Isn’t that a prerequisite for enshitification? Publicly-traded companies are required (by law, I think) to maximize profits for their shareholders, even if that means utterly ruining their original product (Reddit, Boeing, etc.), yes? What do you think?
Nope! My company is private after getting bought last year and they are definitely fucking it up with “ai all the things” and “ai makes us more human” and strip mining out our actual work culture and replacing it with an even more soulless grind
Every single comment here is describing symptoms but not the cause.
Enshitification is the evolution to the final form, only possible after the company, thru merger/acquisition or stock manipulation (leveraged buy outs, acquiring controlling stake, shorting a company into insolvency, etc), has achieved a commanding monopoly.
Then it flexes it’s monopoly powers, the buttons fly off its shirt and the monster shows it’s true colors.
We have laws to prevent this. Lina Khan is the first FTC chair to start holding these companies to meaningful account in my lifetime (yea, Microsoft/netscape is exponentially smaller than todays issues). Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all need to be broken up into a thousand different companies, same as we did with AT&T. Uber, Angieslist, homeaglow, all the contractors pretending they’re just networking hubs (like some union hall) need to busted up and gigwork made to contend with employment law, which it can’t, because it’s all bad faith exploitation.
And for fucks sake we need to make the fine for white collar crime that extends state lines to necessitate the forfeiture of the entire C-suite’s and board of directors assets, both domestically and internationally, upon threat of seal team 6. Empty their bank accounts and leave them with nothing, like they regularly do to employees. They’re so fucking smart they can earn it all again, right? Right!? Corporations are the largest thief in the land, just in WAGE THEFT. Everything else they do that’s slimy is all BONUS. The 2nd largest thief in all the land? the fucking Police force. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, democracy doesn’t work in mental institutions. We don’t need to defund the police, we need to fire all of them and start over with transparency. If casino employees can be video taped all day, so can cops. Fuck em.
What America truly needs is another Teddy Roosevelt. We need to revive the Progressive party with the Bull Moose as the symbol. Protect the environment, protect the family by protecting the workers, end legal loopholes and trustbust the 1% back down into the 10%.
And if we don’t? The path ahead is obvious, I for one, don’t want to live in Blade Runner, but that’s where we’re going until we stop fucking around and right ship.
Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all need to be broken up into a thousand different companies, same as we did with AT&T.
And unlike with AT&T, after divestiture there needs to be an order in place that perpetually prevents the divested companies from ever merging or buying each other up. At this point AT&T has almost completely re-formed from the companies it was broken into, and that should never have been allowed.
And for fucks sake we need to make the fine for white collar crime that extends state lines to necessitate the forfeiture of the entire C-suite’s and board of directors assets, both domestically and internationally, upon threat of seal team 6. Empty their bank accounts and leave them with nothing
Absolutely this. We need to abolish corporate personhood, and hold company leadership directly responsible for the company’s behavior. Since it is the people who are doing these things. The “company” isn’t some autonomous entity that has a will of its own. People drive it, and those people should be held accountable.
Keep corporations as persons - restore public execution. If a man with the mind of a 10 year old can be executed, so can executives.
I’m really emotionally and mentally exhausted. But what you just wrote makes me think you are my spirit animal. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to see that other people are identifying a major issue and care about it.
it happens because people have a natural urge to think things constantly need improvement.
I don’t think that it’s a prerequisite but it’s definitely a catalyst.
Another catalyst is one company buying another. I cannot think of one example where the acquired company’s product/services got better after a M and A. OTOH, I can think of many examples of it getting worse. Confirmation bias? Absolutely. But still makes you go “hmm…”
Another catalyst is one company buying another. I cannot think of one example where the acquired company’s product/services got better after a M and A.
I feel like there have been some positive outcomes of mergers and acquisitions but I am having trouble thinking of them. What comes to my mind is Meta acquiring Oculus, Activision merging with Blizzard, and Microsoft acquiring Minecraft. All of those have led to a shitty Russian nesting doll of launchers and DRM.
The positives might be harder to note though. There must have been a couple times where some kind of acquisition has brought a series into the mainstream.
I know a lot of people prefer the classic Fallout games but I do wonder how people would be aware of the series if it weren’t for Bethesda buying the right to Fallout for example.
Meta acquiring Oculus
As someone with industry experience working with VR, I can tell you it’s a mixed bag. I think there’s certainly no way Oculus (and consumer VR in general) takes off the way it did without Facebook’s dollars behind it, and it’s certainly paved the way to the outstanding quality of standalone HMDs that are on offer today. However, it killed the initiative for PCVR hardware with the non-consolation that Meta, Pico, and HTC offer “Link mode” on all their headsets and it’s iffy on good days, which makes B2B PCVR very difficult to facilitate without some serious legwork on lowering latency over the air connections. Would that we could revive the Rift S, that headset was perfect for our needs.
After being acquired by Google, YouTube got better for years (before getting worse again). Android really improved for a decade or so after getting acquired by Google.
The Next/Apple merger made the merged company way better. Apple probably wouldn’t have survived much longer without Next.
I’d argue the Pixar acquisition was still good for a few decades after, and probably made Disney better.
A good merger tends to be forgotten, where the two different parts work together seamlessly to the point that people forget they used to be separately run.
I recently discovered the excellent suite of Affinity Photo, Publisher and Designer. Not open source, but very good and they sell them at a reasonable price with no subscription. Seemed pretty ideal. Then a week or two ago they sent out an email saying they had been bought by Canva. I kind of hate Canva because it functions like one big infuriating ad for their subscription service. They promised Affinity would not change, but I have never known such promises to be kept after an acquisition. It’s pretty disappointing.
Can we talk about the enshittifation of Lemmy. Where everyone seems to be calling everything enshittified?
Enshittification requires two specific conditions:
- when a company can get more profit by decreasing the quality of the goods/services that it offers; and
- when the company is willing to do so.
The company being publicly traded can cause #2, as the investors won’t be as emotionally attached to the goal of the company as the founders. However, it is not a prerequisite, with Reddit being an example (it started enshittifying way, way before the IPO).
I’ll let others address the “enshittification” angle but I thought I’d point out that “shareholder value uber allies” is a relatively recent … “innovation” … in economic theory, brought about by failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Milton Friedman in the last half of last century:
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/what-made-chicago-school-so-influential-antitrust-policy
The rethinking of what the boards of companies are supposed to do (from maximize stakeholder value to maximize shareholder value) and how they can operate (from requiring justification to approve mergers to requiring justification to block mergers) really took off with them, and exploded when former union boss Ronald Reagan found “religion” (because Nancy’s pussy was just that good) and ruined the economy for workers.
Lots of other people contributed, including Clinton after he “won” the 1992 election with 40% of the vote due to Perot splitting the Republican vote. His campaign of fiscal conservatism but without less bigotry became the model for the Democratic Party for the next two decades.
Anyway, Biden’s FTC is finally working to help workers again, which might even release the death grip of the Chicago School from our economy. We’ll see after November I guess.
bill clinton didn’t start fiscal conservatism until after 1996 when newt gingrich swept congress, though.
No. Enshittification happens because of venture capitalism.
Startup companies get a lot of money early on with the hopes that, after the investment cash is spent, there will be a profitable company left in its place. That company can become publicly traded or get sold to another company. The key is that the investors make their money off the startup.
The flip side is that, without venture capitalist companies, a lot of these companies wouldn’t get the opportunity to grow.
it’s both publicly-traded companies and VC-owned companies. any product that is required to constantly report their earnings and risk their company being dissolved if they don’t increase profits year-to-year.
