Friday Funnies: It's a Slippery Slope

All the world's a stage, and Enshittification continues to progress

Enshittification is a pattern where online services and products experience a decline in quality over time. It is observed as platforms transition through several stages: initially offering high-quality services to attract users, then shifting to favor business customers to increase profitability, and finally focusing on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of both users and business customers. This process results in a significant deterioration of the user experience. A variety of platforms have been described as examples of this, including Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook, Google Search, Twitter, Netflix, Bandcamp, YouTube, Reddit, Uber, and Unity.

The neologism "enshittification" was coined by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022 to describe this phenomenon. The American Dialect Society recognized the term's relevance and impact by selecting it as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also referred to this concept as platform decay, emphasizing the inevitable decline in service quality due to these profit-driven changes.

https://www.malone.news/p/friday-funnies-its-a-slippery-slope