i don't really have a problem with the term 'enshittification' that a lot of ppl i know do, i think it describes a phenomenon that is worth pointing out, but i do wish more work would be done to illustrate that the concepts therein are not purely the work of companies squeezing out more profits but rather a natural consequence of the way these companies were set up to work-- the way business in the late aughts and teens essentially tried to capture audiences by frontloading their money and thus features with the expectation that they would either
- get bought out by a bigger company, or
- eventually jack up prices or otherwise exploit that customer base
as it is now i think the vast majority of ppl are aware of these trends but not aware of the actual source of them; i see all the time a sort of assumption that companies should be able to go back to the way they were a decade ago, rather than a recognition that it was always impossibly unsustainable the way these businesses were run
