Archives for 2024

Let’s review Cory Doctorow’s definition of the enshittification cycle:

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.

His definition doesn’t quite capture the driver behind this cycle, which is the expectation by Silicon Valley investors that a company will control an entire market (“disruption!”) and generate billion dollar returns for million dollar investments.   Still, he’s pretty much spot on about the disease if not the cause.  The point that nobody makes about these enshittified Silicon Valley behemoths is that the invisible hand may strike a few of them down.

Since we’ve been traveling for the last couple of years, I’ve been a first-hand observer of the decline of ride sharing, house sharing and payment systems:

• Uber and Lyft were cheap in the beginning, now they’re about as expensive as a cab used to be. In smaller towns, I’ve had long waits for ride sharing since few drivers were working.  This is because driving for L/Uber is a terrible deal, and drivers lose money when they figure in wear and tear on their car.  In larger towns, the I’ve ridden with a U/Lyft driver who was renting the car from someone else and doing a shit job driving.  After a concert, the L/Uber drivers showed me what a ride would cost on the ridesharing system, then offered to take a little less in cash if they drive you “off app”.  All of this is sketchy as fuck and brand destructive, but since there’s no real alternative to L/Uber now that the taxis are gone, it’s gonna suck for a long time.  I’ve only seen a non-L/Uber future in one place:  Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is apparently too small for U/Lyft to colonize.  Thunder Bay had an independent ride sharing company with its own software and payment system that worked fine.  When all the AI bullshit is stripped away, L/Uber offer an app to connect you with a driver, as well as some minor guarantee that if the driver does something wrong, you’ll get your money back or insurance will pay out.  It doesn’t take a billion dollar company to do that.  Maybe if enough towns thrown them out, we’ll see a rideshare system that fairly compensates drivers and doesn’t put customers in danger, but I’m not holding my breath.
• Airbnb has priced itself out of the market.  I’ve been on the road for a couple of years off and on, and I’ve stayed at about 3 Airbnb’s (and a lot of hotels). Airbnb properties just don’t make financial sense for a short stay for two people when compared to a hotel, due to the Airbnb fees and cleaning fees.  As with ridesharing, Airbnb makes the property owner take all the risk.  Owning an Airbnb property might make financial sense if the host is willing to do some of the work.  But, many hosts have bought their Airbnb property as a “passive investment,” so they hire property managers and cleaning services to do the work of renting and cleaning their “investment.” There are too many middlemen taking a cut for this to be competitive.  For longer stays, or families/parties where a whole house makes sense, an Airbnb can be financially competitive compared to a hotel.  But for stays of a month or more, there are services like Furnished Finder that simply connect landlords to tenants and let them work out the financial deals.  I thought that rising interest rates would be the death knell for Airbnb, because their hosts who are using Airbnb to pay the mortgage were going to get caught in a squeeze when their adjustable rate kicked in.  But it looks like the lower interest rates of Joe Biden’s terrible economy (/s) are going to save Airbnb for the short term.  Longer term, between cities hating how Airbnb contributes to the housing shortage, as well as the ability of hotels to undercut Airbnbs for some stays, I don’t see a bright future for a trillion-dollar Airbnb, but what do I know?
• Venmo, which was the most common way for people to split checks or pay a landlord, has shat itself spectacularly.  The other day I tried to pay my landlord and my transaction was rejected, even though I’ve paid for other things successfully for years with Venmo.  Searching online, this seems to be a common event.  Apparently, Venmo’s “AI” for detecting fraud is broken, and their new owner PayPal isn’t motivated to fix it.  I solved this issue by paying a few days in advance with a paper check — you may have heard of this new technology.

Anyway, my approach with all of these “disruptors” is to take advantage of them when they’re giving some of their billions away, and then avoid them if all possible when they start moving up the enshittification ladder.  Sometimes you still have to take a Lyft or rent an Airbnb when traveling, but I also carry around a bike to ride instead of using a ride service, and stay in a hotel if at all possible.  I don’t think I’m the only one, so I’m hoping to see at least one of these behemoths get slapped down by the invisible hand.

Travel Enshittification ChroniclePost + Comments (204)