9 ms·

It's not. The quality stayed the same, even improved. It's run of the mill monopoly pricing.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
crote 2y ago
It is 100% enshittification. The definition is even in the linked article: > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, (..) The core point here is "abuse the user", not "make features worse". Price gauging would be included in that definition.
- roywiggins 2y ago
  Enshittification usually refers to companies that run two-sided markets ("platforms"), like rideshare and delivery apps. Adobe raising prices on everyone isn't really the same thing. Enshittification works by first subsidizing everything for everyone, then alternately squeezing the sellers and buyers on the platform by increasing their cut and raising prices. It's about playing a game where you alternately squeeze one side or another of a marketplace that you control. Adobe doesn't really run a platform, they're selling a product and finding ways to raise the price.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Ensnittification definitely applied to home appliances like washing machines. IMO inkjet printers where the front runner here before online platforms really took off.
    - roywiggins 2y ago
      I don't think any of that stuff really follows the definition as quoted though. That definition is all about a middleman squeezing buyers and sellers. That people use it to mean "any scummy business practice that uses lock-in or corner-cutting to squeeze customers" doesn't make those uses fit that definition. That stuff is not new, enshittification was coined to refer to the relatively new ways that platforms started to squeeze people.
      - Retric 2y ago
        The original word is really just descriptive of the unpleasant side of optimization you see in commerce. Walmart finding the minimum product quality they can sell is no different than Facebook finding the maximum number of Advertisements people will tolerate.
        roywiggins 2y ago
        People can use words however they want, but it wasn't coined to refer to that in general. You can read the blog post: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ > "I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them." (emphasis mine) All I'm saying is that citing back to the original definition (which is talking about platforms) does not bolster the case that what Adobe is doing counts, because it plainly doesn't fall under that definition. Adobe is not running a two-sided market. For it to be enshittification you need to use a much more expansive definition. Which is fine, but in that case you can't cite the original definition!
        Retric 2y ago
        He applies the word to more than just that kind of 2 sided market. https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2d6d57306072 https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2... In his own words the enshitificstion of Google is: “curse of bigness.” > With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, “growth” has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users. Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. How did a company like Unity — … — turn into a protection racket? So, while he may describe Enshittification as platform decay he’s not limiting its use to such.
  - LocalH 2y ago
    They subsidized things for everyone by turning a blind eye to personal piracy for so many years. They got entrenched as a defacto standard, and then they started tightening the vice. It's enshittification. Why defend a multibillion dollar corporation who doesn't care about you one bit?
    - roywiggins 2y ago
      I'm not defending them, I'm saying that their behavior is probably a different sort of bad. There are lots of ways for companies to extort consumers, they can't all be "enshittification". If enshittification is anything a company does that involves delivering a worse product for more money, that's fine, but then it becomes a less useful concept. My attitude in general is that diluting useful ideas to the point where they encompass an entire vibe is unhelpful. If anything anti-consumer a company does is enshittification, the causes are so disparate that solutions seem impossible. If you draw a tighter boundary around it, you can try to nail down causes and solutions.
      - LocalH 2y ago
        The point I mentioned isn't enshittification by itself so much, but combined with the predatory dark patterns, I personally consider it enshittification as a whole.
- jonathankoren 2y ago
  Are you sure you read the article? The very first sentence of the article is, "Enshittification is the pattern of decreasing quality observed in online services and products[.]" (Emphasis added.) If the quality remains the same, or improves, it's by definition not decreasing, and therefore not enshitification. Furthermore, as other people pointed out, this is a reference to two sided marketplaces. Just because there's a new buzzword, doesn't mean it applies. In fact, it usually doesn't.
whycome 2y ago
Adobe has removed features from Premiere and Flash/Animate (those are the ones I know personally and have been pissed off at)
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Nevertheless, they've added far more features to Premiere than things they've removed. So it's not "ensh*ttification", which is when prices go up while the product gets worse. Nobody can seriously argue that Premiere hasn't been getting better overall. It has been. And it's continuing to. (Which is totally separate from how scummy their subscription cancellation/renewal practices are.)
wnevets 2y ago
It absolutely is. I now dread every single time I am forced to open a modern creative cloud product.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

It is 100% enshittification. The definition is even in the linked article: > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, (..) The core point here is "abuse the user", not "make features worse". Price gauging would be included in that definition.

roywiggins 2y ago
Enshittification usually refers to companies that run two-sided markets ("platforms"), like rideshare and delivery apps. Adobe raising prices on everyone isn't really the same thing. Enshittification works by first subsidizing everything for everyone, then alternately squeezing the sellers and buyers on the platform by increasing their cut and raising prices. It's about playing a game where you alternately squeeze one side or another of a marketplace that you control. Adobe doesn't really run a platform, they're selling a product and finding ways to raise the price.
- Retric 2y ago
  Ensnittification definitely applied to home appliances like washing machines. IMO inkjet printers where the front runner here before online platforms really took off.
  - roywiggins 2y ago
    I don't think any of that stuff really follows the definition as quoted though. That definition is all about a middleman squeezing buyers and sellers. That people use it to mean "any scummy business practice that uses lock-in or corner-cutting to squeeze customers" doesn't make those uses fit that definition. That stuff is not new, enshittification was coined to refer to the relatively new ways that platforms started to squeeze people.
    - Retric 2y ago
      The original word is really just descriptive of the unpleasant side of optimization you see in commerce. Walmart finding the minimum product quality they can sell is no different than Facebook finding the maximum number of Advertisements people will tolerate.
      - roywiggins 2y ago
        People can use words however they want, but it wasn't coined to refer to that in general. You can read the blog post: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ > "I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them." (emphasis mine) All I'm saying is that citing back to the original definition (which is talking about platforms) does not bolster the case that what Adobe is doing counts, because it plainly doesn't fall under that definition. Adobe is not running a two-sided market. For it to be enshittification you need to use a much more expansive definition. Which is fine, but in that case you can't cite the original definition!
        Retric 2y ago
        He applies the word to more than just that kind of 2 sided market. https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2d6d57306072 https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2... In his own words the enshitificstion of Google is: “curse of bigness.” > With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, “growth” has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users. Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. How did a company like Unity — … — turn into a protection racket? So, while he may describe Enshittification as platform decay he’s not limiting its use to such.
- LocalH 2y ago
  They subsidized things for everyone by turning a blind eye to personal piracy for so many years. They got entrenched as a defacto standard, and then they started tightening the vice. It's enshittification. Why defend a multibillion dollar corporation who doesn't care about you one bit?
  - roywiggins 2y ago
    I'm not defending them, I'm saying that their behavior is probably a different sort of bad. There are lots of ways for companies to extort consumers, they can't all be "enshittification". If enshittification is anything a company does that involves delivering a worse product for more money, that's fine, but then it becomes a less useful concept. My attitude in general is that diluting useful ideas to the point where they encompass an entire vibe is unhelpful. If anything anti-consumer a company does is enshittification, the causes are so disparate that solutions seem impossible. If you draw a tighter boundary around it, you can try to nail down causes and solutions.
    - LocalH 2y ago
      The point I mentioned isn't enshittification by itself so much, but combined with the predatory dark patterns, I personally consider it enshittification as a whole.
jonathankoren 2y ago
Are you sure you read the article? The very first sentence of the article is, "Enshittification is the pattern of decreasing quality observed in online services and products[.]" (Emphasis added.) If the quality remains the same, or improves, it's by definition not decreasing, and therefore not enshitification. Furthermore, as other people pointed out, this is a reference to two sided marketplaces. Just because there's a new buzzword, doesn't mean it applies. In fact, it usually doesn't.

whycome 2y ago

Adobe has removed features from Premiere and Flash/Animate (those are the ones I know personally and have been pissed off at)

crazygringo 2y ago
Nevertheless, they've added far more features to Premiere than things they've removed. So it's not "ensh*ttification", which is when prices go up while the product gets worse. Nobody can seriously argue that Premiere hasn't been getting better overall. It has been. And it's continuing to. (Which is totally separate from how scummy their subscription cancellation/renewal practices are.)

wnevets 2y ago

It absolutely is. I now dread every single time I am forced to open a modern creative cloud product.