Tag: throwaway society

  • Enshittification: when goods & services turn bad

    Let’s talk about enshittification – and yes, this is an actual term! Do you notice your favourite products, platforms or services steadily deteriorate in quality over time? See articles about services and marketplaces charging for functionality you otherwise used for free? Well, more likely than not, it’s a symptom of these places turning to complete and utter rubbish!

    Today, we explore the slow burn process of manufacturers, tech companies and other businesses appealing to everyone in different ways, then extracting value from them. In other words, maximising short term gain at the cost of long term sustainability.

    What exactly is enshittification anyway?

    Enshittification, crapification, or “poopification” (as we will call it from now on) is where companies make decisions which result in making their products and services worse for their customers. Usually, it is a gradual process with a focus of maximising profits from customers, advertisers and suppliers. But eventually, these groups grow dissatisfied to the point of taking their respective customs elsewhere.

    Cory Doctorow first used the term in a November 2022 blog post, where he explained how people started leaving Facebook and Twitter en masse. He also used the term ‘platform decay’ to illustrate the same concept. Then, he released another blog post in January 2023, further elaborating on the poopification concept. There, he describes how companies make platforms flourish, then exploit users, advertisers and suppliers for profit, and finally let the platforms wither into irrelevance.

    In a May 2024 post, Dave Pollard further expands upon Cory Doctorow’s articles about poopification. He illustrates how it is the culmination of decades of unregulated capitalism. According to Pollard, businesses engage in activities with the goal to maximise profits. He identified five key areas which keep the businesses in check, and how they work to undermine, and eliminate these as if they are obstacles. These are: competitive markets, domestic laws and regulations, overseas rivals and laws/regulations, consumer groups and unions, and Governments.

    This infographic illustrates how businesses maximise profits through a broad range of questionable activities and measures. (Image courtesy of Dave Pollard, under CC-BY-NC-SA)

    How poopification works

    1. Firstly, a business launches a new platform or marketplace. It leverages products and services as loss leaders to attract users to the new platform or marketplace.
    2. Then, the business encourages these users to purchase goods and services from them. One approach is to stock items which customers can’t easily find elsewhere.
    3. Once it sufficiently locks in a critical mass of customers to the platform/marketplace, the business then uses its customer base as a loss leader to attract suppliers and advertisers.
    4. Afterwards, it then exploits the suppliers to accrue the value and profits in order to keep advertisers satisfied.
    5. Then, the business leverages the platform/marketplace to maximise profits for itself, along with shareholders and venture capitalists.
    6. Finally, the business goes into stagnation and decline, as people and organisations abandon the platform. Particularly, advertisers will search for other loss leaders in markets. Eventually, it withers and dies, or another business buys the failing platform for itself.

    Does this only happen to platforms?

    Sadly, no. While we see this often with online marketplaces and social media platforms, anything can fall victim to poopification. From everyday items such as food and drinks, tech gadgets and furniture, to services such as healthcare and public transport. Often, there is the tendency among organisations to succumb to greed and the allure of ever greater profits. And as a result, they – along with the environment as a whole – become unsustainable.

    In fact, we would argue that planned obsolescence often goes hand-in-had with poopification. Basically, manufacturers transitioned from building products to last, to extracting value from expensive repairs and new product sales. By doing this, they can maximise profits for themselves and their investors. Consequently, planned obsolescence and poopification contribute to a ‘throwaway society’.

    But what happens when free and open source software (of all things!) fall victim to poopification, too? What if maintainers of Linux distros engage in the same anti-user practices Microsoft does with its proprietary Windows OS? Here, Nick from The Linux Experiment demonstrates what might happen when the concept applies to a Linux distro…

    What if it happens to repair cafes?

    But what happens when repair cafes like our own Reyt Repair workshops succumb to poopification? Well, imagine an alternate universe, where Gareth transforms them into a global enterprise. One where our repair cafes pop up all over the world, and people can help fix each other’s things. Even in Antartica – because there are humans living in small colonies there as well. Can’t have them go without repair services, after all!

    And then, one day he starts to turn to the dark side. He cannot resist the temptation of the massive profits Big Tech earn year after year any longer. Slowly but surely, he enacts measures to extract profits from these enterprises. He transitions from being an awesome pro-community fix-it-upper, to an evil corporate overlord. Gradually, piece by painful piece, he turns Reyt Repair – and other enterprises he runs – into the exact same entities as the manufacturers in the real world. Entities which engage in the very practices he founded these groups to fight against.

    So how would Gareth do it all in this alternate universe? Let’s go over some of the different ways he would enshittify our services, the workshops and…well, everything else!

    How Reyt Repair could go through poopification

    Basically, the key part in the poopification of our services is in doing so in subtle, gradual steps. If he does it too quickly, then customers will go elsewhere, and our services will suffer as a result. So, let’s go through the steps in the poopification process, and cover some of the ways in how they work in practice. They may not happen in the exact order we list here, but they illustrate how a repair cafe goes from serving the community to serving the “mighty pound sterling”!

    Step 1: Attracting customers and volunteers

    Gareth needs ways to encourage everyone in Sheffield and beyond to take their items into the Reyt Repair for repairs, and to devote spare time to help out with repairs. Just like in the real world, they reside in a small room inside Abbeyfield Park House. So, how to expand beyond the busy main roads in Pitsmoor?

    Well, we can send our flyers all over the city to start with! Basically, flyers help inform people about our work, and how they can help us repair everyday items in the community. Additionally, we can augment these with some local ads to really get our social enterprises out into the collective consciousness!

    Step 2: Establishing the enterprises

    Next, he needs to build up an empire, where he reaches out and sets up repair shops to the rest of the UK. Bonus points if he gains a presence across the rest of the world! Initially, teams of volunteers can create articles and materials which garner interest in our work.

    In the real world, I predominantly take on the responsibility of writing articles for this website. Usually, I focus on quality over quantity in making them informative, insightful and/or humourous. But in this scenario, I can only produce so much content without veering straight into clickbait territory! And so, I need all the help I can get! (In fact, perhaps I should try dabbling in AI tools like chatGPT. After all, it might prove useful for augmenting my work in writing interesting articles for us all…)

    To expand the network, volunteers in other parts of the country can set up new repair cafes and shops under Gareth’s family of social enterprises. In this way, we can help serve communities across the UK and beyond.

    Step 3: Monetising everything

    Once Gareth reaches a critical mass of volunteers, customers and online followers who all want to be part of his burgeoning repairs empire, he needs ways to really start raking in the cash. Because after all, all this work in growing his empire costed him valuable money. This is the point where Gareth sells the souls of Reyt Repair and other enterprises he operates to the devil!

    Initially, he could put the most interesting articles on this site behind a subscription paywall, where readers pay a small monthly fee to access these articles. Another way to make money is to source cheap, questionable quality components for repairs. Bonus points if he finds parts no other repair cafes have! This ensures customers will keep coming back to Gareth’s repair shops.

    Step 4: Enlisting the services of suppliers

    Without spare parts, Gareth’s repairs empire can’t fix all kinds of everyday items. To ensure that his repair shops always have the necessary parts, he can do deals with various manufacturers. These manufacturers then supply the spare parts to his repair shops.

    After a time of gaining customer confidence, he can then start to reduce the quality and cost of the spares to boost his operating profit. Usually, this entails specifying cheaper and less durable materials, particularly for critical components in the parts to accelerate wear and tear. Naturally, he will proceed cautiously, only subtly reducing quality over many months to maximise thee time it takes until the customers begin to notice!

    Step 5: Acquiring venture capital

    To keep his empire going, Gareth would reach out to investors and venture capitalists. He would enter discussions with them to strike deals, where they offer capital upfront, in exchange for a share of the profits from his repair empire. To further sweeten the deal, he would further monetise the site(s) and the repairs services – which means, you guessed it, more enshittification. By now, he notices that the premium subscription services for the super-interesting articles on this site are wildly popular. So he decides to roll it out across the rest of the websites under his wing.

    He can also, at this point, choose to go public with his empire on stock markets across the world. This allows investors to buy stocks and shares in his conglomerate. It also means one more group of people he needs to keep on his side – but hey, such is business! These injections of funding would allow him to further sustain the business – oh, and buy more beachfront properties (and shiny yachts!), because why not?!

    Step 6: Selling out to the advertisers

    By this time, the volunteers churn out all sorts of interesting and insightful articles for Gareth’s repair empire. They busily maintain a strong presence on social media. But all this effort only goes so far in sustaining a strong mindshare in the world at large. So now, he needs to go beyond the local papers and go not just national, but international!

    And what this entails, is enlisting the help of marketing companies to really get the brands out there! There are ad spaces for television, radio, billboards…oh, and especially in apps and online, too. Speaking of online in particular, Gareth decides to wring more value out of the websites under his empire by placing ads throughout the site. Sure, this would open readers up the risks of malware and scams miscreants place through ad networks. But hey! By buying a monthly subscription for a small fee, they can remove ads, as well as browse all the super interesting articles to their heart’s content.

    Step 7: Accruing all the value for oneself (and shareholders & venture capitalists!)

    Here is where Gareth starts to work on keeping all the value he accrued from his empire for himself – along with all of the shareholders and venture capitalists he attracted along the way! Essentially, he would do all of the measures we covered earlier – but crank it up to eleven! In fact, he realises technology evolves to such an extent, he would just fully automate all of the repair jobs and content creation using a mixture of robotics and AI tools. No volunteers and staff necessary any more!

    While Gareth goes about it, perhaps he’ll use the extraordinary wealth he built up over the years to entertain himself and fellow billionaires. For example, he could start a mission to enter space – if the likes of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson can send rockets into space, then so can Gareth!

    Or, perhaps he could explore the depths of the oceans in a submarine. Who knows? If he really fancies a challenge, Gareth could try building an underwater city deep in the oceans. All with its own public services and means of producing everything cities need to thrive!

    Step 8: Withering on the vine at the end of it all

    Eventually, Gareth pushes his efforts in maximising profits from his repairs empire too far. And all the volunteers, the customer base, and everyone else reach the point of not taking all the poopification any more. At this point, some of them start setting up their own local repair cafes and workshops to break free from the network lock-in. And when these workshops start thriving, customers simply take their items there for repairs instead. Consequently, Gareth’s repairs empire experiences a gradual decline in relevance and sustainability. One of the following would happen at this stage:

    • His enterprises would still operate as much smaller businesses.
    • He would sell them off to another business, which would operate them as part of its portfolio.
    • Worst case, the enterprises would simply close down for good.

    Now, Gareth might try to buy up all of the fledging repair shops he possibly can. However, at this point, it’s a case of delaying the inevitable. People who feel his excessive profiteering costs him all the trust and goodwill he spent so much time and effort building up, do not easily forgive and forget. And, once they turn away from his empire, they will not willingly return. In fact, they may even revert back to discarding broken items and only buying new ones out of sheer disillusionment.

    Summarising poopification

    In conclusion, poopification is the insidious creep of sacrificing long-term quality and sustainability for maximum short-term profits. Ultimately, the resultant decay of products and services benefits no-one in society. It has a detrimental impact on the environment, with many poor quality products needlessly going to waste. And so, we all deserve better, repairable and sustainable products and services.

    We used our own workshops as an example to illustrate how poopfication subverts efforts to help communities and the environment. Because if it creeps into our work in real life, then it will negatively affect every other existing community repair group and social enterprise. So let’s all keep calm, keep on fixing, and support each other and our communities!

  • Planned obsolescence – what is it all about?

    In the world of manufacturing and repairs, there’s a term that refers to the state of being that makes us favour new stuff and trends. Something that leads us to switch to new and better ways of working and entertaining ourselves. And what sometimes leaves us unable to keep old, but otherwise functioning everyday items going any more. We call this planned obsolescence.

    The word “obsolete” refers to a product, service or practice that’s no longer in use or becomes outdated or old-fashioned. Obsolescence refers to the act of making them obsolete by introducing newer or improved products, services or practices. Take moving from horse-drawn carriages to heavy-goods vehicles (HGVs) for transporting goods, for example. You can move much larger volumes of products over longer distances with HGVs than you can with horse-drawn carriages.

    There are other forms of obsolescence that we encounter in the real world. But today, we specifically focus on planned obsolescence for this discussion.

    The beginnings of planned obsolescence…

    Before the trend of sacrificing product longevity for ever greater profit started, manufacturers produced all kinds of everyday items that last a long time until they naturally break. Light bulbs, cars, cameras, you name them! Back then, manufacturers made sure they built their products to last. But the concept of planned obsolescence started to take root and spread across whole industries…

    During the 1920s, Alfred P. Sloan, then president of General Motors, came up with a strategy to stimulate demand for GM’s cars. Back then, rival car giant Ford aimed to sell progressively improved versions of the Model T across the US market. Sloan coined the term “dynamic obsolescence“. He wanted to get consumers to perceive their current cars as outdated, compared to new models. This is so that they can replace their car with the new one, even if it still works perfectly fine.

    In 1924, the Phoebus cartel, consisting of prominent light bulb makers, came together for a meeting in Geneva. They agreed to make light bulbs with a much shorter lifespan than typical bulbs at the time. The cartel even made sure to impose heavy fines on manufacturers who made longer-lasting bulbs! However, engineers thought there was some merit to this strategy. They believed that bulbs began to lose efficiency and increase energy wastage after 1,000 total hours of operation.

    Then in 1932, Bernard London, who was a real estate agent, used the expression “planned obsolescence” in its proper context. He published an article with the title, “Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence”. Here, he presented it as a way to recover from the Great Depression by stimulating demand for consumer goods. By then, however, some manufacturers, like those in the Phoebus cartel, already cottoned on to the idea. And so, the rest is history…

    How planned obsolescence works

    Planned obsolescence is where manufacturers deliberately make a product that becomes useless or outdated within a set time period. They do this to ensure that we keep replacing their existing products with new versions of those products. To that end, manufacturers employ different approaches to getting us to discard otherwise perfectly-working and repairable items. They typically consist of all of, or a combination of any of, the following:

    • Contrived fragility: Designing and making an item in ways that make it deteriorate quickly.
    • Anti-repair measures: Making products difficult or even impossible to repair to deter people from servicing these items themselves.
    • Sealed-in batteries: Using adhesive to secure batteries in some electronic items to make it harder to replace with new batteries.
    • Programmed obsolescence: Using software/firmware to restrict or render products useless to force replacement of consumables or new models.
    • Perceived obsolescence: Combining marketing campaigns with frequent product update cycles to make current items seem outdated.
    • Withdrawal of product support: Stopping hardware and software support for a product within an arbitrary period of time.

    So, let’s go over each of them in turn!

    Contrived fragility (also referred to as contrived durability)

    Now, there’s a degree of uncertainly that affects how long a product will last. That’s intrinsic to everything people and manufacturers make. Even the longest-lasting and best looked after item will eventually break down. So imagine this scenario; you bought an item that you previously knew lasted a very long time from a shop. You happily use it for its intended purpose as you normally do. Then one day, it inexplicably breaks much sooner than your old one did. What gives?!

    Your newer item is a victim of contrived fragility, of course! It’s a product design strategy that focuses on artificially limiting a given product’s lifespan. A typical manufacturer takes into account an expected average lifetime during all development stages. Therefore, it specifies how long each part should last and then makes each of those parts accordingly.

    One way they limit durability, is incorporate “weaknesses” into the product, so that it wears out quickly through normal use. They could use inferior materials in critical areas, such as plastic for gears of other stress-bearing parts. Or they could make its design layout inefficient in order to accelerate wear and tear on components. The goal here to get consumers to replace their broken items with new ones as soon as realistically possible.

    Many people call this form of obsolescence “contrived durability”. However, we’d argue that contrived fragility is a more accurate term. That’s because fragility conveys weakness, whereas durability actually conveys strength.

    Anti-repair measures

    You bought a spare part for your item that just broke down, and decide to try fixing it yourself. Unfortunately, you notice that it has screws that you don’t have a screwdriver for! So you have to go out and do one of the following:

    • Buy the appropriate screwdriver in order to perform the self-repair job.
    • Send the broken item (and the spare part) to an independent or OEM-authorised repair centre, and have it fixed there.
    • Contact the manufacturer and get one of their technicians to come out and fix the item for you.

    Apple are particularly notorious for this (and their anti-repair stance in general). They introduced pentalobe screws in 2009, starting with the 15-inch Macbook Pro. This type of screw requires a corresponding pentalobe screwdriver to fasten and unfasten. It became synonymous with Apple devices, though some other manufacturers used them as well.

    Another anti-repair measure is to tightly integrate critical parts into a single complete part. For example, manufacturers often permanently mold the drum bearings into the wash tubs. The bearings are a mechanical component that’s prone to wear and tear during normal use. This kind of product design means you can’t replace the bearings without replacing the entire tub.

    Also, some manufacturers don’t even sell replacement parts for their products. Or when they do sell them, they price them as close to the cost of a whole new product. They do this to make people think that they’re better off scrapping their items altogether, and buying new ones.

    Sealed-in batteries

    This is common in smartphones, watches, wireless earbuds and many other electronic goods. Manufacturers know that these items last only as long as the part with the shortest lifespan. And that part is usually the battery. Batteries naturally lose capacity, output power and the ability to maintain steady voltage during normal use.

    The practice of sealing batteries into smartphones began when Apple introduced the original iPhone in early 2007. Back then, early smartphones had batteries that user can replace themselves. And replacing the battery that wears out (or becomes a spicy pillow!) in those phones is very simple. You just remove the cover, take the worn battery out, put a new one in, and re-attach the cover.

    Over time, other phone makers caught on, and began releasing their phones with sealed-in batteries. Nowadays, the vast majority of smartphones are like this. Replacing batteries in those require a heat source and specialist tools to remove the rear cover and access the internals. There are very few new smartphones that still have easily removable batteries. Among these are the Samsung Galaxy XCover series, the Teracube 2e and offerings from Fairphone and Shiftphone.

    Programmed obsolescence

    You try to print some homework off that you desperately need to hand into college, school or university. But the printer simply won’t print your documents! You open your printer, take the toner or ink cartridge out, and notice there’s still some left inside. You put it back into the printer and try printing again. Only, it still won’t print! What trickery is this?!

    You fell victim to programmed obsolescence, where a manufacturer artificially disables a product in its software or firmware. It does this to stop the product from working, in order to get the user to buy replacements.

    This is common in printers with ink cartridges containing smart chips. Manufacturers program the chips to stop printers from using them after a certain number of uses or period of time. That’s even though there’s still usable ink inside the cartridges, or the user can refill them. The end result is to get users to replace ink cartridges as frequently as possible.

    Perceived obsolescence

    Let’s say you bought a new phone, laptop, or some other item from a shop, and started using it. Then a few months later, the manufacturer releases a new version of that same item. Your first thought on seeing that new item advertised online or in-store was, “Oops, my current one’s out of date!”. And there’s the concept of perceived obsolescence in a nutshell.

    There are many kinds of everyday items, where people desire them for aesthetics instead of functionality. Clothes and shoes are two examples of these. Manufacturers regularly release new items that have various different cosmetic changes from previous iterations. For example, they change styles, patterns, colours, decals or motifs on a given item. This creates the illusion of a brand new item, when it’s really functionally identical to the old one.

    Withdrawal of product support

    When your item breaks down, you start looking for spare parts in order to fix it. But you find out on the manufacturer’s website that they don’t sell any parts for it. Then you notice that the item is end of life!

    Manufacturers define for how long they provide support for a given product. They can sell replacement parts, provide technical support, and make software and firmware updates available. After a defined period of time, they stop supporting the product and designate it as end of life. When it’s end of life, it no longer gets support from the manufacturers.

    Smartphone makers are particularly notorious for this. Many models from these OEMS only get software updates for a few years, if that. In fact, some smartphone brands don’t release software updates for their phones at all! As time passes, unpatched vulnerabilities in software and firmware can leave users susceptible to security breaches. The end result of product support withdrawal is to make people by new items much sooner than they normally would.

    However, sometimes it’s not actually manufacturers, but Governments, that push for planned obsolescence. This is legal obsolescence, where Governments enact policies to gradually phase out older products. For example, major cities such as London, Paris and Amsterdam introduced low/zero emission zones. They implement them to improve air quality by restricting or barring use of polluting vehicles. This can encourage people to replace older vehicles that have combustion engines with electric vehicles. Or, they may alternatively switch to using bicycles or public transport.

    Why it’s bad for the planet

    Planned obsolescence results in increased waste, as it makes us buy new things more frequently than we should. We allow manufacturers and brands to seduce us in this way through clever marketing, product placement and attractive offers. These encourage us to be wasteful by constantly hopping to new products, even after a short time using previous models! As a result, we consume so much resources that we’re harming the environment in the process.

    Manufacturers also waste valuable resources by making unnecessary changes to their products too often. These changes often serve little-to-no useful purpose for consumers, when the end result is essentially the same product. In turn, this feeds into the vicious cycle, further damaging the environment and amplifying climate change.

    Planned obsolescence also discourages repairing and reusing otherwise perfectly viable items, through various anti-repair measures. This tempts us to take “the easy way out” in replacing broken or worn items with new ones. If manufacturers won’t let us repair items that we buy and own, then we can’t learn how to repair them.

    All of this culminates in a “throwaway society”. We condition ourselves into always demanding the latest and greatest in everything we buy. And so, through this kind of consumerist attitude, we choose to use, discard and buy new. So much so that we end up forgetting that we should reduce, reuse and recycle instead…

    How we can tackle planned obsolescence

    However, it doesn’t have to be this way! We can do our bit to help reduce waste and protect the environment. One key way we can tackle planned obsolescence is through education. By teaching others how to repair their stuff, we can help them keep items working for longer. We can encourage them to make better consumer choices. For example, they can buy refurbished items or upgrade their existing unit, instead of buying new ones.

    Another key way is to push for legislation to tackle planned obsolescence and encourage right to repair. We can help support efforts to bring in new laws to ensure manufacturers provide long-term product support. Efforts to counter lobbying efforts to oppose right to repair by manufacturers and business groups are also important. We can also rally behind other people who support right to repair. These include notable YouTubers such as Louis Rossmann, Hugh Jeffreys and Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips.

    By fighting planned obsolescence, we can stem the tide of waste and ensure they don’t end up in landfill sites. You can do your bit too, by not buying new stuff when your old ones still work fine. And try to fix them when they do break. Together, we can push back against planned obsolescence!