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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Rise of Enshittification: Officially the Word of the Year [techspot.com]

Enshittification is defined 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.

It's a helpful term for describing many of today's tech products, from Google search being a slush [techspot.com] of ads, link farms, forum posts, and useless AI content, to social media platforms becoming a hate-filled nightmare. Don't forget those products that move from being one-off purchases to subscriptions before their quality starts becoming diluted, or once-great video game franchises that become little more than a way for publishers to push more microtransactions and season passes onto people. Companies are putting yearly increases in profits and share prices above absolutely everything else, including making sure the products they offer aren't, well, shit.

Generative AI's ability to create unlimited amounts of crap and lies has exacerbated an already bad situation, of course.

We should thank author Cory Doctorow for coining a word to describe this phenomenon. He first used enshittification in a 2022 essay on how difficult and annoying it had become to shop on Amazon.

Macquarie Dictionary, Australia's national dictionary, has recognized the importance of the term enshittification in today's tech by crowning it the word of the year – it also won the people's vote. According to the dictionary's committee, it is "a very basic Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes which elevate it to being almost formal; almost respectable."

"This word captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment," the committee said.

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