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| ▲ | jasode 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >This goes for almost all software. 'entshittification' in software It's really every category of commercial activity. Restaurants food quality, cable tv channels, movie sequels, home appliances, airline travel, theme parks, etc. For years, I had a particular local HVAC company do my twice-a-year maintenance on my air conditioner and furnace. I liked the owner and he had a crew of older experienced guys that knew what they were doing. He then sold the business to another owner and he completely changed out the crew to kids that barely look 18 years old. The young inexperienced techs didn't have the skills to diagnose anything on their own. They always had to phone the home office and use their smartphones to send video/photos of what they're looking at to the more knowledgeable technician at the office. That way, the senior guy sitting at the desk can walk them through what to do next. That's when I realized the financial game the new owner was playing: hire new kids that just completed their 3-month HVAC tech certificate for cheap wages but still charge the same high prices that the old owner was charging for experienced techs. And only pay for one expensive senior tech back at the office to be a "shared resource" for all the clueless techs out in the field. That type of "enshittification" didn't require venture capital, or private equity, or ads. The common pattern of degrading a product or service has the same thing in common ... humans. The vast majority of enshittification is not caused by private equity or ads. | | |
| ▲ | spenuke 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It's really every category of commercial activity. I'm not going to defend capital's ability to ruin things, but this is framing is not helpful. Enshittification as it was described by Cory Doctorow, who invented the term, requires two additional things: 1. A platform that tries to attract both producers and consumers. Amazon is the canonical example. The platform does what it can to attract enough consumers that producers have to use the platform to reach them. Then it squeezes out the value to the producers (e.g., hiking acquisition fees, etc.; competing with them and underselling them with cheaper alternatives). The final step is to destroy the value to the consumer, by degrading quality and increasing price. By this time, neither producers nor consumers have many levers to fight back. 2. Non-physical pricing levers. Enshittification requires the ability to observe consumer behavior and jigger pricing at great speed. We see this in Amazon again; ridesharing apps introduced surge pricing; ads are priced according to what platforms know about you. In a physical store, the logistical cost of changing the price of goods is nontrivial, so we don't see the same sort of gaming there. Enshittification is a novel and illuminating concept, so we need to be careful not to let it turn into some vague "things got worse" meaning. | | |
| ▲ | jasode 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Enshittification as it was described by Cory Doctorow, who invented the term, Cory Docotor didn't invent the term. He just made it more popular. Others used it at least 9 years before he did to describe "web design", and 3 years prior to describe the U.K. :
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/enshittification_n?tab=meanin... >Enshittification is a novel and illuminating concept, so we need to be careful not to let it turn into The gp I replied to already used "enshittification" in a more general way to describe "almost all software". Most software out there is not the platforms that have the 2 factors you listed. I was just going going along with the conversation. As far as policing the usage of "enshittification", you've got an uphill battle because people like the way it sounds and tend to use it as a spicy word to talk about anything getting worse. They're not going to research what Cory Doctorow was talking about and doublecheck to see if matches exactly what he was trying to describe. E.g. See it used to complain about "public libraries", "policing", "tech jobs", etc: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=enshittification |
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| ▲ | ldayley 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Private equity firms are buying profitable local businesses all over the US, including HVAC, plumbing, auto techs, storage, etc. So it’s possible that this case of enshittification actually WAS caused private equity in your example. | | |
| ▲ | jasode 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | In my case, the new HVAC owner is just another local resident that had an existing local area HVAC shop. Nothing to do with any private equity rollup. |
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| ▲ | rightbyte a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Enshitification is a problem when the power structures are not in the user's favour. | | |
| ▲ | sbarre a day ago | parent [-] | | It's also a byproduct of the most successful user acquisition model to be honest. Getting users is hard, especially on the Internet where your audience is global, and competition is fierce. Word of mouth or user advocacy has always been the best cost-to-value marketing tool. So starting out by offering things for free or at a loss has been the go-to strategy forever. But (as we all know) that's not sustainable, so there's pretty much nowhere to go but down, from a value-to-user perspective. |
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