Hacker News Reader

Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

If a restaurant raises it's prices in an inflationary environment, is it enshittification? You know, the restaurant you've been able to buy a $6.50 burger and fries with for the last 10 years now costs $8. Am I, the customer, being abused?

"Abusing users" in eshittification is fundamentally about violating expectations/norms, which is what Eternal September was about. Before "Eternal September", Usenet users came aboard in small waves and acclimatized to the local culture. This was the norm on Usenet. Once Usenet opened up, users joined so quickly that they could participate in the network with no shame without acclimatizing to the local culture. Likewise, when more ads appear or previously-free API surfaces begin costing users, older norms/expectations have been violated.

View on HN

Enshittification ensues on platforms/services with a captive audience - whether it is due to network effects, switching costs or retraining costs. It is especially prevalent where there is a growth imperative followed by a profitability imperative (e.g. VC funded companies which first need to grow to get funded and then need to secure an exit).

Usually a restaurant neither has a captive audience nor a growth imperative (unless it is a PE-owned chain restaurant).

Thinking about this analogy further, where captive restaurants do exist their prices probably meet the definition of enshittified. Cruise ships, movie theaters, stadiums, concerts, etc.

How about the sole grocery store or Dollar General type store in a rural area? Same thing. As I said in a sibling comment down below, having your expectations violated isn't some form of personality flaw. Changes in behavior and pricing put real pressure on individuals to change their behavior, which can put stress on individuals who were already stressed. I'm merely describing what I feel is the emotional reaction behind this sentiment, not weighing in on whether it's good or bad.

It's not like by adding a moniker on this phenomenon ("enshittification") or by upvoting or downvoting arguments we agree with that we can change the phenomenon anyway; pricing and economics are a distributed exercise.

Great point, I hadn't thought about isolated areas.

And with you there, it's already starting to sound like a buzzword to me. The first step on the road to losing all meaning.

You're getting downvoted because it's clear you simply don't comprehend the arguments you're allegedly responding to and are projecting your own straw men to make your (non-)points.

I'm curious what the purpose of your comment is, to further sneer at me out of disagreement? HN's culture has been steadily changing from one of operators to one of users for a long time now. I knew this would be an unpopular sentiment. Though my comment did go up and then down, so it's obviously a controversial one.

It's also not wrong to feel angry when expectations change. If a Dollar General in your area raises prices, it puts pressure on local residents who may have just barely been staying solvent. Through no fault of their own, those residents now have even more financial stress on them. This is why economics is a complicated field; things like interest rate regimes have broad knock-on effects on the economy and create winners and losers that under different regimes may have never emerged.

I'm not speaking to the validity of your points per se, just to the framing as some kind of response to an argument no one is making.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com