"enshittification" gets thrown around a lot, but this is the exact playbook. Look at the previous bubble's cash cow: advertising.

Online advertising is now ubiquitous, terrible, and mandatory for anyone who wants to do e-commerce. You can't run a mass-market online business without buying Adwords, Instagram Ads, etc.

AI will be ubiquitous, and then it will get worse and more expensive. But we will be unable to return to the prior status quo.

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chasebank 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But why would they make the product shittier and not just more expensive? A lot of the complaints have been the model getting lost and going rogue.

	▲	ImPostingOnHN 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because sometimes you can make more money by reducing costs and making something shittier (especially if you do it covertly), compared to increasing prices. I suspect more customers are lost a lot faster when you increase prices, compared to enshittifying the product. It's also a lot more directly attributable to an action, and thus easier for an executive to be blamed if they choose the former over the latter.

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hirako2000 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The odds of that happening are high. Trillions invested.

It occurred to me an outright rejections of these tools is brewing but can't quite materialise yet.