuvo on every system you own!"

A paywall is not DRM.

Additionally, it's not really paywalled at all, it's just crossposted to a paywalled platform (presumably for the convenience of people who prefer Medium, for reasons I can't fathom but to each their own):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-comput...

How is it meaningfully different? Both exist to ensure that each person consuming the media has paid for it. Sure, in practice pay-walled articles can be easily copied to non-drmed formats, but no one does this and the motivation is the same.

It's meaningfully different because once the access is confirmed, it respects you. You can easily save a copy forever. You could even copy/paste from it. DRM specifically makes it impossible for you to do that. It just doesn't just verify that you paid, it blocks and interferes what you can do with the content.

It doesn't become DRM just because some people choose not to make a backup copy. That would be like saying everything I can see with my eyes but choose not to photograph has DRM on it (or effectively is DRM). That's clearly not true, as I could at any time decide to photograph my surroundings and the objects I'm photographing aren't going to restrict my camera.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com