I write software in what is possibly the most capitalist industry there is. We have meetings about how to make the software better for the customer. How to present the info they need better, how to reduce the friction for them.
No, what this is, is the user not being the customer but the product.
My reaction too. I'm from a pre-digital generation so it feels less surprising and like a personal betrayal than it appear to some younger people. Not that I applaud what's happening obviously.
This piece articulated so many things I have thought and felt, and pointed out a few more that hadn't occurred to me. Just brilliant and essential, and with any luck, it will have a wide reach.
I’d go with just this bit, which I see *so* often, especially in anyone who isn’t a posh, youngish man. “they might just assume that tech has always sucked, or they're just personally incapable of using the tools that are increasingly fundamental to living in a modern world.”
it's so good! very glad I've become aware of the "even worse than usual" enshittification operating system as I'm going to have to get a new laptop in the new year and the entire description of "S mode" fills me with a very 21st century eldritch horror
The question is no longer "how can we make the customer like the product/service?", but instead "how can we keep the customer reliant on the product/service, even if they hate it?"
If you're good at answering that question, it makes the relationship between provider and customer completely asymmetric and predatory
And inevitably this leads to the follow-up "how far can we go explicitly making the product/service more profitable without breaking the customer's dependance?"
Have you ever considered visiting a major city in India - so see how bad things can get and the majority of folk just carry on? (I visited Bombay in the 70s - several times - and it was absolutely MENTAL then - god knows what it's like now)
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No, what this is, is the user not being the customer but the product.
https://bsky.app/profile/drvon2.bsky.social/post/3l67r2izflc2i
Alhtough, I wouldn't include Sonos's update in the same category, they screwed up in a different way with different incentives.
The provider is co-ordinated, well-advised, agile and spending money to lobby regulators.
Customers aren’t.
Providers could be forced to fund customers so that they could co-ordinate, lobby and resist this.
The question is no longer "how can we make the customer like the product/service?", but instead "how can we keep the customer reliant on the product/service, even if they hate it?"
And inevitably this leads to the follow-up "how far can we go explicitly making the product/service more profitable without breaking the customer's dependance?"