We’re living in the #enshittocene, in which the forces of enshittification are turning everything from our cars to our streaming services to our dishwashers into thoroughly enshittifified piles of shit. Call it the Great Enshittening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

1/

  • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    For 40 years, we’ve allowed companies to violate antitrust law by merging with major competitors, acquiring fledgling rivals, and using investor cash to sell below cost so that no one else can enter the market. This has produced the inbred industrial hulks of today, with five or fewer firms dominating everything from eyeglasses to banking, sea freight to professional wrestling:

    https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

    17/

    • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      The endless and continuous weakening of competition has emboldened corporate enshittifiers, who operate on the logic of Lily Tomlin in her role as an AT&T spokeswoman: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company”:

      https://vimeo.com/355556831

      But the drawdown of competition has also enabled regulatory capture, by converting cutthroat adversaries to kissing cousins.

      18/

      • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        These companies have convinced their regulators not to enforce privacy, consumer protection or labor laws, provided that the gross violations of these laws are accomplished via apps.

        This is where #TechExceptionalism is warranted: while the bosses that run these companies aren’t any nobler - or more wicked - than the Robber Barons of yore, they are equipped with a digital back-end for their businesses that let them change the rules of the game from moment to moment.

        19/

          • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            10 months ago

            This is a plain violation of labor law, but the fiction that gig workers are contractors, combined with the opacity and speed of the wage discrimination back-end, lets the companies get away with it.

            21/

            • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              But the monsters who hatched this scam are no worse than their forebears, nor are they any smarter. Any black-hearted coal-boss memorialized in a Tennessee Ernie Ford song would have gladly practiced algorithmic wage discrimination - but there just weren’t enough green-eyeshade accountants in the back office to change the payout from second to second.

              22/

              • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                10 months ago

                I call this “#twiddling” - turning the knobs to continuously adjust the business logic that the firm operates on:

                https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

                Twiddling is everywhere, and it is only possible because “it’s not a crime if we use an app” has been accepted by (captured) regulators. Think of Amazon’s #PricingParadox, where deceptive search results - which Amazon makes $38b/year on - allow the company to offer lower prices, but charge higher ones:

                https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

                23/

                • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  10 months ago

                  The first constraint on enshittification is competition - the fear that you’ll lose money when a disgusted customer take their business elsewhere. The second constraint is regulation - the fear that a regulator’s punishment will eat up all the expected gains from an enshittificatory move, or even exceed those gains, leading to a net loss.

                  24/

                  • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    10 months ago

                    But the less competition there is in a sector, the easier it is for the remaining companies to capture their regulators. Say goodbye to that second constraint.

                    But there’s another constraint - another one that’s unique to technology, and genuinely exceptional. That’s #SelfHelp. Digital technology is infinitely flexible, which is why managers can twiddle the business logic and change the rules on a dime.

                    25/