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Platform Misery

 Always a fan of Cory Doctorow's writing, no surprise that I loved this one as well about enshittification which he describes thusly:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.I call this enshittification,

He proceeds to unpack how each of the major platforms have gone from good to enshittified based on the the inevitable lifecycle trajectory such platforms much follow to maximize value extracted from the system. What Doctorow outlines is a problem that has existed in the world well before there was internet or any of these platforms. I find this not so different (except for scale) wherever a broker/dealer layer between the buyer and seller of goods or services. 

A handloom weaver in India, holding on to centuries old sari weaving traditions does not have direct access to the affluent buyer at home or abroad who is willing and able to pay 200x the COGS for that sari. There is a dense layer of intermediaries that make this transaction so punitive for the seller that they either cannot remain in this business or have their reach reduced to such a minority that their struggles never end. 

On the buyer side, comes a point when the math no longer makes sense. The quality of product compared to the price is no longer appealing. So the buyer moves their spend to somewhere else. This is enshiffication too just not happening on the scale of Meta and the like. 


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