Enshittification Is Our Fault | Hacker News Reader

Enshittification Is Our Fault

theahura.substack.com

13 pointstheahura15 comments

This is a good example of why you want to interrogate the urge to be contrarian and ask whether it’s leading you into a cognitive pitfall. While it’s true that there is an element of consumer choose, that has to be seen in the light of the respective power gradients and knowledge - otherwise you’re like the tobacco companies arguing that people just love the taste or oil companies arguing that Americans don’t care about climate change and just love driving everywhere, ignoring the enormous amounts of money spent promoting that culture and removing competing options. The average millennial sure used Uber and AirBnB a lot - and probably believed that prices were lower due to efficiency rather than VCs subsidies trying to run competitors out of the market. Social sites like Facebook spent billions of dollars trying to make their products more addictive – I know neuroscientists who were recruited for that specific goal – only to struggle with finding enough new content to keep people seeing ads, I have to assign most of the blame to the people who intentionally built that system rather than the people who fell into it not realizing that their trust was misplaced.

Eh, I care less about blame and more about what is to be done about the situation. I don't think we can expect the platforms to fix issues with consumer behavior, both because they aren't incentivized to and because they immediately lose market share to less scrupulous actors. The government needs to act to break coordination problems, much like they did to reduce smoking

That’s why I reject the diffusion of responsibility called for in that post. “We” didn’t do this, a few executives at certain big companies did, and the way to fix it is by removing their ability to do so unilaterally without consequences.

I think part of the problem is the loss of a shared value system, or that there is none online. Like before the newsfeed you talked to your friends and then signed off when you were done.

People liked to smoke, everywhere and then we changed the laws so they couldn’t, but until then every diner had a big smoking section because smokers went to diners with smoking sections.

Like, Facebook and tik tok could choose not to sell over-optimized digital crack. Google could choose not to have AI summaries, or maybe, the government should make them illegal, but like, I dunno, this argument of “we can over optimize everything to take advantage of people’s innate psychological weakness and that’s just people asking for a product is a cop out.

The free software movement is the set of social norms people are looking for.

To be clear, I agree with you. I am not defending "this is just people asking for a product", and I explicitly say in the article that the government should step in to regulate (in part because the social media companies are trapped in a race to the bottom even if they wanted to create less addicting software)

So many of these examples don't hold up if you stop and think about it. The first example staying that Google's shitty results is "our" fault for using SEO. But it's SEO spam that's the problem, not SEO itself. When I search "Dentist <CITY>" someone is optimizing to be at the top of that specific search, but that person is usually a dentist in my city which is what I want.

Similarly, I'm well aware I'd spend less time on sites not deliberately engineered to be addictive. That's not because I'm having a miserable time, I'm just balancing it with other stuff.

> someone is optimizing to be at the top of that specific search

Sorry, I disagree. I think it's antisocial behavior to specifically optimize to be on the top of a specific query. No one thinks they are the bad guy. Everyone believes they are just trying to help people out. There isnt any hard distinction between SEO and SEO spam, just gradients and subjective opinion about the content

I can understand believing that in the abstract, but that's why I provided an example. I guarantee you that I can objectively measure if someone is a dentist, and if so, the city that they practice in.

Sure, I don't doubt that. But what is the benefit of having said dentist spend extra money trying to 'optimize' the search engine?

Here's a hypothetical.

There is a town called Foo with two twin dentists, Bar and Baz, who provide identical services. They both get ~50% of Foo's clientele.

One day, Bar decides to hire a firm to SEO-market for him. He suddenly gets 75% of Foo's clientele, while Baz drops down to 25%. In order to counter this, Baz now hires the same firm. Now both Bar and Baz are back to splitting Foo's clientele. But they are also losing some chunk of money to SEO marketers in a rat-race against each other.

Who benefits from this? I think in your example you suggest that you as a consumer benefit from this -- why / how?

Sorry for the delay, part of the benefit of SEO to the consumer is that you optimize your website by improving performance and filling your website with information. Provided we're not talking SEO spam (inaccurate information) then an optimized website is more likely to answer the questions I'm querying for. Before, I (maybe) knew Bar and Baz were dentists in Foo. Now, I have the ability to actually compare the differences based on the specific queries they optimize for. Maybe one is open later than the other, or offers a procedure I'll need, or takes different insurance.

I'm sure this will be unpopular but a large majority of these recent negative practices are a result of consumer behavior. Things like microtransactions, dealer markups on cars, clickbait, are all so prominent because they _work_. We have the power to reject them, yet people don't. The algorithm driven feeds with engagement bait and rage bait work.

And many other situations are damned if you do damned if you don't. Journalism websites have paywalls and people complain. They have ads and people complain. One way or another these people have to get paid. It's the same with shrinkflation. If costs increase, then either the product gets smaller, or the price gets higher. Either way, people complain.

> dealer markups on cars

Cars are special. They have some of the same issues other high-priced items that you buy occasionally and are a pain to shop for. Think mattresses, tires, and homes. There's information asymmetry, and actual comparison shopping is hassle. This is a setup for painful buying experiences.

With cars, lots of states also restrict manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. I guess it helps with competition at the consumer level, but manufacturers still have leverage over dealers (see This American Life #513).

With real estate, NAR only just (in 2024) got in trouble for price fixing commissions.

Heroin works, do you praise the dealers as "disruptors" and blame the victims? Not a far-fetched example, the opiod epidemic was basically that.

Individuals have few resources to protect themselves from massive corporations armed with sophisticated technology, predatory tactics, and a compliant and captured state.

This kind of victim blaming is sociopathic.

>Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

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