date created: 2024-10-28 11:40
date modified: 2024-10-29 12:11
status: 🌲evergreen

9.1 the enshittification of the internet is the process of extracting value for shareholders at the expense of users

A phrase coined by Cory Doctorow to describe how platforms screw over their users and business customers in order to extract the most amount of capital for shareholders.

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.

Let's take Amazon as an example

Amazon started by operating at a loss for years to offer cheap goods and shipping. This attracted lots of users who began to use Amazon preferentially, killing off many brick-and-mortar stores. Then came ebooks, audiobooks and Prime, further locking people into the system.

The locked in user base attracted business customers, building amazon's Marketplace into the everything store it promised in the first place. Amazon then made things good for business customers with low commissions on marketplace, kindle and audible creators getting good packages.

The effect of this was that Amazon became the only place you could find things, and sellers had to sell on Amazon if they wanted to make a profit. Now amazon turns on its business customers, jacking up commissions and making it hard to appear in results unless you spend money on their "advertising". Searching for something on amazon now brings up list of sellers who have paid the most to appear near the top.

And sellers can't sell for lower elsewhere, meaning Amazon drives prices across the market. And with the death of brick-and-mortar alternatives, users have little choice but to shop at Amazon. Even when trying to shop elsewhere, you sometimes find out that you were actually handing money to Amazon after all. I've bought more than one item on ebay that has turned out to be fulfilled by Amazon.

All of which only serves to squeeze out more and more cash for Amazon's shareholders, at the expense of both uses and business customers.

This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.

This has happened to platform after platform: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (after being bought by Facebook) and will happen to others in the future. Ebay and Etsy fell prey to enshittification by encouraging drop shippers.

The key question is: how do we fight back against enshittification? By owning the platforms where we publish our work

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

See 9.1a POSSE and PESOS - a better way of publishing on the internet for one way to fight back against enshittification