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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Enshittification is caused by greed, so unless you've fixed greed, it's going to continue. Every site that has deliberately made their site shitty probably has some "math with dollar signs" to back it up. We're lucky that HN is pretty much a side-show for YCombinator. If there was even a remote chance that it could make a significant amount of money (compared to YCombinator's actual business), I guarantee you we'll be reading "Announcing HN's Redesign" pinned to the top one day.

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It'll continue iff it actually works to satisfy greed. If platform builders and funders see there's a limit to enshittification before a platform breaks, then they'll stop crossing that line out of self interest. I guess there will always be a few just trying to sell the platform to a sucker before it crashes, but you'd at least see the shit diminishing.

Enshittification is caused by bad behavior being profitable. If bad behavior weren't profitable, greed would make everything nice.

I would put a slight caveat on that: it's caused by bad behavior being _perceived_ to be profitable. That doesn't mean it necessarily is. Nor that the bad actor necessarily has the tools (or desire) to evaluate the effectiveness of their behavior in realizing their greed.

Or perhaps profitable in the short run, which for an IPO is all that matters when people with more money than sense buy into it.

Would you say profitability is an issue per se?

It seems to me that users should _want_ their community platform to be profitable in order to sustain, but not "too profitable" (=greed) or the sense of community vanishes.

If that is true, is it the responsibility of the online citizen to interact/transact on a platform with the "right" degree of profitability (not too small, or it'll close tomorrow, but also not to greedy, or enshittification occurs)?

PS: How profitable exactly is "right" - reminds me of the family game where the winner is the "most average" person - scoring points closest to the arithmetic mean instead of the person with the max. score.

The problem is less "profitability" and more "increasing profitability". The problem is a publicly traded company, or a VC-backed firm trying to target an IPO, doesn't care about how much money a company makes today. They care about their investment continually increasing in value, which demands the company be growing in profits.

Enshittification is a direct consequence of this mindset being applied to companies who reach something resembling market saturation. Once your user growth starts slowing down, you need to show that you'll continuously make more money per user than you did before. And that path can only lead to shit.

Yes, and? What I'm saying is that there's probably a limit to how profitable enshittification can be. Certainly it can't be the basis of a long-term sustainable business, so it's limited to the kind of zero-sum profits of a pump and dump. Even investors get tired of this eventually, when enough of them get stuck holding the bag.

A small family-run coffee shop can be profitable. It might pay for your kids' college and a comfortable retirement one day. But everyone (or everyone's investor) wants to be the equivalent of the next Starbucks.

There is of course the option that the "math with dollar signs" is wrong. The "math" is often based on old-world ideas of how to make money, which is basically "screw the user" is no longer valid in the internet age when a new behemoth can arise in months. The supply chains of the past are not the same as the always on internet with is extreme fluidity.

Maybe Ycomb has done some math, possibly a litte more up to date, and the people, culture and cred this site gives them is worth more than selling it?

Your main point remains valid of course, but we don't all suffer evenly - the internet is still a great place for many and a new home will be found or at least the next generation will find one.

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