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Technology

'Enshittification' Is Officially the Biggest Word of the Year (gizmodo.com) 160

Posted by BeauHD from the nothing-to-celebrate dept.
The Macquarie Dictionary, the national dictionary of Australia, has picked "enshittification" as its word of the year. Gizmodo reports: The Australians define the word as "the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking." We've all felt this. Google search is filled with garbage. The internet is clogged with SEO-farming websites that clog up results. Facebook is an endless stream of AI-generated slop. Zoom wants you to test out its new AI features while you're trying to go into a meeting. Twitter has become X, and its owner thinks sharing links is a waste of time. Last night I reinstalled Windows 11 on a desktop machine and got pissed as it was finalized and Microsoft kept trying to get me to install OneDrive, Office 360, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, and a bunch of other shit I didn't want. Writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification in 2022, and recently offered potential solutions to the age-old phenomenon in an interview with The Register.

"We need to have prohibition and regulation that prohibits the capital markets from funding predatory pricing," he explained. "It's very hard to enter the market when people are selling things below cost. We need to prohibit predatory acquisitions. Look at Facebook: buying Instagram, and Mark Zuckerberg sending an email saying we're buying Instagram because people don't like Facebook and they're moving to Instagram, and we just don't want them to have anywhere else to go."

'Enshittification' Is Officially the Biggest Word of the Year More | Reply

'Enshittification' Is Officially the Biggest Word of the Year

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  • Appropriate, I guess. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @09:28PM (#64974939)
    We are witnessing the enshittification of the United States government, live and in real time.

    • Re:Appropriate, I guess. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @10:34PM (#64975007)

      Who doesn’t want an alleged kiddie diddler as attorney general or someone with a brain parasite making health decisions? After Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico all his dick riders were googling who pays the tariffs. The bottom line is the public will be paying it. So Trump raised your taxes, congrats. Oh he’s using it as a negotiation tactic you say? The 78 year old casino bankrupter? Keep riding that dick.

      • Gaetz dropped out of the confirmation process, so you won't get your wish. Too bad!

        • Re:Appropriate, I guess. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @01:33AM (#64975153)
          And PedoGaetz was replaced by Bribery Bimbo Bondi. Meanwhile, Hegseth the Rapist and his Klan Tattoos, and Modi Plant Shit Gabbard, and the rest of them are just as completely fucking corrupt. The GOP is a criminal treason cult.

    • Re:Appropriate, I guess. (Score:5, Informative)

      by korgitser ( 1809018 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @04:50AM (#64975349)

      The enshittification has been going on for 50 years soon, starting with the ascension to power by the neoliberal world order, spearheaded by Thatcher and Reagan. Trump is nothing but a symptom of the disease.

      You only need to see one graph to understand what is going on: https://www.epi.org/productivi... [epi.org]

    • Re:Slashdot is not immune from this. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PleaseThink ( 8207110 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @01:39AM (#64975159)

      Absolutely. Sometime within the past two days Slashdot added pop-up warnings saying the page won't load unless I unblock html-load.com. That site is loading 38 tiny pixel sized images, over a hundred scripts, and 55 frames yet Slashdot loads perfectly fine and normal without it. With it blocked, a few seconds after the page loads the website wipes itself out and displays the warning. Click cancel and that page reloads normally and you can browse Slashdot for around 15 seconds before it triggers again, damages the page, and pops-up another warning.

      WTF Slashdot? What an excellent way to lose readers.

      • Re:Slashdot is not immune from this. (Score:5, Informative)

        by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @02:25AM (#64975199)

        ... after the page loads ...

        Hmm, at first glance, html-load seems related to Facebook in some way. I've never had Facebook get in my way: Maybe, because I don't open Facebook.

        Surely, the good answer is disabling JavaScript.

        Maybe the problem is, your web-pages are being hijacked.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by PleaseThink ( 8207110 )

          html-load shows up when you have fsdn.com enabled. You need that if you want comments to expand/collapse dynamically. I'm using uMatrix on Firefox on Ubuntu. I don't use Facebook.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Jahta ( 1141213 )

          ... after the page loads ...

          Hmm, at first glance, html-load seems related to Facebook in some way. I've never had Facebook get in my way: Maybe, because I don't open Facebook.

          Surely, the good answer is disabling JavaScript.

          Maybe the problem is, your web-pages are being hijacked.

          It's being triggered by an inline script on /. - view the page source of this (or any other) page. Privacy-oriented browsers like Librewolf catch this automatically. Otherwise, ublock-origin is your friend.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Vivaldi integrated adblock does a fine job of preventing that. uBlock Origin is apparently pretty good too.

        Remember, intrusive ads are a _collaboration_ between the site and your browser.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 0xG ( 712423 )

        Yes, i noticed this, too. Who the fuck are these people?
        And when i click an article, going back always returns me to the top of homepage.
        Very annoying.
        I will miss Slashdot.

  • Am I the only one sick of people who post on X/facebook etc with just a link and no comment? (Few on slashdot, fortunately.)
    Sufficient value-added before the the link should be enough, but on X the workaround is apparently:
    "Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply. This just stops lazy linking."

  • "Last night I reinstalled Windows 11 on a desktop machine and got pissed as it was finalized and Microsoft kept trying to get me to install OneDrive, Office 360, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, and a bunch of other shit I didn't want." Enshittification might imply windows and other apps were good to begin with. Win10 has gotten to the point on my system where occasionally you cant unlock the screen without clicking on one of the three icons on the bottom (temperature, stocks, or news) without edge opening up t

    • > Enshittification might imply windows and other apps were good to begin with.

      You're not wrong, however the vernacular usage is that most people would agree that Windows peaked at SOME point. i.e. Win 7 > Win 8 > Win 10 > Win 11.

      Look at how Windows starting becoming crap when Microsoft starting hiding file types back in ~ Win 98. What's kind of funny is that WinZip has an OLD Knowledge Base 26 [winzip.com] that documents how to Show file extensions in Win 7, 8, 10, and 11. :-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        most people would agree that Windows peaked at SOME point.

        That's like saying your shit used to taste better.

        Some versions of windows were less shit than others, but it's always been shit.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Some versions of windows were less shit than others, but it's always been shit.

          Some versions were somewhat tolerable, but it has indeed always been crap. Same, incidentally, for MS DOS, except there I could use DR-DOS and get things like actually working memory protection, good documentation and no stupid artificial limits on disk sizes.

      • Why use the built-in file explorer in the first place? Total Commander doesn't hide extensions by default.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Once windows goes full retard im unplugging them from my router and simply using linux."

      Quite a sentence there. That 8th grade education is doing a lot of work.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That MS products have always been bad (and they have, even DOS was a complete piece of shit compared to DR-DOS back when), does not mean they cannot get worse. Just have a look at Windows 11 or the joke that MS Office is. Especially the latter seems to be designed to waste the maximum of user time it can these days. I usually use LaTeX or LibreOffice, but whenever I have to use the MS offerings, the lack of usability and sheer obscurity of how to do things is staggering. And they seem to be actively worki

    • Once windows goes full retard

      I'm really curious about where you draw this line and how it is that Microsoft hasn't crossed it long ago.

  • Hostile Content (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HnT ( 306652 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @10:03PM (#64974979)

    It kinda started with pinterest, hostile content that shows up in search results but then forces you to jump thru hoops and sign up.
    Then it continued with even more general Enshittification, and nobody really fought against it. Even when Netflix went back on a formerly important promise and hassled everyone for more money.
    So now the game is on for the greedy marketing types, they gonna squeeze harder than ever before - because you did not teach them a lesson the first time, you just let it happen.

    It is going to get so much worse, before one day maybe it will get better again.

    • Honestly it's really just standard corporate bullshit we're just noticing it more. Probably because things never really recovered for working stiffs after 2008. We always had boom bust cycles that hit us hard but lately we don't really seem to get the boom we just get the bust. And we're always having another pound of flesh cut from our bones by our corporate overlords

      • Honestly it's really just standard corporate bullshit we're just noticing it more. Probably because things never really recovered for working stiffs after 2008. We always had boom bust cycles that hit us hard but lately we don't really seem to get the boom we just get the bust. And we're always having another pound of flesh cut from our bones by our corporate overlords

        The busts used to hit the oligarchs the same as it did the plebes. 2008 changed that, as the government stepped in to say, "Wait a minute, we need to make sure these oligarchs don't pay for their mistakes." Then started writing checks for them. So, of course there wasn't a boom after the bust for the middle class and down. There didn't need to be one, because the bust became a boom for the oligarchs, so they could get right back to creating the next bust.

        It's a simple formula. Get enough wealth and power th

        • Whoa, where are my mod points when I need them. I've thought recently the only winners in this last election are the 10 digit club. What I think would be a fun new show would be the ICC sets a random week during the year where the top 50 in the world are targeted. Anyone who manages to bag one gets 1% of their wealth and no charges filed. Of course it would all be filmed. Sort of a reverse hunger games.

  • Boing Boing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ttyler ( 20687 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @10:17PM (#64974995)
    Ironic that Doctorow's Boing Boing has recently succumbed to enshitification by going hard core against any ad blocker and paywalling all of the discussions. Truly sad...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cory Doctorow hasn't posted on BoingBoing in 4 years - I'd hardly call it his blog at this point.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I just visited it with uBlock Origin enabled and didn't experience any issues. What is broken?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kwalker ( 1383 )

        Really? You haven't experienced any issues? Have you tried reading any articles there in the last two weeks? Don't just hit the index page once, try opening a couple of articles, even their "boingboing shop" adverstories have them.

        I'm running Firefox latest stable, with uBlock Origin latest, and I still get that damnable popup constantly. Even on the index page, I get it about half the time. On article pages, I get it 90-100% of the time. If I clear cookies, I have a 50% chance of it coming back on a refres

  • Something happened in the aughts (Score:3)

    by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @11:28PM (#64975053)

    Something happened in the aughts, the years 2000-2009. The various financial bubbles sparked or peaked, medical, education, housing. Personally that's when I noticed the quality of durable goods declining dramatically. A new social paradigm took hold, driven by companies seeking to extract maximum value without regard to longer term company performance or product quality. Income inequality grew [pewresearch.org]. There was some sort of paradigm shift, I suspect in business schools and in monetary policy, which has been wealth-extractive to the majority of society.
     

    • Re:Something happened in the aughts (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tom ( 822 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @03:43AM (#64975267) Homepage Journal

      Something happened in the aughts, the years 2000-2009.

      The end of the Cold War.

      While communism existed, capitalism had to offer people a better alternative. Not just more wealth, but most importantly a better quality of life.

      The Soviet Union croaked in the 90s, but change on grand scales takes some years. So once the immediate aftermath was done, capitalism had no competition and that's when we saw its true face.

      And no, I don't think communism was better. What definitely WAS better was tamed capitalism. In parts of Western Europe, it was called "social capitalism". Essentially: A version of capitalism that aimed to lift up society instead of just generating wealth. Investments into education, healthcare, social security, etc. - things that don't generate a quarterly profit, but have a positive contribution to a society's wealth.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Personally that's when I noticed the quality of durable goods declining dramatically.

      Same here. Except not all vendors participated in that. For example, having a business-asshole run a tech company is a _really_ bad idea.

    • Thanks, Obama!

  • The only issue I have with Doctorow's term is that everything he's describing seems to be to be already covered by the concept of monopolies, and we already have a legal structure to handle it. (We only really lack the political will to enforce the existing laws.)

    "the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking."

    Yes, that is one of the core outcomes of a monopoly. That's why we regulate them.

    "We need to have prohibition and regulation that prohibits the capital markets from funding predatory pricing,"

    Yes, that is called "dumping", and we already have prohibition and regulations.

    "We need to prohibit predatory acquisitions"

    Yes, also already prohibited for monopolies.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not really. Some monopolies do not regress. I guess those are the ones that keep the "business" assholes out of the important positions. Because these people run everything into the ground sooner or later.

    • monopoly AND monopsony (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @04:27AM (#64975331) Journal
      Not entirely. As Cory Doctorow writes in numerous stories and books, it is the combination of monopoly (not enough sellers) and monopsony (not enough buyers). The platforms sit between them. For example, artists have very little choice of music publishers, but they have to get through them to reach an audience. So seen from the audience, all artists are behind a cartel of publishers, and seen from the artists, all music lovers are behind the same cartel.

    • Re:An even longer word for "monopoly" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @04:31AM (#64975335)

      Not quite. The economic outcome that a product or service gets worse is not part of being a monopoly. The outcome that the product or service gets more expensive or that simply less competition exists is the outcome of a monopoly. This isn't "enshittification" since that term applies specifically to the quality and deterioration of an existing product or service. Also the reverse isn't true. There are many non-monopolies which practice enshittification as well as the requirement to prevent it is not competition, it's lack of capture. Many services which start out loss making go through enshittification as a natural process just in an attempt to become financially viable. The two concepts really have nothing to do with each other.

      The problem with many monopoly based laws is that they are piss poorly enforced largely because the regulations are so bent in the USA (and in Australia for that matter) on the pricing outcome for the consumer. Often all you need to do is make some vague promises to keep the price the same for a while and the USA regulator signs off quite happily. It's also one of the reasons the EU goes after monopolies more heavily, they have far larger legal latitude to do so.

    • The only issue I have with Doctorow's term is that everything he's describing seems to be to be already covered by the concept of monopolies, and we already have a legal structure to handle it. (We only really lack the political will to enforce the existing laws.)

      In a world full of not-a-monopoly monopolies and people coming up with creative words to describe that blatant problem, your (caveat) statement, has become utterly fucking pointless. To the point of you looking ignorant for even claiming we still have some “legal structure” to handle it.

      We the People, can’t even handle blatant insider trading being sold as some kind of fucking job perk for lawmakers no less. Google and many others are blatant monopolies, and yet they somehow aren’t

  • "Writer and activist Cory Doctorow..." using /. to promote himself yet again. How sad is it when this is all you have to offer.

    You'd think that a word that is "officially the biggest word of the year" you'd hear once or twice in conversation. Nope, just on /. At least we know who to credit, right? He keeps telling us, and /. editors love to play along.

    • Re: Writer and activist Cory Doctorow (Score:4, Informative)

      by pitch2cv ( 1473939 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @09:17AM (#64975647)

      That's a load of bull, buddy: The first line of OP litteraly says "The Macquarie Dictionary, the national dictionary of Australia, has picked "enshittification" as its word of the year."

      AFAIK, neither /. or Cory Doctorow have any say in Macquarie Dictionary. We know nobody reads TFA. But we've dropped really low if we even skip OP or can't remember it a couple PgDn's further, haven't we.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

        But we've dropped really low if we even skip OP or can't remember it a couple PgDn's further, haven't we.

        Sir, this is a Wendy's.

        Now, would you like a slightly smaller burger with your slightly smaller portion of fries?

        BTW, that'll be 5% more with the new pricing.

  • Including enshittification of the environment. Cool performance, human race! What a fail.

  • It's ugly, which is fitting I suppose. And I know language evolves. But I still hate this word.

    • Its semantics and morphology are just about perfect. It is highly [grits teeth] performant.

    • It's ugly, which is fitting I suppose. And I know language evolves. But I still hate this word.

      While I agree, I'm beginning to come around. Reason? It perfectly encapsulates the absolute lack of concern we have for one another as human beings. And let's be honest, that's what these last couple decades have been all about for us. Fuck you because fuck you is the name of the game. That word not only tells us a process, it does it in the crudest, most juvenile way, which seems to epitomize what it is to be an American now. We're children throwing a temper tantrum, and we just hope that it hurts somebody

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      The late mathematician/philosopher/magician Raymond Smullyan, coined the word "autologous" to refer to the class of words which are self-descriptive."Polysyllabic" is an autologous word, but "monosyllabic" is not.

      "Enshittified" is an autologous word.

  • This just sounds like the Gen Z way of saying "in my day everything was lasted longer, the food was healthier, people actually cared, and companies made quality products. Now get off my lawn!"

    Every older generation has said this in some form or another. Now there's a witty term for it.

    In my day we didn't have a witty term for things getting shittier. We called it shittier-than-before.

  • Slashdot is a great example (Score:3)

    by DaFallus ( 805248 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @11:12AM (#64975789)
    First they got rid of true anonymous posting and require you to log in and then check the box to post anonymously. Now you can't even register new accounts. If you click the Sign up [slashdot.org] link, you get a page with the following message:

    New user registration is now approved by Slashdot administrators. Please contact feedback@slashdot.org and let us know why you are interested in registering, and what you can add to the discussion.

    This site isn't dying, its fucking dead.

  • In music circles it's called 'going mainstream'

  • One of the main reasons you acquire a company is to expand your customer base. Capitalism naturally trends towards monopolies. That is why we have laws against them. There is nothing pink and fluffy about capitalism, it is predatory in nature, when large companies collaborate instead of competing for a share of their market what you get is price fixing, cartels etc.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      We all learned in school that in a free market system companies compete to fulfill consumers' needs as effectively and affordably as possible, and that this always leads to optimal solutions.

      Then we went to work for companies, and if we kept our eyes open it should be clear that a lot of what companies spend their time doing is avoiding competition. "Commodity" is a dirty word, you want it to make it hard for consumers to compare your products, services and prices to other firms. Thus we have cell phone se

  • Looking at the discussion from a safe distance, it seems the US missed taking their medication again. Are you ok over there?

  • It will start becoming a target for marketers. You'll start to see ad placement, and misappropriations for the benefit of corporations.

    If only we had a word for this...

    Wait, is this becoming recursive?

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