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Complaining about enshittification does belie a certain lack of awareness of always having been swimming in shit.
@aral
It's possible that people are more aware of tech enshittification because it happens faster.
Appliances, furniture, housing build quality, tools, etc. have all been getting shittier, but over a period of decades.
@jargoggles @aral It’s all downstream of rent-seeking. Abuse of property rights to create monopolies, change the nature of ownership and extract value.
It’s been happening for decades with planned obsolescence and warranty chicanery. I think it’s more obvious now because it’s becoming easier to get away with barely concealed contempt for customers and be rewarded for it. (at least in the US).
@aral not true, and the companies who disrupt should be accountable for the side effects.
@Holi I beg to differ. Silicon Valley was always a sewer. VC only funds shit. Just because it’s covered in a layer of cake before the exit doesn’t mean it’s was a shit cake to begin with. And they’re not side effects. They’re effects. Every surveillance capitalist and people farmer who sets up a VC-funded startup knows exactly what they’re doing. So maybe it’s about time we did too and stopped getting surprised over and over and over again. Maybe then we can hit them where it hurts: by not enabling their exponential growth to begin with and by investing in ethical alternatives for the common good from the common purse.
@aral ah! A silicone valley centric comment, I guess so then 
@aral Enshitification is just the terminal stage when it's no longer possible to gloss over the business model with warm and fuzzies.
@aral @pluralistic (who coined the term) references the historic conditions and deeper causes pretty much every time he remarks on the topic, but here is an article specifically about that.
https://locusmag.com/2025/03/commentary-cory-doctorow-there-were-always-enshittifiers/
@aral Nice one
Anna Filina @aral I understand enshittification as the process by which we reach a shitty state. The process was around for a long time. However, for many people, it only became apparent when everything became intolerably shitty, whereas previously things seemed as mere pain points.