title: "Enshittification" is enshittification
created: 2026 May 24
location: https://cybertiggyr.com/zuhvx70.txt
website: https://cybertiggyr.com/

"ENSHITTIFICATION" IS USEFUL
============================

Cory Doctorow is an insightful & clever author of non-fiction & fiction.

His catchy term "enshittification" sticks in many minds, making them aware of
important (& annoying-at-best, often terrible) effects in our society.

However, a single catchy term necessarily leaves much to the imagination,
making communication imprecise & further analysis naive.

So your next step is to recognize that "enshittification" is an example of
enshittification, & then to learn the older, more precise terms.

THE OLDER KNOWLEDGE
===================

Here are some pre-existing terms that fall under the "enshittification"
umbrella but are more precise.

* commercialization

* commodification

* planned obsolescence

* advertising (specifically when a major portion of income is from ads; the
  users aren't the customers though they think they are)

* rent-seeking

* regulatory capture

* consumer lock-in

* terms-of-service drift

* shareholder primacy

* user interfaces that get worse over time due to the accumulation of UI
  "improvements" that aren't.

(The last one is a gripe of my own, but the others are recognized consequences
of the profit motive.)

WHO CARES WHICH TERM I USE?
===========================

Language affects how we think & understand.  A larger vocabulary can (&
probably does) lead to more nuanced analysis & understanding.

If we label every problem "enshittification", then differences between
specific problems become blurry or invisible.

Commercialization, rent-seeking, regulatory capture, planned obsolescence,
consumer lock-in, & commodification are not identical processes even though
they all fall under enshittification (or could, depending on your definition,
if it's the same as mine, which it might not be since "enshittification" is a
hand-wavy term).

Using precise terms enables analysis, then nuanced understanding, & then
solution synthesis.

(It seems that everyone claims "1984" was a powerful novel, then they fail to
appreciate the significance of Newspeak.)

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