to be boring, the term "enshittification" was invented by one individual, recently, and has a specific meaning. it does not refer to "things just get worse" but describes a specific strategy adopted by corporations using the internet for commercial purposes.

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pdonis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> a specific strategy adopted by corporations using the internet for commercial purposes.

Isn't that what's driving the pollution of the Internet by LLMs?

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PaulDavisThe1st 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No. The specific strategy is not about using LLMs or polluting the internet. Enshittification is ... ah screw it, let's turn to wikipedia:

> Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to both users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.

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ninjagoo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Feels like there is a case to be made here that the decline of The Internet rather precisely fits those definitions, with the exception that it is a collective of those products and services undergoing enshittification, since high-quality internet-based products/services no longer exist in quantity.

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#Impact which talks of the broadening of the usage of that term.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> high-quality internet-based products/services no longer exist in quantity. asserted without evidence and likely false.

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LPisGood 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Words change meaning as they are used. Especially negative words that may start rather specific tend to get used more generally until the specificity is lost.

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anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

how about we put some effort into actually picking the correct words and not just handwaving everything? Especially since the whole topic of discussion here is 'internet research is increasingly less reliable because people just wrote/publish any old BS for clicks.'

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LPisGood 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t think it’s necessarily handwaving. I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on the way language is used and broadening terms is a very natural thing that happens as language evolves

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		we already had "it's getting shittier every day". no need to lose the specific meaning of "enshittification".

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PaulDavisThe1st 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"enshittification" was invented within the last couple of years and its inventor is still alive.

I'd normally be the first to agree with and push your point about language evolving, but it's not time to apply that to a neologism this young.

	▲	LPisGood 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the fact that it’s primarily an Internet related term that gets used a lot on the Internet, has something to do with the acceleration in the broadening of its meaning

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ninjagoo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having thought about your note some more, perhaps this would be a better encapsulation of what I was trying to say:

The consumer internet has become platformized, and the dominant platforms are going through enshittification: early user subsidy, then advertiser/seller favoritism, now rent extraction that is degrading outcomes for everyone.

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krapp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>to be boring, the term "enshittification" was invented by one individual, recently, and has a specific meaning. it does not refer to "things just get worse"

It literally started meaning that hours after it was first posted to HN and being used. Sorry, that's just how language works. Enshittification got enshittified. Deal with it and move on.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		that's literally meaningless. also ahistorical, both in that this is not what happened hours after it was first posted to HN (which was months after it was originated), and also in that "things become shittier" was and is still a perfectly common expression, the source of Doctorow's neologism and much closer to what the loose use of it is trying to get at.