I see it referenced constantly here, not quite as much on Reddit. I know what it means, but just wondering why such the popularity over on this side of the fence?
Cause it’s one big part of why the Fediverse and Lemmy exist in the first place.
We wouldn’t need all this decentralization overhead if centralized sites were trustworthy and focussed on serving their users. The fact that they are not is what leads to privacy violations and enshittification, hence why people created the Fediverse and why we are here (at least most of us I presume).
Selection bias. Lemmy users by default are probably more sensitive to/negative about enshittification than those on reddit.
Many of us came here in response to the enshittification of reddit.
The term “enshittification” is a useful neologism because without it we’d need half a sentence to get the same concept across.
I’d argue most of us are older but not too old to remember what the internet was as well.
Yeah you’re probably right. It surprised me how many people my age are here but it does make sense because we’re the generation that enjoyed a less corporate internet.
Because the Fediverse itself is a response to enshittification.
Because most people on lemmy are here because of it.
It’s the reason we are all here…
People here are far more likely to be anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, pro-privacy, etc. those groups all circle the same kind of Cory Doctorow/Matt Stoller/Luddite world where the word enshittification became popular.
How you conflate those other things with Luddite is… fascinating.
I assume they mean in the original term, that technology should be used to make life better, not to damage peoples employment.
I had no idea the term Luddite had any meaning beyond the colloquial definition of shunning technology in general. Thanks for giving me something to read about today.
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The Luddite is an anticapitalist blog https://theluddite.org
Thank you for clarifying, and the link. I’ll check it out!
Happy to! I can see why someone would be confused 😂
I think a lot of people also misuse the word and use it as a catch-all for companies doing something they don’t like.
Raising prices is not enshittification, that’s inflation.
Not paying employees well is not enshittification, that’s under-compensation.
YouTube putting more ads in their videos including when the video is paused isn’t enshittification that’s… wait no that is enshittification.
Enshittification refers to offering the same service (often free, or at least with an option to pay more) but making it worse in order to squeeze you onto a paid (or higher paid) tier of service. This sounds good to shareholders but ultimately it alienates their customers and often leads to a company dying.
Enshittification refers to offering the same service (often free, or at least with an option to pay more) but making it worse in order to squeeze you onto a paid (or higher paid) tier of service
It doesn’t have to be a paid service, it can also refer to (and usually does) a two-sided market. For example, a site with free users and advertisers. The platform first gains a critical mass of users, then they switch to focus more on the paying advertisers to increase value for shareholders. Over time, the main focus becomes the advertisers.
This place is noticeably more anticorporate - which makes sense because corporations tend to be dicks - and leftist. Enshittification is a fairly apt term for what goes on.
and leftist
Wasn’t there some controversy a while back due to the political beliefs of the Lemmy developers and the instance they run (lemmy.ml)? Maybe I’m misremembering.
Yes, they are tankies. Arguably tankies are No True Leftist or they wouldn’t be fellating right-wing regimes, but at least purportedly and self-identified…ly… they are not only “leftist” but “Communist”, ML is Marxism-Leninism after all.
this is your brain on liberalism
What’s your opinion of the Bolsheviks?
Bolshevik? I hardly knew her!
Yes, that they’re too leftist and are apologists.
I see it referenced constantly here, not quite as much on Reddit.
It’s a fairly new term.
Reddit is bots and AI, and hasn’t been trained on new words.
Sometimes I’ve seen it used legitimately when a service gets noticeably slower or more confusing over time as misfeatures keep getting added on. At the same time, I often see it just get applied when people don’t like change. It just the latest in a long string of phrases or words that mean “you made a change I don’t like.”
Those things are not enshittification, enshittification is the process where a service becomes worse as a means to extract more value from users and then shareholders, where user does not just mean the classic consumer but ad sellers, data buyers, etc.
Not all annoying features are enshittification, but enshittification is not just misfeatures.
You may know all this but I felt your comment was not clear enough about the distinction.
Reddit is inside the walls of enshittification. Reddit kowtows to the techbro narrative. Dissenting voices do appear there as they aren’t a full blown censorship. By and large the reddit userbase has historically been in aligned with big tech.
It lets ppl describe late capitalism without using those words or even knowing that’s what they’re describing.
Were stuck Don’t Look Up style in a cycle of trying to find a way to explain and enumerate the things happening around us without pointing to their precursors even when we remember them from our own lives and experiences.
This is the correct answer. These “things are getting worse” terms are on the right track, but they don’t describe why things are getting worse.
Class-based systems like feudalism and capitalism have overarching rising and falling phases, and in the late phases, exploitation of our labor increases drastically as the ruling classes fight over a declining surplus. This has rippling effects to every other aspect of society, from how hard we’re forced to work, to the degradation of media, art, politics, etc.
You also made me think of this relevant quote by Lenin:
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
Because it’s happening literally in every facet of society
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Capitalism, specifically late stage capitalism.
We need to stop the corporate obsession of “green line go up and no go up means worse than down reeeee” mentality. Essentially late stage capitalism where green line still needs to go up but wages have stagnated
I believe people hope it will stop the intentional degradation of products… it’s a natural process where products are solid to develop a reputation, people buy/use the product and recognize its quality, use grows, the company cuts back as much cost as possible (with quality suffering), in order to grow, or in some case even just start to make (Uber, Amazon) profit. The growth plan often includes this step either for continual operation or as part of a plan to pay for a buy out.
If the enshittified product manages to become entrenched, people have to use the lower quality product. The real step we need to take is to assume most big product pushes are temporarily good, and drop them when it’s convenient. If the growth model isn’t sustainable, it will lose favor.
Selection bias. There’s plenty of overlap between the groups of people who know about it, care about it, use FOSS, use Lemmy etc. It’s basically a prominent characteristic of the stereotypical Lemmy user. We’re still a small and surprisingly homogenous group of people. If Lemmy ever grows like Mastodon, you’ll begin to see more diversity.
There’s also something you could call the “fish out of water” bias. If you’re not LGBT, you’ll suddenly notice how many LGBT people there are on Mastodon. If you’re not into ML, you’re going to notice the people who are.
I mean, a huge number of redditors moved here because of reddit enshittification.
