“Enshittification” isn’t just company did bad thing, you know
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.
I doubt there’s even a cost cut here. They’re most likely still doing the work, just not making it available.
I think that’s still just “what businesses do in general”, enshittification is specifically:
- 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)
- Once the users are used to using it and are sort of locked in, crank up the costs so your customers get their returns
- 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.
