“circleWe are all living in a massive Ensitcene, a massive Ensitcene where the services that are important to us and depend on become a giant pile of shit.” Author Cory Doctorow I wrote it earlier this year.
In 2023, Mr Doctorow coined the word ‘enshittification’, which was named Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. The dictionary defined this word as follows:
“The gradual deterioration of services and products caused by a decline in the quality of the services provided, especially online platforms, and as a result of the pursuit of profit.”
Even if social media users don’t know the word, they will intuitively understand the concept, how trolls and extremists, bullshit and criminals and criminals have taken over the platform.
Consider Twitter, once a useful and often entertaining microblogging site, twisted by tech bros into X, a post-truth swamp.
Or on Facebook, you’re more likely to be gifted Shein’s crocheted Aresless chaps than a humble brag from a dear friend.
Or Instagram, where cute dog videos once reigned supreme. Now, yet another unfathomable algorithm, tradwife, gym buddy, wow girl.
The Dictionary Commission describes enshittification as “a very basic Anglo-Saxon word wrapped in affixes, which is elevated to an almost formality.” Almost admirable.”
Without these affixes, for example, simply saying that X kinda sucks would erase any intentional degradation of the platform.
Macquarie Dictionary. Photo: AAP
These affixes convey the impression that platform owners are tampering with their products to the point of obscuring their original form, like guano on a rock.
Doctorow writes that this collapse is a three-step process.
“First, the platform is good for the users. Second, they abuse the users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse the business customers and take all the value for themselves.” We will take it back soon,” he wrote.
“It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even frightening.”
Macquarie Dictionary Committee honorable mentions went to ‘The Right to Mutilate’ and ‘The Raw Dogman’.
But Enshittification not only won their votes, it also took away the People’s Choice Award.
“This word describes what many of us feel is currently happening in the world and in many aspects of our lives,” the commission said.
Doctorow himself is surprisingly optimistic about how this will ultimately turn out.
Tackling competition to prevent market domination, regulating things like digital privacy, giving users more power to decide how they use their platforms, and tackling worker exploitation have the potential to reverse the process. he wrote. This is because “everyone has a stake in disenfranchisement.” .
Big tech can’t be fixed, he claims, but maybe it can be. can be destroyed.
He added a fourth stage to the scatological journey of tech platforms, from good intentions to users to abusing users for the sake of customers and abusing customers to serve themselves.
“And they die,” he wrote.
Source: www.theguardian.com
