It’s about market capture and the resulting lack of choices allowing market holders to maximize profits by degrading product performance. This can occur even when the product has no price.
That’s part of enshittification. Step 2 of enshittification is to entice in business buyers with low prices and changes that meet their needs. Step 3 is to cut costs and start price gouging to maximize profits.
You’re missing half the point of enshittification. I’m just going to quote Doctorow directly:
“Here is how platforms die: 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. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
I think the price being gouged by Google and Facebook enshittification is your time being wasted for their own benefit. Your time and attention is what they sell after all.
Enshittification has nothing to do with pricing.
It’s about market capture and the resulting lack of choices allowing market holders to maximize profits by degrading product performance. This can occur even when the product has no price.
That’s part of enshittification. Step 2 of enshittification is to entice in business buyers with low prices and changes that meet their needs. Step 3 is to cut costs and start price gouging to maximize profits.
Google is free to use. It still is. There is no price.
Facrbook, fee to use. Still is.
Both have been enshittified. There is no price being gouged.
The services they do sell are to advertisers, those costs are not being cut, they are focused on improving their targeting to attract more revenue.
Enshittification is a very simply concept; only product quality is measured. There might be price gouging but turn doesn’t have to be.
You’re missing half the point of enshittification. I’m just going to quote Doctorow directly:
“Here is how platforms die: 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. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
Counterexamples: Netflix without ads, Gamepass, Tinder.
I think the price being gouged by Google and Facebook enshittification is your time being wasted for their own benefit. Your time and attention is what they sell after all.
I’d say that pricing is part of the deal which can get worse. Claiming that it’s not enshittification is useless nitpicking, IMHO.