The Enshittification Curve

(Been meaning to link to this for a while, mostly so I can find it again easily.)

Back in January, Cory Doctorow put a name to a thing everyone’s been feeling but can’t quite name: Enshittification.

He’s talking about TikTok specifically there, and then Mike Masnick over at TechDirt did a rundown on Twitter’s speedrun of the process.

And see also his earlier piece on how to avoid that outcome, which is excellent, but has the amusing side detail that he uses Amazon as an example of a company that did things right, while Doctorow uses Amazon as his number two example of a fully “enshittified” company.

But that’s the thing, this applies to just about everything in the tech space. The classic example has been everyone realizing how deeply strange to have lived through the era where Google was useful and now be on the other side of it, but! The entire post-dot com tech industry seems to be at the same point on the curve, and part of the bizarreness current moment is that a decade ago there was this whole array of web-based stuff that worked great, and now there... just… isn’t. The entire Tech Industry seems to have settled into being the American Car Industry circa the mid-70s. Belaboring the metaphor, I’m looking forward to see who plays the part of Toyota this time.

Edited to add: Tsai's Link Roundup.