Hacker News Reader

Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> This story is so common that I wish there was an established economic term for it.

I thought we'd collectively decided on "enshittification"? Or is that different?

No, it should be the same. In software you can't really lower quality. Instead, stuff your product with ads and raise prices. In hardware you can lower production quality, but you can't really put ads on it. The outcome is the same.

Software suffers from a different problem, I feel. Namely that buyers care little about quality and only look for features.

So the MVP that meets what ever feature requirement a customer wants - at the lowest price - wins, regardless of how stable or secure the service is.

We most definitely have not settled on that shitshow of a word.

No, enshittification is a different economic thing where a continuing service provides less and less for more and more (either attention or money) over time.

What I'm talking about is buying concrete objects at discrete moments in time.

Similar, but not the same.

I think it is the same: build reputation and trust in your brand, and then abuse that trust by making more and more consumer-screwing decisions.

With enshittification, you aren't just coasting on historic brand reputation. You actually have users locked into your product with pervasive network effects.

People don't still use Facebook because of any lingering nostalgia from its halcyon glory days. They use it because that's where their friends are and they can't get away. That's what enshittification is about.

There's no lock-in making boomers buy Harleys. It's just brand nostalgia despite the fact that the bikes suck now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com