Enshitifcation: The gradual worsening of products and services over time. A shift from the free / “freemium” model that was the mainstay of the 2010’s in the start-up and new tech growth phase – to now – a gloves off, all out assault of corporate profit making at  any cost – that cost essentially being borne on the user as a shittier experience and much less value for money.

Though there’s nothing unusual about companies wanting to make profit, it seemed as though the experience and good will was part of the equation. Though there seems to be an inflection point  we’ve reached. “No more Mr Nice Guy” in terms of the services provided for the dollar paid.

The excellent documentary “The Corporation” posited that companies are essentially people with psychopathy. In this case we can see that once a captive audience has been reached. The “treats” are hidden away and the stick comes out. It almost seems as though a lot of this has been happening in sync.

This year I’ve personally seen the following

• Citibank Silver card that I’ve paid $15/year since 1998 jump to $149 a year. The number of interest free days has reduced from 55 days (which seems standard since forever) to 44 days.
• 28 Degrees Card has gone from free to $8 a month. Paper statements were free, then $2/month, now $5/month
• YouTube Premium Family subscription has increased from $18/month to $33/month
• Amazon Prime $7/month to $10/month and now introduces “limited ads”
• NetFlix no longer sells the plan I’m on. $11/month for 2 SD streams with no ads. If I ever decide to cancel, I’ll only have the option to “downgrade” to a $7/month with ads experience or HD for around $17.
• Hulu has increased their price by a dollar in 2022. Overall their increase has been quite reasonable. (EDIT: Since I’ve posted this, it’s gone up another $2)

Netflix no longer sells the Basic Plan. You only have access to it if you are grandfathered in. Though once Netflix removes this plan worldwide (as they are already starting to do in USA), then the ad-supported plan will gradually creep up to the Basic plan price over a few years and price hikes. It’s a way to turn Basic Plan to Ad Plan by stealth. Watch this happen!

It only takes one rogue horse to bolt for the others to play catch-up. Elon Musk introduced blue checkmarks to Twitter, most see as a cash-grab. Not long after Facebook implemented the same feature and removed their front-page assertion that Facebook was supposedly “Free and always will be”.

Amazon are considering whether to make Alexa a paid service, or to hide some extra functionality behind a paywall.

Logitech created a “forever” computer mouse that is subscription based. You get some macro  key functionality and driver support. F**k me dead.

This is the end game of late-stage capitalism. Make a product that will “disrupt” an existing service. Make it cheap, make it compelling, take away market share from the incumbents. Drive engagement with low price. Once saturation point is achieved, turn the screws. Scrape every bit of the dregs from the barrel whether or not it puts your service into disfavor. Attrition doesn’t matter if you have large enough market share. There is enough base to sustain any dropouts. Find extra ways to scrape revenue (password sharing crackdown, remove mid tiers etc.). End up becoming the thing you vowed to replace.

Once the disruptor has disrupted, everything unfolds back to it’s natural state. The almighty dollar wins in the end. In another 10 years we’ll go through this cycle again. Rinse and repeat.