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https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/enshittification-as-overproduction-in-software-part-1-seeing-overproduction-7f175bca7724>
"As someone who has previously enshittified a product, I have a few things to
say about this moment of mass enshittification…
First off, we’re giving up too soon. There seems to be collective resignation
that companies will always screw the little guy, but I think that’s missing a
key dynamic: most of what we’re seeing is incompetence, not malice. This post,
the first of two, is about software makers’ common inability to perceive a
decline of value in software. Together with the second post, we’ll see there’s
a big space for improvement where users get better products and companies make
more money. Win-win, don’t give up yet.
Some context on “enshittification”: the word is most commonly used for
rapacious platform companies who jam their entitled, sweaty hands into our
personal data. This is canonical enshittification, as coined by Cory Doctorow.
Think Facebook. A platform company starts off giving us value, then milks us to
satisfy corporate users, screws over the corporate users, and dies. Doctorow
focuses on the complex cases, unpacking structural dynamics to make the case
for deep structural solutions.
But it’s clearly not just the big social platforms that are enshittifying
things. Bloat and decay are such a strong expectation of software products that
it’s a surprise when it doesn’t happen. It was there when Jira abandoned user
experience, it’s there in Evernote’s desperation, and it’s there in the
hard-turn to large language models, like Co-Pilot.
The majority of product decline happens in products that are screwing up the
transition to maturity. We are in a mass enshittification moment largely as a
function of the number of businesses that were growth businesses until
recently, many from pandemic times. To see this dynamic in action, let’s dive
into a tale of enshittification, overproduction, and commitment escalation."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
