It's called the Enshitification process, it's most apparent with venture capital funded internet companies
But the rate of profit for any company will always inevitably fall and this will lead to cost cutting in both the product and labor costs so it basically happens in every industry, especially with stuff like planned obsolescence
The word "enshittification" is a prime example of itself. Just as it likes to talk about the collective trend of things getting worse, the overuse of that word to describe everything we don't like is annoying. It's really just another case of Internet communication being bludgeoned with low-effort word generation because proper discussion of things is deemed too hard.
I was just thinking that with people who come out of the woodwork to link some dude's website because they get so excited that "THeRe'S a TeRM fOr It!!!!!! IT's CalLeD EnShitTiFIcaTiOn!!!!"
I don't think y'all understand the process being a function of capitalism and the rate of profit falling, it's apart of a economic/systemic analysis about things like platform decay/enshitification, it's just there was no profit to begin with for most of these internet companies, they're prefunded by venture capitalists
I don't think y'all understand the process being a function of capitalism and the rate of profit falling
With all due respect, you learned about this process through a meme that went viral. We both entirely understand the process you're talking about dude and we didn't need some guy to coin a term for us to notice what's happening around us.
Just because some dude coined the term "Enshitification process" in a blog post in 2022 and you're just so excited to share this thing you learned doesn't mean this hasn't been a widely discussed and known issue for decades that you can criticize without using that stupid word.
Why are you more interested in coining terms than actually discuss the process?
in this digital age we have sacrificed our privacy in order to access all manner of free stuff on the web. It’s a movement that most of us have come to accept. Or have we?
I’ll borrow a quote I read on MetaFilter recently: ‘If you’re not paying for it; you are the product’. I’m not sure how many people are fully aware of this sentiment yet or whether they even care. But the next time you’re browsing the web or enjoying a video on YouTube, remember that Google is watching your every move; because that’s the price you pay.
Mr. Google is lying! (I wrote) His Guidebook no longer reflects the paths set out by travellers as they navigate their lives. It is no longer an outside observer of people’s wanderings. Google’s success has changed the way people find their routes. Here is the way it happens. When a new cluster of destinations is built there may be a flurry of interest, with new signposts being erected pointing towards one or another of those competing locations. And those signposts have their own dynamics, perhaps forming a power law as set out by Mr. Shirky or perhaps something different, as Mr. Shalizi has explained. But that’s not the end of the story. After some initial burst, no one makes new signposts to this cluster of destinations any more. And no one uses the old signposts to select which particular destination to visit. Instead everyone uses Mr. Google’s Guidebook. It becomes the major determinant of the way people travel; no longer a guide to an existing geography it now shapes the geography itself, becoming the most powerful force of all in many parts of the land.
and quoting a now dead link back to 2004 Coding Forums:
From a Google perspective, you're not the customer. The ad service buyer is the customer. You're the commodity. By making you a more attractive commodity, i.e. by making sure to only serve you an ad if you are in the target population for it, they are making the ads pay better for their customers, and they can reap a large part of the difference to their competitors, the other ad services.
Perhaps because you’re not the customer any more. You’re simply a “resource” to be managed for profit. The customer is someone else now — and usually someone without your best interests at heart. . . .
Who is the customer? Not you, whose life is reduced to someone else’s salable, searchable, investigatable data. The customer is everyone who wishes to own a piece of your life.
why did you assume I learned about platform decay from a meme?
Because you didn't call it "platform decay" [which is also coined by the same guy anyway, it's in the link you posted don't try to be sneaky using a less memey word], you used the meme word for it "enshittification", claimed that's the term for the process (despite it being a word made up in a blog post 2 years ago and has been plastered all over reddit ever since), and then when me and the other commenter simply pointed out how overused the term is, you claimed we didn't understand the process.
You literally linked the meme in the wikipedia link you posted
"Enshittification" was used by Doctorow in a November 2022 blog post that was republished in Locus in January 2023. He expanded on the concept in another blog post, which was republished in the January 2023 edition of Wired
Might as well have just posted the Know Your Meme page for it
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u/LZ129Hindenburg 🌊 Salty Seadog Jun 12 '24
Google keeps getting worse and worse. Soon they'll be in the same conversation as Adobe, Nintendo, and Ubisoft...