I dislike the word and I also feel like we're already at the point where everything people don't like is just lazily called "enshittification."
I'm not sure this qualifies, but IMO it comes close. There's a lot of nuance in the whole discussion about ebooks and public libraries and handwaving about "enshittification" avoids all of it and dumps the responsibility for maintaining the concept of libraries on publishers and private companies.
Consumers and communities are free to continue consuming books using the same models libraries operated under for decades. Ebooks came along and don't fit well with that model, at all. It's another public commons problem we're basically hoping that Somebody Else will solve and then complaining when the foxes guarding the hen house do what foxes do.
I think Cory is about half right about enshittification but there's also a huge dose of entitlement and apathy. If you expect corporations or government to just Do The Right Thing when it's not in the interest of those in power, without regulation or continual threat of loss of power or market share, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
> If you expect corporations or government to just Do The Right Thing
It's not just corporations or government. Any system of organizing multiple human beings that depends on an unbroken chain of Good People Doing The Right Thing is bound to fail, and fail much sooner rather than later. This happens all the time in nonprofit organizations, civil societies, and what have you.
Individual people can be expected to Do The Right Thing, even at personal cost, sometimes. We've all helped strangers change a flat tire even when it's uncomfortably hot outside. But I'm sure we've all also just driven by someone on the side of the road, because we were in a rush to get somewhere.
Over time, and in groups, people can only be expected to operate based on the incentives and disincentives that are presented to them. (Hence your "regulation or continual threat".)
>Over time, and in groups, people can only be expected to operate based on the incentives and disincentives that are presented to them
No, this is missing the core reason due to believing in an inherent order or that implementing the "right" incentives is the solution.
The real core is that humans are sometimes irrational. This irrational behavior is why economists are regularly wrong (on both macro and micro scales, from recessions to struggling to understand why an incentive/disincentive is ineffective when it should from all other testing), and the core as to why groups can't stick to Do The Right Thing.
gottorf speaks true when he says:">It's not just corporations or government. Any system of organizing multiple human beings that depends on an unbroken chain of Good People Doing The Right Thing is bound to fail, and fail much sooner rather than later. This happens all the time in nonprofit organizations, civil societies, and what have you.<"
This.
Everyone should serve a stint as an officer in their condominium's homeowners' association or neighborhood association so they begin to understand.
(I want to underscore that the described behavior is not limited to capitalists, although one might at first suspect so).
> I think Cory is about half right about enshittification but there's also a huge dose of entitlement and apathy. If you expect corporations or government to just Do The Right Thing when it's not in the interest of those in power, without regulation or continual threat of loss of power or market share, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
Sure, but do you think Cory expects people to do the right thing? The entire thesis assumes everyone basically having good intentions except the middleman who mostly wants to make money.
It's not a judgment, so much as a very obvious pattern driven by understandable and predictable human behavior.
If we can find a way to break away from the pattern while still assuming people will not do the right thing and keep doing human behavior, we should do that.
Endoparasitism is more difficult to say, but that's what's actually going on.
Parasitoids are parasites that corrupt a host, eventually resulting in its death. Endoparasitism is where the parasitoid infects and lives inside the host.
Enshittification usually leads to death of the host too. It can just take a while. The stronger the host the longer it takes. People all just move on to the new best thing until it gets enough attention that the parasites start sniffing around
> If you expect corporations or government to just Do The Right Thing when it's not in the interest of those in power, without regulation or continual threat of loss of power or market share, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
That's the whole point? Enshittification is a response to the idea the capitalism optimizes for the consumer, when instead it points out that it optimizes for the business. It doesn't provide a solution, but it at least names the problem.
> Enshittification is a response to the idea the capitalism optimizes for the consumer
I don't think the problems we're seeing are limited to capitalistic nations.
In any case, my understanding of the philosophical foundation of capitalism, wasn't that it relied on optimization or altruism toward consumers at all. Rather, that it structured incentives so that consumers would benefit from the selfish pursuits of industry.
Pointing out the failings of that system is easy. What's difficult is proposing a system that's better, and has a chance of working with human nature as it is, rather than as we wish it to be.
I guess the point I was hoping to make, was that blaming "capitalism" isn't helpful, and seems like a very common and counterproductive emerging zeitgeist. It's like blaming organized religion for all the ills of our past. In both cases, it's blaming the system, for human nature itself. You can destroy the system, but you'll still be left with the same forces of humanity, as ever.
And we need to be very careful to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because, capitalism has had some very profound and positive outcomes for humanity. So, by all means, let's improve incentives, and punish corruption where we find it. But let's do it with a scalpel, not a machete -- lest the patient die on the operating table.
capitalism can be offset by regulation or just taxation.
kind of problematic that capitalism is seen as all-or-nothing. then there's nothing that can ever be done about it. i'm starting to see the perceived problem with calling out enshittification now.
A feature that was considered a key component of how libraries knew there was interest in a title existed. Then the feature was removed and a worse version was put behind an extra paywall. (Note that libraries are already paying for this product.)
Note that again, libraries are already paying for the product. This is not "free."
Why does this comment deserve downvotes? It demonstrates perfectly what the parent comment was joking about and makes it clear that it's also just a joke.
My hypothesis is that everyone here is at least intelligent enough to understand it's a joke, but they downvote it because either they feel it's a low quality / low effort joke, they don't get the reference, or because that style of humor makes them feel uncomfortable.
Apart from being obnoxious and immature, "enshittification" doesn't communicate any concept beyond "something turning into shit." Being both vague and emotionally charged, semantic drift is inevitable.
It at least conveys that there's an active process going on, which implies that somebody is INTENTIONALLY turning something into shit. That's important. It's true that it doesn't do a good job of conveying the exact process it means.
I wouldn't say that qualification of it being a process necesarily communicates intentionality, and I don't think any of the uses I have seen exclude it from being a process.
I'm not sure this qualifies, but IMO it comes close. There's a lot of nuance in the whole discussion about ebooks and public libraries and handwaving about "enshittification" avoids all of it and dumps the responsibility for maintaining the concept of libraries on publishers and private companies.
Consumers and communities are free to continue consuming books using the same models libraries operated under for decades. Ebooks came along and don't fit well with that model, at all. It's another public commons problem we're basically hoping that Somebody Else will solve and then complaining when the foxes guarding the hen house do what foxes do.
I think Cory is about half right about enshittification but there's also a huge dose of entitlement and apathy. If you expect corporations or government to just Do The Right Thing when it's not in the interest of those in power, without regulation or continual threat of loss of power or market share, you're going to be sorely disappointed.