So unshittification?
Yes that’s right, the suction of one’s poo right back into one’s asshole.
Thanks for the exquisite mental image
Can we all take a moment to appreciate how stupid that word sounds. I feel like we come up with something better.
People are scared of the word “degeneration” for some reason
Removed by mod
This post is a little bit unintentionally hilarious because listening to Cory Doctorow speak is kind of horrifying because he’s obviously so much fucking smarter than any human should be allowed to be. Debating him in his fields of expertise would hugely masochistic.
Not only that, but they’re acting like they’re the first to figure this shit out.
This is just rent-seeking. It’s as old as capitalism itself. No need for dumb new terms.
It doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue, but that’s a good thing. It seems to be catching on, and frankly those large companies and orgs that are enshittifying and get labeled thusly might actually not love being called out with it, and hopefully slow their roll.
Doubtful, but a man can dream.
I used to work at S***ify… which is currently enshittifying at top-speed. It fits.
In what ways does it enshittify?
Welp… how long-winded do you want me to get on this one? You could look up literally hundreds of examples in mainstream news about how Shopify came up as a lean scrappy underdog circa 2012 alongside many of the second wave of budding platforms. In those days they were just a snowboard company who hated the pre-rolled ecomm solutions (especially Amazon) and came up with their own way.
Turns out a few other people liked their way as well… so they pivoted to SaaS and took off running. Their mantra at that time (and they still pull it out on the regular now… for laughs) was “Arming the rebels” (against Amazon…)
They built their SaaS platform on world-class customer/merchant support. Built things users asked for. Hired talented people who were inspired by the environment of doing good in the world… etc etc. They believed in what they were doing… i.e. “Make Commerce Better.”
Around the time I joined (2021) they got absolutely fucking hammered by new clients/merchants over lockdown. They were primed for “easy dropshipping” this and “low-cost barrier to entry” that for tens of millions of broke people sitting at home for lockdowns across 18+ months, looking for (pre-rolled) ways to earn an income. Their own marketing to small and emergin businesses (easy money over here!) ended up fucking them in the end.
They did an over-hiring wave like any other tech compan at the time. Very shortly after their email and chat support queues were overrun (weeks-long wait times) they reduces phone support hours for normal merchants before killing them completely shortly thereafter (workers can only field one call at a time, vs 3 chats and multiple emails per hour)… Obv they kept phones open for Plus merchants (enterprise, of course). That’s Enshittification - Stage 1. They built their business, name, and reputation helping the little guy (the “rebels”)… and now they were pulling up the ladder behind them to help the Plus/enterprize clients get and remain profitable, instead.
I could keep going. If you look far enough into it they started aggressively courting Enterprize clients last year after their shares tanked, and after they laid off 30% of staff… and while they do that they need to pull finances and resources further away from their “rebels” to keep the Nikes and the Chapters of the world happy. Established mega-corps don’t love it if you’re giving “the little guy” stellar support while you give them (Nike) the same level. They want “better”, at all times.
They’ve been at multi-billion dollar valuation for years prior to Covid. It was the pressure through lockdowns and out the other side tha pressured them to keep growing profitability, sent them over the edge of enshittification. They’ve clearly taken a lot of advice from Wall Street and Silicon Valley about how to stay on the money train (from same)… during tough financial times. They’re already pulling top-notch support from their enterprize clients, and third-party app devs (ask me how I know that). The next (obvious) phase is to claw back those margins that keep enterprize clients happy, once they have enough of them locked in that a few leaving won’t hurt them. That’s phase 3, if you haven’t been keeping track.
Do you need more of a primer, or did I answer your question?
Funny that it could either Shopify or Spotify, you refer to, as both are arguably enshitifying.
See my other comment 😂
I first read it as Shittify
let the internet enshit itself, that why we are here, profit focused companies are going to fuck themselfs, it’s just a matter of time
I love that this is on YouTube, which us going full force in enshittifying itself right now.
True but it is unfortunately still the place where people will most likely watch your video.
The real cost of enshittification is that they make it impossible for others to run honest business.
Who will pay a subscription for privacy respecting services when there are a dozen free alternatives. True cost of running online business has been completely hidden from users and for so long that they will never accept those that want to cover the costs upfront.
e.g. how many of you remain on Lemmy if instance owners asked for a monthly fee to cover their server costs?
I’d pay if the price was reasonable.
That’s the neoliberal secret – you have to play the game, no matter how immoral the rules.
Well, not entirely. We can move out to the wilderness and live off the land with very minimal interaction with civilization. We don’t because iPhones and medicine are too good to give up.
We should hear about these costs more often, see emcouragement posts towards donating and stuff. I’ve seen some admins did these.
Kind of surprised (and a bit disappointed) you didn’t get more replies saying “I already pay”. Which does admittedly support your point!
p.s. I already pay.
I run my own Lemmy instance, I already pay $23.00 a month just to be here.
At least in feddit (main German instance) there were a lot of posts offering up financial support, but it was declined because it was not needed.
I think especially the smaller communities wouldn’t have a problem coming with funds for hosting. Donations for lemmy developers have also increased significantly since the main exodus.
I get your scepticism, but I think the lemmy community for the most part wants this thing to “succeed” and is willing to chip in a reasonable amount.
I watched the video yesterday and I couldn’t really understand what the plan is. What I got was something like “they corps are too big for the consumers to do anything and laws are very slow to made”.
Did I miss something about the “audacious(?)” plan?
Man, people think they want laws to regulate the internet but seem to forget who owns the lobbyists.
The fediverse will be at risk as soon as they start legislating.
Man, people think they want laws to regulate the internet but seem to forget who owns the lobbyists.
The fediverse will be at risk as soon as they start legislating.
tl;dw
-
Cory Doctorow coins the term “enshittification” to describe how platforms start out benefiting users but eventually abuse users and business customers to extract all value.
-
Facebook started by prioritizing user privacy over ads but now prioritizes profits over all else.
-
Network effects are a double-edged sword - they lock users in but also make platforms vulnerable if users leave en masse.
-
Low switching costs due to universality and interoperability allow competitors to reverse engineer platforms and plug in competing services.
-
Mandatory interoperability and limiting data control can curb platform power by distributing control to users and smaller companies.
-
Recent antitrust actions aim to roll back decades of lax merger policy that let platforms consolidate power.
-
Breakups will take a long time so interoperability is a faster way to restore competition.
-
Laws should limit abusive behavior rather than rely on platforms to self-regulate.
-
Federated open services fail gracefully and encourage migration to better platforms.
-
Political will is growing but change will be gradual - focus should be on harm reduction in the near term.
-
Thank God you censored the word SHIT so we didn’t all need a group hug meeting .
What’s that about shit? Fuck, I love me some shit!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4&si=4REg2e22vrfEUYwl
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
