Why is Lemmy obsessed with the word "enshittification"?
Why is Lemmy obsessed with the word "enshittification"?
I see it referenced constantly here, not quite as much on Reddit. I know what it means, but just wondering why such the popularity over on this side of the fence?
Cause it's one big part of why the Fediverse and Lemmy exist in the first place.
We wouldn't need all this decentralization overhead if centralized sites were trustworthy and focussed on serving their users. The fact that they are not is what leads to privacy violations and enshittification, hence why people created the Fediverse and why we are here (at least most of us I presume).
Selection bias. Lemmy users by default are probably more sensitive to/negative about enshittification than those on reddit.
Many of us came here in response to the enshittification of reddit.
The term "enshittification" is a useful neologism because without it we'd need half a sentence to get the same concept across.
It's the reason we are all here...
Because most people on lemmy are here because of it.
I think a lot of people also misuse the word and use it as a catch-all for companies doing something they don’t like.
Raising prices is not enshittification, that’s inflation.
Not paying employees well is not enshittification, that’s under-compensation.
YouTube putting more ads in their videos including when the video is paused isn’t enshittification that’s… wait no that is enshittification.
Enshittification refers to offering the same service (often free, or at least with an option to pay more) but making it worse in order to squeeze you onto a paid (or higher paid) tier of service. This sounds good to shareholders but ultimately it alienates their customers and often leads to a company dying.
I think it's happening more and more in the tech industry - one theory I heard was that rising interest rates meant companies couldn't just take out loans that were practically free money, so they're cracking down on monetizing every nook and cranny.
Reddit was no exception. Many of us left this thing we once loved because of it, and came here. So on top of industry trends, there's a huge selection bias among us Lemmings.
I’m new here but I’m here precisely because of the enshittification of Reddit.
Honestly though, now that I think about it, a huge chunk of my digital experience has been enshittified. Technology and software that used to wow me still wows me at the surface but frustrates me at my core. Some UI elements and design seem outright hostile.
Maybe I’m just misremembering the past or was more patient back then. Reddit certainly has enshittified though.
I see it referenced constantly here, not quite as much on Reddit.
It's a fairly new term.
Reddit is bots and AI, and hasn't been trained on new words.
Reddit is inside the walls of enshittification. Reddit kowtows to the techbro narrative. Dissenting voices do appear there as they aren't a full blown censorship. By and large the reddit userbase has historically been in aligned with big tech.
Selection bias. There’s plenty of overlap between the groups of people who know about it, care about it, use FOSS, use Lemmy etc. It’s basically a prominent characteristic of the stereotypical Lemmy user. We’re still a small and surprisingly homogenous group of people. If Lemmy ever grows like Mastodon, you’ll begin to see more diversity.
There’s also something you could call the “fish out of water” bias. If you’re not LGBT, you’ll suddenly notice how many LGBT people there are on Mastodon. If you’re not into ML, you’re going to notice the people who are.
It lets ppl describe late capitalism without using those words or even knowing that’s what they’re describing.
Were stuck Don’t Look Up style in a cycle of trying to find a way to explain and enumerate the things happening around us without pointing to their precursors even when we remember them from our own lives and experiences.
Sometimes I've seen it used legitimately when a service gets noticeably slower or more confusing over time as misfeatures keep getting added on. At the same time, I often see it just get applied when people don't like change. It just the latest in a long string of phrases or words that mean "you made a change I don't like."
It started 40 years ago, when a man was not allowed to fix his printer. We didn't have the word enshittification at the time but even then it was understood what happens when technology abuses its users in order to enrich its creators.
I mean, a huge number of redditors moved here because of reddit enshittification.
It's funny that you used the phrase "this side of the fence", because the fence in that metaphor is exactly the line marking the territory of "enshittification" and "anti-enshittification" ^^
While there are thousands of communities on Lemmy, there are a few topics that get a lot of attention. Linux/programming is one of those, and the enshittification trend is particularly pronounced in the tech sector. Another big topic is workers' rights and other grass-roots movements, which again deal largely with fighting against corporate greed (embodied in the enshittification trend). The intersection of these two major topics (and possibly others) means you'll see more of that here right now.
Cause Cory Doctorow is a hero ?
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112038663883385719
- Oh, what was Reddit again ? Ah, yes, that ad driven company that filed IPO and probably fully embraced A.I. by now and is said to be full of bots, and immediately shadow-bans Tor and VPN users since years /s
Remember when things were better, before all the enshittification ? Pepperidge Farms remembers
I also like the phrase "rot economy", though it does reach a little wider
Because quite literally everything in the world is a victim of it, and we're basically trying to raise awareness about it so that it doesn't spread any further.
Not that raising awareness about something on a less than mainstream social platform is gonna do much, but still, at least we can escape the platforms that already suffered from enshittification.
I'm only here because I'm pissed at the enshitification of elsewhere. Of course Imma talk about it.
Because "willful, profit-oriented degradation of quasi-monopolistic services" just doesn't sound nice, so a man who's passionate about that sort of stuff came up with a better word for the concept, and other people who are passionate about that sort of stuff picked it up. Those same people ended up leaving Twitter and Reddit when they underwent that process and congregated around the fediverse.
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New word for old phenomena
Along with the views of it's users it's just fun to say things like enshitification and the great enshittening
It’s a word that has become popular in general in the last year-ish. But if you hear it more here. It is likely because it is a term used to describe the dynamic that pushed people from Reddit and other platforms to Lemmy. So you will here it more here, since pretty much everyone here has been personally affected by it.
Basically we are a self selecting group of people who chose to leave (or minimize use of) big tech platforms. And are therefore much more likely to be aware of the problems with those platforms.
Exactly. It's actually turning me off Lemmy completely.
And some of the times I've seen it used, the evidence was weak. Once challenged, it often resulted in the "trust me, you'll see in a few years time" line
Not just Lemmy, it is simply a popula word now. But for good reason.
Give me a synonym. Until then I'll use it.
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Because it perfectly embodies one thing the Lemmy hivemind hates the most about how large, for-profit corporations tend to behave
Maybe because many of us saw it happen the first time.
Well, enshittification is what zaps the internet of its power. It is an energy created by all idiots. It surrounds it and penetrates it; it binds the internet together.
I think it's because enshitification is just sort of everywhere now.
Wait... I thought Lemmy liked TPB as much as Star Trek. I just like Mr. Lahey
People find a shiny new word that sounds clever. They start using it so that they sound clever too. They like sounding clever, so they use it a lot. They start using it for things that it doesn't actually mean, until it loses all meaning other than the most generic "I don't like that." The word becomes enshittified and people eventually stop using it.
Needing a substitute, people find a new word...
are you comparing reddit today to lemmy today?
Lemmy.
Lemmings?
Because they seem to love Cory Doctorow, while not knowing he was involved in the media harassment and witch hunting of a famous Chinese tech girl Naomi Wu.
You can navigate to part 1 if you want to read the full story, so you can understand Cory Doctorow's role mentioned in part 2.
because you're not allowed to say "capitalism" nobody knows what that is
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They're not class conscious.
Easier to repeat other people than think.