That's part of enshittification. Step 2 of enshittification is to entice in business buyers with low prices and changes that meet their needs. Step 3 is to cut costs and start price gouging to maximize profits.

[–] Clent@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Google is free to use. It still is. There is no price.

Facrbook, fee to use. Still is.

Both have been enshittified. There is no price being gouged.

The services they do sell are to advertisers, those costs are not being cut, they are focused on improving their targeting to attract more revenue.

Enshittification is a very simply concept; only product quality is measured. There might be price gouging but turn doesn't have to be.

[–] Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

You're missing half the point of enshittification. I'm just going to quote Doctorow directly:

"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net -1 points 16 hours ago

Counterexamples: Netflix without ads, Gamepass, Tinder.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 0 points 18 hours ago

I think the price being gouged by Google and Facebook enshittification is your time being wasted for their own benefit. Your time and attention is what they sell after all.