this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

"Enshittification" isn't just company did bad thing, you know

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It isn't, but I think this probably fits. Enshittification is when a company provides useful, good services to gain users, then once those users are locked in they start degrading those service or removing features to cut costs, right? That seems like a pretty close analogy to what's going on here, I'd think.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I doubt there's even a cost cut here. They're most likely still doing the work, just not making it available.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I think that's still just "what businesses do in general", enshittification is specifically:

  1. Offer a great service as a middleman so users want to use your platform and customers want to sell through it (i.e. get the market share)
  2. Once the users are used to using it and are sort of locked in, crank up the costs so your customers get their returns
  3. One they are locked in, crank up the costs for them so you profit

From the original post that defined it:

First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.