I’m putting this in chat and not in Technology because I’m also wondering about things like clothes, appliances—basically any sort of consumer product, virtual or physical, you can think of that you feel has retained some standard of quality and has not yet been enshittified. I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified, but perhaps you disagree? Post is inspired by this video.
EDIT: coyotino correctly points out that Wikipedia isn’t a product but a service; poor word choice on my part, just trying to cast a wide a net as possible here in the hopes of making a list of “things that are still good that don’t suck.” Like I said, a wide net 🙂.
well that’s because Wikipedia isn’t a product, it is a free service hosted by a nonprofit. lately i find myself gravitating towards and wanting to spend money supporting nonprofit/open-source “products” like Wikipedia, because they seem like the only ones that aren’t prone to enshittification.
But to answer your main question, non-enshittified and for-profit brands that come to mind:
I’m noticing a trend here - can enshittification apply to physical products? Certainly there have been products in the past that have dropped in quality over time, but i kind of feel like that isn’t the same thing as enshittification. Enshittification is the process by which tech companies (1) create a product, (2) offer the product at an unsustainably low price, (3) obtain venture capital to stay alive while waiting for the competition to go bankrupt, and then finally (4) raise the price on the product or otherwise monetize in anti-consumer ways to claw back the value. Most of the brands I named above are long-time physical product brands, where their brand is tied to the quality of their product. If they made the product noticeably shittier, people would just buy a different brand next time. Certainly prices have gone up over time, but that’s just inflation. I can think of brands that have kept their price in a similar range but lowered the quality of their product (apparel brands like Adidas and Levi’s come to mind), but to me, this isn’t enshittification, because it wasn’t part of some master plan. It’s just a form of shrinkflation, where the brand reduces the quality or value of the product in mostly-invisible ways to address rising costs.
Disagree on Vornado.
I have bought around ten of their fans in total. Larges, mediums, smalls. 9/10 of them are rattly, half-plastic pieces of shit.
Maybe you have an older model? Go buy one of their current fans. I call it a “trash-gamble”, 50% chance of rattling fan right away, 90% chance it will rattle within the year.
I wonder if a Conway air purifier would help Mrs. Hedge with her allergies . . . ? 🤔
Did you mean Coway? Coways are incredible, in my experience.
I have a couple based on the recommendations and testing from Wirecutter. I’m not going to definitively say it will help with allergies bc everyone’s body is a little different, but it’s definitely highly effective for filtering!
Mrs. Hedge is convinced that all air purifiers don’t work, but I’ll definitely pass that on to her and maybe it will change her mind (and even better, improve her mood during allergy season!)
My kitchen doesn’t have a vent to the outside, so I’d have to open windows to deal with any smoke or fumes from cooking. Since I got the air purifier it kicks in when I cook and cleans the air in minutes. I’ve also noticed improvements with my allergies since getting one.
I wouldn’t necessarily say Firefox. They’ve been static at best, but have definitely had their L takes, like the recent auto opt in to provide info to advertisers thing.
Like getting in bed with facebook now. That’s sort of a red flag
I think that it can but it’s harder to do so, since physical products are usually sold as discrete units, while digital products are often sold as a continuous service. Enshittification requires you to trap users into the continued consumption of the product, even after a sharp drop of quality, and that’s easier to pull of under a continuous service.
If that’s correct physical products can be enshittified too, but that would require a different sales model than just “go to the shop, buy it”. Perhaps exploiting either subscriptions (like ink cartridges) and network effect (you need to use that product instead of a competing one because otherwise you break compatibility with what others use, and that compatibility is essential for the usage of the product).
It could also apply to degrading quality or features in replacements. Something like newer cars offering subscriptions for heated seats or extended battery range. Or leather goods switching to a lower grade.
that does make sense, and you cite two great examples. I initially thought of Apple as maybe a physical brand that hasn’t enshittified, but really they hit that network effect that you’re talking about.