“Chickens figure out enshittification”

postscript

Enshittification is the pattern of online products and services declining in quality over time.

The term was coined by Cory Doctorow, who describes the stages as:

• 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

Once you know it, you begin to see it everywhere…

Google search:

• became dominant through relevant search and minimal, contextual ads

• increased the ads, degraded the search results to show more ads (see comic “Why Google search sucks now”)

• reduced control and data to advertisers in order to monetize greater swaths of poor traffic

Facebook:

• became dominant by being the best social platform

• adjusted algorithms to flood users’ feeds with sponsored content

• inflated metrics to advertisers, leading them to over-invest in ads

Amazon:

• became dominant through low pricing and convenience

• added fees and raised prices

• exorbitantly increased fees to sellers advertising their products

(Trillion-dollar corporations are not our friends.)

See the bonus panel for this comic here.