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0 pointsrectang10mo ago0 comments

Don't say "reliable", say "opportunity for enshittification".

0 comments

if it has software it will be enshitted. sadly true

I was a bit surprised to see the the "software" criteria in your reply, as I'd always thought of enshittification's inevitability as a capitalist phenomenon whereby a quality brand is wrung out for near term gains by management incentivized to get their cut before riding off into the sunset.

But after reading up a bit, I've found that software platform lock-in was important in enshittification's original formulation — it's not just that quality goes to crap, but that users have nowhere else to go.

dzhiurgis10mo ago

Thank you for that second paragraph. Really hate people throwing that word around without understanding what it actually means. Was about to get inflamed.

Makes you wonder how open software car platform could look like and why nobody is making one.

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FredPret10mo ago

That's a phenomenon that can be blamed on low-IQ or disengaged owners.

Some companies have owners that are locked in, who know where the true value of their business lies (usually this involves a high quality product), and holds the management to account to keep the golden-egg-laying goose alive.

But other companies are owned by index funds, ETFs, and/or dumb people who don't know or care how things work. These have no defense against enshittifying.

I've bought some products that are of almost egregiously high quality, and nearly 100% of the time there's family ownership, or it's still run by the founders.

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