this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Is there a name for the method of enshittification where they take away things you used to take for granted and try to sell them back to you?
It's bad even from the perspective of the system because even though they're growing GDP they aren't actually creating any new tangible value.
The airlines call it “unbundling”
Unbundling? Ugh.
I guess the devil's advocate would say that 1) they're uncovering value that was previously unaccounted for, and 2) if people stop using the thing that is newly charged for, then it wasn't that valuable to them in the first place/it could be more valuable somewhere else.