this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
162 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37717 readers
408 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org 18 points 9 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.

[–] Powerpoint@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago

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

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 9 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.