this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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I'm putting this in chat and not in Technology because I'm also wondering about things like clothes, appliances—basically any sort of consumer product, virtual or physical, you can think of that you feel has retained some standard of quality and has not yet been enshittified. I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified, but perhaps you disagree? Post is inspired by this video.

EDIT: coyotino correctly points out that Wikipedia isn't a product but a service; poor word choice on my part, just trying to cast a wide a net as possible here in the hopes of making a list of "things that are still good that don't suck." Like I said, a wide net 🙂.

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[–] theangriestbird@beehaw.org 14 points 2 months ago (11 children)

I would start by saying that Wikipedia has not yet been enshittified

well that's because Wikipedia isn't a product, it is a free service hosted by a nonprofit. lately i find myself gravitating towards and wanting to spend money supporting nonprofit/open-source "products" like Wikipedia, because they seem like the only ones that aren't prone to enshittification.

But to answer your main question, non-enshittified and for-profit brands that come to mind:

  • Firefox
  • Noctua
  • Red Wing Shoes
  • Coway air purifiers
  • Vornado fans

I'm noticing a trend here - can enshittification apply to physical products? Certainly there have been products in the past that have dropped in quality over time, but i kind of feel like that isn't the same thing as enshittification. Enshittification is the process by which tech companies (1) create a product, (2) offer the product at an unsustainably low price, (3) obtain venture capital to stay alive while waiting for the competition to go bankrupt, and then finally (4) raise the price on the product or otherwise monetize in anti-consumer ways to claw back the value. Most of the brands I named above are long-time physical product brands, where their brand is tied to the quality of their product. If they made the product noticeably shittier, people would just buy a different brand next time. Certainly prices have gone up over time, but that's just inflation. I can think of brands that have kept their price in a similar range but lowered the quality of their product (apparel brands like Adidas and Levi's come to mind), but to me, this isn't enshittification, because it wasn't part of some master plan. It's just a form of shrinkflation, where the brand reduces the quality or value of the product in mostly-invisible ways to address rising costs.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Disagree on Vornado.

I have bought around ten of their fans in total since 2018. Larges, mediums, smalls. 9/10 of them are rattly, half-plastic pieces of shit. I refuse to give any more money to them.

Maybe you have an older model? Go buy one of their current fans. I call it a "trash-gamble", 50% chance of rattling fan right away, 90% chance it will rattle within the year.

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