Enshittification
Three weeks ago my Instagram account was hacked and taken over. I was working against the hacker in real time, I even knew where they were operating from. But they were faster than I and my account was gone.
I then spent 7 hours trying to get it back, two of those hours with a Meta customer service person.
I was grateful to actually be speaking to a human, because a few weeks before that my Starlink internet went down, and we did not get a response from them for 48 hours, and it was only through chat.
The Meta service person advised me to write an email, told me how to do it, who to send it to, and then said, it would take 48 hours before they get back to me.
That was three weeks ago. Zero response so far.
Two of the richest companies in the world, run by the two richest men in the world, offer the minimal, bare-bones customer service in the world.
Why? Because they are a monopoly, and they have us locked in. They do not care.
They do not care at all.
Cory Doctorow coined a word for this experience.
Enshittification.
The Australian Macquarie Dictionary made this the word of the year for 2024.
Enshittification goes like this.
First, they treat the customer well so they can build a huge platform.
Then they invite Business to Business – sales on the platform. They don’t care about the customer any more, only the business.
Once they have the customers and the business locked into the platform, where the leaving costs are very high, they then shift to becoming all about themselves and how much money they can make by exploiting both the customer and the business.
Now they do not care about anyone.
In their minds, they have won. Their platform is enshittified.
We are the losers. And we are.
No need for customer service. There is no competition.
Screw the customer.
It will work for them until it doesn’t.
I have always been ambivalent about social media. It’s deliberately algorithmic addictiveness. Clickbait. Conspiracy propagation. Fear mongering. Hate stirring.
As someone said, the CEO of a car company has highjacked the US government using his social media platform. That kind of power in the hands of one person never ends well.
But here we are. Supposedly caught in the tentacles of the greatest exploiters and extractors by numbers the world has ever seen.
What does this mean to me?
Social media will never inform my strategic business message delivery. I will not be captured by those who own every single thing I write on Social Media. (Or Audible)
I may use Social Media as an adjunct. But never as the main platform.
I revert to email. The long haul of building what Kevin Kelly described as true fans. Quality work. Word of mouth. Generosity. Kindness.
We must recognise that the colonising part of capitalism, vital to its existence, has never gone away. With Social Media, it has simply morphed to look differently.
Photo Taken December 14th 2024, Article written December 20th 2024
