Pluralistic: How monopoly enshittified Amazon
Pluralistic: How monopoly enshittified Amazon
Cory Doctorow details how Amazon's monopoly and monopsony power have led to the "enshittification" of its platform, transforming it from a customer-centric company into an ad-saturated marketplace. Sellers are forced into a "payola" system to gain visibility, driving up prices across all retail channels due to Amazon's "most favored nation" clauses and high fees. Doctorow extends this critique to other platforms like Spotify and Audible, arguing that market concentration consistently shifts value from creators and sellers to shareholders. He advocates for structural separation, strong antitrust enforcement, and "adversarial interoperability" to restore competition and benefit consumers.
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the birth of the term "enshitification" and what a classic this essay is with many more sound exacting sound bites tagging along.
chasing the bottom line requires a lot of sacrifices and tradeoffs. morals and customers aren't immune, especially if you are too big to fail.
with that said, consumers do still have power, but only through collective action. unfortunately, that won't be coming through a government that is shrinking its services and increasing its authoritarianism.
82% of house holds subscribing to prime seems like an ideal place to go after. getting it to zero is likely never going to happen, but even 10% would make a meaningful statement.
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