Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception

#11

Post by orsenthil » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

Quibblingeek wrote: post #7

I love Cory Doctorow’s work, but man is it hard to get through sometimes. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s depressing.

Yes, I agree with you. He is both real and it is depressing as the state of world is. I sometimes have take solace in utopian fiction like Kim Stanley Robinson's have my spirits high and have a positive look out. It is just me.

Re: Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception

#12

Post by dgently7 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 11:02 PM UTC

kentbrew wrote: post #8

mannyv wrote: post #4

There should be a double t in ‘enshittification.’

Came here to say this. Otherwise it's pronounced "en-SHITE-if-fication."

i kinda like that better than the typical pronunciation tbh, but also unfortunately for us CD coined the term so we cant even be on a high horse about how he decided to spell and say the word he made up and now we all use.

i still might start saying it shite for fun though.

Re: Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception

#13

Post by sxzygz » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

Usually Doctorow is tedious in his presentation mainly because of how angry he is at what he's reporting on. It's not that it's unwarranted, it just hard to digest because of it. This article, which eventually arrives at Amazon's absolutely unforgivable corrupt implementation of a second-price auction for advertising placement, is worth the read.

Re: Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception

#14

Post by tomjakubowski » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:25 AM UTC

The article spends a couple paragraphs complaining about Amazon not allowing sorting by unit price. This would be a very useful feature, I agree, but I don't think I've ever seen a online grocery or department store retailer which supports it. The brick and mortar retailers he praises don't let you _sort_ by unit price either, they just show it to you on the shelf (often because a regulation requires it), same as Amazon.

Test search term: pretzels. Couldn't find a way to sort or filter by unit price at Target.com, Ralphs.com, Walmart.com, Vons.com, not even beloved Costco.com.

If anyone does know a grocery or department store which lets you sort by unit price, I'd be interested to see it.

https://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=pretzel

https://www.ralphs.com/search?query=pretzels

https://www.walmart.com/search?q=pretzels

https://www.vons.com/shop/search-results.html?q=pretzels

https://www.costco.com/s?keyword=pretzels

Re: Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception

#15

Post by theturtletalks » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 8:54 AM UTC

So many e-commerce companies have made product search a dark pattern. It’s exactly why LLMs are coming for their lunch. Why would I use a marketplace in the future when I can get a terminal agent to scour the web and sort the products however I see fit? And prices will be cheaper since the LLM will find the sellers direct website where they don’t have to give the marketplace its cut.

The general argument against this is that “how can I trust the stores my terminal agent finds?” I much rather trust an objective LLM than these modern marketplaces that remove or simply don’t publish bad reviews, game reviews with programs like Vine, or start selling generic versions of the same popular products third party sellers sell.

Re: Amazon Achieves Enshitification Inception

#16

Post by memcg » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

At some point it feels like blaming someone else for my cocaine problem. If Amazon sucks, stop using it.

It would be nice to drive thru my neighborhood without have to sit behind an Amazon delivery vehicle parked in the middle of the road.