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Comment by jonplackett | Hacker News Reader

Google also famously intent Isla made their search engine _worse_ so you have to look through more results, and then see more ads.

The enshitificstion begins.

The only saving grace is the promise to have an ad-free tier.

If something is valuable to you, paying for it to not have ads is very reasonable.

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Paying to remove the ads likely doesn’t also remove all the other design decisions based on maximizing ad revenue rather than utility for users.

The [enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) begins.

Fixed that for you, and I agree fully with that assessment.

A plea to the wise members of this community, please stop using this word. Use degradation or decay but not this.

What is wrong with "enshittification" as a word?

I think the word doesn't have a good analogue, so I support it. I wish it sounded a bit less sophomoric, but the concept is sound, because it's the intentional worsening of a product to extract more revenue, not just by charging more, but by being worse for the intended purpose.

I don't think degradation or decay capture this...those are more associated with a process in nature, or due to the laws of physics, but especially something unintentional (like "bit rot").

I like Cory Doctorow, so I might be a bit biased here. Would be interested in alternatives that capture the intentional aspect.

The neologism is purposefully crude

I don't know, I like that it somehow implies it is caused by humans. Decay is a natural process, sometimes unavoidable. Degredation is often used in the same sense. But human and organisational decisions are driving this.

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