Comment by johnnyanmac
8 months ago
Nostalgia, network effects, and boiling thr frog. Then you build on that with business incentives; you may not like Facebook, but you need to advertise there because that's where everyone is.
Basically, you rely on goodwill from yester-year and slowly ad in intrusive stuff that users adjust to. Thars enshittification in its raw essence. Admittedly, this mostly works because the general user is not "active" and will not take the time to migrate unless something absolutely scandalous happens. For them, it's easier putting up with ads than trying to log into an ad free substitute.
Nostalgia changes how people perceive value. Network effects is about how exponential value can be gained from linear user growth. Boiling the frog us about slowly doing things to avoid changing how people perceive value. None of these are a sign a product has no value.
No one would advertise with Facebook if there was no value from purchasing ad space. The billions of dollars people spend is evidence there is value there for advertisers.
>will not take the time to migrate
Sure, people don't actively seek to maximize the value they receive, but that doesn't mean what they are currently getting value from doesn't have value.
> None of these are a sign a product has no value.
You described the majority of those as being about the perception of value rather than value.
>No one would advertise with Facebook if there was no value from purchasing ad space. The billions of dollars people spend is evidence there is value there for advertisers
No one is disputing that the advertisers are getting value. The pursuit of advertiser value at the expense of users is the complaint.
>You described the majority of those as being about the perception of value rather than value.
Which is why they weren't useful to bring up.
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> Network effects is about how exponential value can be gained from linear user growth
network effects is the momentum that keeps everyone from stopping the use of the service/product. it takes too much energy to stop, so people just keep using. it also helps there's nothing to replace. any fledgling service that might offer an alternative just gets bought up by the service.
It is both mysterious and comical how we manage to enshitify every corner of our existence. I can't think of anything unrubbed with the magic poop wand.
Must be hard to understand or something?
The scope of the problem is much larger. If there is no "let's not use the app" movement and if there was it wouldn't be big enough to pick up on the radar.
We have bigger things to worry about as the shit is oozing out of everything.
They are localized, and not enough to overcome the migration Apathy. Reddit in 2023 was a great example of a high profile boycott that ultimately failed (in terms of impacting revenue. You can definitely argue brain drain).
>We have bigger things to worry about as the shit is oozing out of everything.
Yes, but "Tech bad/greedy" is about as far as we can push on HN before it becomes "too political" and and people/bots try to hide the story. At least I have other sources to discuss those matters.
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