[Animats]

"This pattern of scale > internal ad products > clusterfuckery > user exodus is generally referred to as “Enshittification,” a very fun term coined by Cory Doctorow in 2022 to explain why, broadly speaking, everything on the internet now seems way worse."

That used to be called "pulling a Myspace". Myspace pioneered that way to screw up.

Can anyone name a company that went down this road and came back?

Someone should do a tracking site for companies which fail in this way. Something like "deadmalls.com", or "fuckedcompany.com".

YC idea: develop a LLM model to detect early signs of enshittification and generate sell signals.

[stavros]

"Enshittification" originally had a very specific definition:

> 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.

Nowadays it's just used as a catch-all for "made worse".

[resolutebat]

Etsy fits Cory's original definition to a tee though.

[stavros]

Maybe, I'm not too familiar with their story. Who were the business users on Etsy?

[resolutebat]

- The users were the original arty-crafty people selling actually handmade products

- Businesses come in to exploit the users by flipping AliExpress crap at 10x margins, Etsy does nothing to stop this because $$$

- Etsy realizes they could make even more money off businesses by eg forcing them to buy ads from Etsy once their income exceeds $10k

- Now both users and businesses are pissed off and Etsy has entered a death spiral

[mintplant]

The sellers. Doctorow's original article uses Amazon as an example; you could fit Etsy into the same framing.

[sumeno]

This provides a good overview https://spy.com/articles/lifestyle/gifts/etsy-downfall-12030...

[stavros]

Please point me to the part where it talks about Etsy putting the users first, then the sellers, then Etsy itself.