BlueSky Post.
Transcript.
If you tell someone to “Google it” at this point you’re telling them to look up five ads and some AI-generated bs instead of the actual thing they want to know.
old guy takes long hit on the bong
“Back in my day, search engines used to find things besides the wreckage of late-stage capitalism.”
It's still enshittification, because that's a consequence of Capitalism in general. Capitalism isn't bad because Capitalists are big scary evil people, but because it structurally stands against itself and prioritizes profit over results.
But that's still not what they said in their original comment. They were directly linking Google's search becoming worse to Google's monopoly, while the same is happening to all other providers as well, no matter how niche they are.
Sure we can tranform this into some handwavy "capitalism bad" statement (and I agree), but that's not what they said and has basically no substance.
You spoke about enshittification and claimed it is overused, then gave an example that fits enshittification to a tee. Kinda hard to argue with that.
No. Enshittification imho requires intent. When Google makes you watch twelve ads before a YT video, that's enshittification. If SEO ruins search engines as a whole, that's not enshittification.
Enshittification does not require intent to do anything other than maintain competitive advantages. SEO ruining search engines is a factor of enshittification, as it's a direct flaw of Capitalism and the Profit Motive that led to its existence.