Doctrow argues that nascent tech unionization (which we’re closer to having now than ever before) combined with bipartisan fear (and consequent regulation) either directly or via agencies like the FTC and FCC can help to curb Big Tech’s power, and the enshittification that it has wrought.
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Eh, people have their own tastes in TV. Streaming companies buy exclusive rights to certain content and if that’s where your tastes lie, you’re pretty SOL. It’s about as close to “lock-in” as you can get.
Your definition of enshittificantion is also far too strict. It’s just the shift that companies inevitably make from trying to attract new users quickly by providing a great service, to trying to extract maximum profit by degrading the service quality and cramming in as much revenue generation as they can.
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DVDs (how many people even still own a player?) are not a real alternative to streaming for a number of reasons. Nor is “just watch something else on another platform.” Or, at least, if your claim is that entertainment is interchangeable then you’ve got no real complaint about YouTube. Hell, YouTube has its own ad-free subscription. By your own logic, the ads can’t be enshittificantion because you can just pay more to avoid it!
The enshittification of Netflix goes beyond just charging more. It’s any decision the company makes to make the user experience worse so they can make more money. That’s things like hiding your list and your recently watched shows so they can make you scroll through more recommendations. So then they can autoplay the content they stuck in your way. Recommendations that, like YouTube, are more concerned with what they want to monetize than what you actually want. And it’s restricting the way you used to be able to use the service, like on multiple TVs even within the same house, to get you to wade through a bunch of payment plans.
But my point still stands. Enshittification doesn’t require them to become a monopoly and start producing nothing but reality TV. It just describes the strategy shift that these companies inevitably make from making the platform better to attract more users, to making it worse to extract more money from the user base they’ve built up.
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You are arguing about definition of enshittidication from guy who defined enshittification…
Well, ok, there is alternative.
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