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Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

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Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#31

Post by jackgolding »

brezelgoring wrote: post #28

I espouse a belief that apps have two cycles, one of growth, another of exploitation. In the first, cash is burnt/used to give free goodies and provide good quality services. Rents are a byproduct and not a goal during this phase of the operation, the goal here is to build goodwill and market share through measures that the competition can't match. All in all, it is a good experience to use the service during this st…

Great comment, I can fill in some of your references.

The Essay you were referring to is the brilliant "The Gervais Principle"

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Reforge talks about your cycle - I can't find the exact artcile but you can see it with marketplaces a lot - i.e. Facebook creates APIs for events, 3rd parties build platforms on these APIs, Facebook kills the API access. This is the closest article I could find related to "tactics" https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#32

Post by vanderZwan »

smoldesu wrote: post #20

I felt like I wasn't going to write this comment again, but here we go: I don't like the word enshittification. People glom onto it because they like shaking sticks more than solving problems, and Corey Doctorow is excellent at exploiting that desire. It's annoying how he enables that sense of defeatism when he's obviously aware of resilient and game-changing alternative software (like FOSS) that has revolutionized t…

Given that he actively promotes said alternatives that "he is aware of", I find your claim of him enabling defeatism more than a little disingenous.

For example, he's the reason I'm supporting the devs of pidgin despite not even directly using that software myself, because he wrote a thread on how nobody donates to it even though it apparently is important enough for bad actors to post bounties for sharing zero day bugs that lets them break into it.

More importantly, the term "enshittification" does the exact opposite of "obfuscating the problem". It comes with a very concrete description of a pattern of how things are made worse that most people have felt but had no word for until now. It can also seen to be played out over and over again. It even has predictive powers.

Which means people can now describe a problem without having to write five paragraphs explaining the issue. Or needing the skill to write it in the first place. That's what words are for. That's what sharing ideas is for. Are you going to blame people for relying on a doctor's diagnosis instead of studying medicine themselves too?

And by finally being able to quickly identify an issue, people can start taking active steps against it. Which is the exact opposite of what you are claiming.

But hey, how dare people speak up about issues that affect them them without immediately knowing how to solve/having the means to solve a large systemic problem that other people with more power and money inflict upon them, I guess.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#33

Post by Karrot_Kream »

smoldesu wrote: post #20

I felt like I wasn't going to write this comment again, but here we go: I don't like the word enshittification. People glom onto it because they like shaking sticks more than solving problems, and Corey Doctorow is excellent at exploiting that desire. It's annoying how he enables that sense of defeatism when he's obviously aware of resilient and game-changing alternative software (like FOSS) that has revolutionized t…

Unfortunately most people that become popular by whipping up outrage only really know how to continue doing that to stay visible. It's much easier to identify open problems than to solve them; this is why they remain open problems. Stallman is actually a very prominent exception to this. Not only did he whip up outrage but he then created a principled movement behind his outrage and push forward progress in his ideas. While I do think he lost the plot a bit recently, most don't even get half as far.

(I always found that a bit ironic about Doctorow. He identifies problems with social media but uses its preferred form of virality to spread his own message.)

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#34

Post by [deleted] »

tremorscript wrote: post #30
smoldesu wrote: post #20

I felt like I wasn't going to write this comment again, but here we go: I don't like the word enshittification. People glom onto it because they like shaking sticks more than solving problems, and Corey Doctorow is excellent at exploiting that desire. It's annoying how he enables that sense of defeatism when he's obviously aware of resilient and game-changing alternative software (like FOSS) that has revolutionized t…

Naming things is not easy. Naming things is hard. I am glad that we have this word now and it is catching on. Because all of us know and see and understand what the problem with platforms are. I don't think it obfuscates the problem. Step 1 to fixing a difficult problem. Give it a good name. The Traveling Salesman problem could well have been called "The NP-hard problem" but TSP is a good name.

[deleted]

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#35

Post by gmd63 »

brezelgoring wrote: post #28

I espouse a belief that apps have two cycles, one of growth, another of exploitation. In the first, cash is burnt/used to give free goodies and provide good quality services. Rents are a byproduct and not a goal during this phase of the operation, the goal here is to build goodwill and market share through measures that the competition can't match. All in all, it is a good experience to use the service during this st…

This isn't inevitable. It's the nature of the voluntary business models at play.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#36

Post by ggm »

I compare this mentally to:

* autotesting music for 'hit worthy' == music blandifies to the bangers and you never get interesting voices any more. but .. it works (for profit)

* kindle genres like 'in the style of' and the tendency to more and more but worse and worse in fiction because.. it works (for profit)

* politics descending to the lowest grab, not the highest goal.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#37

Post by brezelgoring »

flir wrote: post #25
ftxbro wrote: post #8

There is a possibly more general phenomenon where a brand gets good reputation and then begins cutting cost and people will still buy at the high price. I don't know if that one has a name or if it's the same concept as enshittification.

Value engineering is the art of making almost the same thing, but cheaper. That could be it. See also: muntzing.

TIL about Muntzing.

From the Wikipedia page about the practice [1]:

> he reduced his costs and increased his profits at the expense of poorer performance [...] so the Muntz TVs were adequate for a very large fraction of his customers. And for those [...] where the Muntz TVs did not work, those could be returned at the customer's additional effort and expense, and not Muntz's. He focused less resources in the product [...] and focused more resources on advertising and sales promotions.

While reading this I thought "This guy is a used car salesman if I've ever seen one", and he was! haha

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#38

Post by bobmaxup »

Trouble_007 wrote: post #2

Users, Advertisers – We are all trapped in the ‘Enshittification’ of the Internet (2023-03-11): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/11/users-... "Enshittification" - Wiktionary : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification Cory Doctorow - Enshittification : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Enshittification I downloaded the podcast from here (mp3) : https://mediacore-live-production.akama…

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitific...

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#39

Post by ccooffee »

manvillej wrote: post #21
amatecha wrote: post #15

Funny timing, as I just described Duolingo's recent trajectory as being an example of "enshittification" to someone who was angry that they have to do even more "quests" this month than any previous one, to earn the monthly badge (merely a fun thing on your profile to look back on). Gotta drive that engagement and keep users in-app as long as possible...

to be fair, practicing is a pretty essential component to learning a new language. "increasing engagement" also means more practice. Its not an entirely selfish motivation.

I disagree in this case.

Duolingo formerly had conversational language lessons, which were 100% audio (not even able to see text on screen). These were phenomenal for actually learning to speak , compared to the generated garbage in the lessons.

Duolingo formerly had lessons that explain new concepts, like a particular verb tense. It doesn't seem to have any of them once changing over the to completely linear lesson tree.

I believe that Duolingo has fallen into a logical trap. They can easily track app engagement. It is known that regular practice is the key to learning a language, but they incorrectly forget the quality of the interactions. I've got my Duolingo 800 day streak still kicking, but I've learned almost nothing with the changes over the last year or so. I'm not terribly sure why I even use the app anymore, as there are plenty of anki decks with the same quality content. (The only thing I'd lose is the speech recognition, but that's so laughably bad that it reinforces incorrect pronunciation.)

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#40

Post by HlessClaudesman »

How much of enshitification can be explained by rampant managerialism?

Managers need to feel powerful, hire more managers.

Managers need to meet their performance targets or just want to carve their own little Mt Rushmore face in the product, wacky user hostile decisions ensue.

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