The argument with pizza is more like "people like salty, fatty food, so pizza places are incentivized to make their pizza less healthy so that people come back more often"... which is exactly what happens!

So why doesn't a legitimately healthy restaurant come along and take the whole market? It's partly because restaurants aren't just in the business of selling (healthy) food: it's also about convenience and satisfaction and experience. More importantly, that just doesn't fit with how people largely make day-to-day decisions.

The same thing happens with dating apps. People get drawn in for all sorts of reasons that don't necessarily map to getting married, even if finding a long-term relationship is explicitly their goal. Tinder competes with Tiktok more than it competes with other dating apps.

The other problem is that making a really effective dating app is just hard. It's fundamentally difficult to help people find compatible partners, especially without in-person contact. That's compounded by cultural and demographic issues. It doesn't matter how well your app is designed when there's a massive imbalance in genders!

Consequence of the above is that marketing and anecdotal evidence are much more influential factors in purchase decisions than quality of the product. Using marketing campaigns to brainwash people is significantly easier (and cheaper) than improving a product enough for them to notice – especially if the product already has a zombie customer base that chooses a familiar brand out of habit rather than merit. We have built a world where money is valued over value, and making better products is often a terrible business strategy.

So the author's list of 'Why Stuff is Bad' should * certainly * include 'lack of anti-trust laws and enforcement'. Rent-seeking, anti-trust, regulatory capture should all be mentioned in this under-thought blog product.

Seriously, not mentioning useful regulation and standards as a countermeasure to the negative trends the author describes seems like willful blindness.

[1] Phoebus Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Oh, they do. But Match Groups buys it and either:

a) they get to cover certain niche of the market they weren't monetizing (Indiamatch, Chispa, Ldsplanet...)

b) they leave it to die so people move to other apps (Like OKCupid, the only app I know that has less features with every update)

Just check their brands [0]: Match, Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, Plenty of fish, Our time, The League...

--

  0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group#Dating_services_owned

A company's strategy, tactics, and individual decisions are always constrained by its competitors, customers, societal laws and norms, etc. For example, if a company faces a competitor that is grabbing market share by offering a cheaper product that is slightly worse, the company may have no choice but to lower the quality of its products so it can compete successfully.

Because there's at least two additional parties to concession revenues beyond the venue operator: the home team, who often takes up to 50% of the revenue, and concessionaires, who employ the servers and supply the actual food.

Venue operators and sports teams don't like the liability and cost exposures of serving food, so they farm it to a third party. And rather than carve that up into multiple competing vendors, most modern large venues hand it to a single hospitality company, who uses scale to lower costs and offer a lower share of revenue in exchange for exclusivity over all venue food service. Without competition, they can jack the price up.

Worth noting two things on the "why not raise ticket prices" angle: ticketing is moving in the same outsourced direction as concessions, and ticket prices are going up anyway (up >100% since 1999[1]).

> Across pro sports, Matheson says, teams are making the determination that "they can make more money selling fewer, more expensive tickets rather than lots of cheap seats."

Most venues have given up having their own box offices and farm that out to StubHub, TicketMaster, etc. Same motivations, same result: the venue spends less by contracting out ticketing, the team gets a bigger cut of the revenue, and the ticket vendors get exclusive control not only over selling the tickets but reselling them, with dark patterns like dynamic pricing and fees piled onto the buyer at every part of every transaction.

Both wipe out all competition on both quality and price. Everyone benefits from it except the consumer, who's the only party who can't choose. Apply that pattern to existing fanbases grown over generations during eras of better prices or quality and you get a captive audience who complains constantly but never quits spending, so there's no pressure to lower prices or improve quality.

1: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/23/nx-s1-5561909/ticket-prices-s...

Isn't this just your "information asymmetry" point over again?

The average user has no way to actually compare outcomes between dating apps - at best, they can run a limited A/B test on short term outcomes (do I go on a lot of dates? Do I click with my dates?), or they might have anecdotal evidence from the success/failures of their friends dating on the same apps.

Dating apps make this dreadful process much faster IMO.

I met my wife through one of these popular apps, but I had a process where I serially dated dozens of women over the course of years, optimizing for volume not for matching score.

Many girls I dated were great but it took years until I finally met the one I could actually marry.

In comparison my parents grew up in a small town and were pretty much set for marriage by their parents when they were very young. They spent almost 60 years together.

The key variable is how long that gap of time is. In the online dating example, if the dating app does a sufficiently great job you will never return. A milder version: if the used car salesman gives you great value, you might be back in 10 years. This creates very weak incentives for good service, so more predatory tactics dominate.

Like I'm not willing to pay certain prices for things like I fly less because the experience is worse than it should be, by a lot and I can't handle paying 10x more for the business class option. So I'm just stuck doing it. And there are plenty of people who are happy to do it still.

So you end up left with a rock and a hard place. Do I not travel? Do I not go buy that thing? Do I not do these things that would possibly add happiness to my life to fight price gouging? Especially when you know that for every 1 of you there are 6 other people happy to pay the price or buy the thing.

It feels like a lot of these big companies are just too big to fail at this point and abuse us for it.

Because this someone will start doing the same thing.

The article feels like a very naive perspective.

1. The miracle of markets (supply and demand, "the invisible hand," etc.)

2. The weakness of markets (incomplete information, monopoly, etc.)

How do I know if the competing app is actually better? I mean, this was the advertising angle for eHarmony about a decade ago - that it was much better than competitors at actually turning matches into marriages. But this claim was found to be misleading, and they were advised to stop using it.

Could a potential customer really get to the bottom of which site is the best at finding a real match? It's not like a pizza restaurant where I can easily just a bunch until I find my favorite and then keep buying it. Dating apps are like a multi-armed bandit problem, but you stop pulling arms once you get one success. So your only direct feedback is failed matches.

Psychologically, they also never admit they're at fault themselves.

People love swiping, but hate being swiped upon. Renters love complaining about prices they are willing to pay – and so on. How many consumers factor in customer support when choosing a carrier? None. They choose on price and then complain when the support sucks.

It's interesting that this article uses the restaurant industry as an example, because it is rife with examples of restaurants that debut to acclaim, enshittify their offerings, and then go out of business as their clientele evaporates. How many software products have gone the same route? How many were initially good, bolted on too many unwanted features, ignored their core audience, and ultimately lost their users to the next big thing?

It seems like something is missing in this fellows theory, and the answer is fair competition. Pizzaria's don't sell cardboard discs for $300 precisely because they become the worst pizza in town long before reaching that point. Restaurants that stay in business long-term are forced to limit their impulse to seek greater profits. They must maintain a level of quality that lets them remain competitive. That's a hard limit imposed by the market. Many choose to dance around on the boundaries of this limit. It's profitable, but risky. If you go too far and consumers abandon you, you can't just improve your product a little and expect them to flock back.

This is why big tech companies love to buy out, lobby against, and otherwise disrupt or obliterate their competitors. Competition is what places limits on profit-seeking enshitification. If you can establish a monopoly then you can enshittify to your heart's content. e.g. Google.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

It takes money to do that. And the money is already in the incumbent, and generating more money. The “free market” is an illusion, spherical cows. Capitalism collapses onto it’s own contradictions if left unchecked.

There are still mid size company that try to make a good product for a fair price, but I have the gut feeling that any company that have a board of shareholders will always default to this behaviour.

¿Por qué no los dos?

I live in New York. Season tickets at our stadiums cost as much as fancy cars, and concessions at these venues are eye-watering.

The simple answer is that folks are willing to pay for shite. The reasons they are willing to do that, merit further examination, but the fact remains. This goes for both individuals and organizations.

As long as that is the case, creating high-Quality product, is damn near impossible.

Quality costs. It’s actually significantly more cost-intensive to even marginally improve Quality, which puts organizations that produce high-Quality stuff at a disadvantage.

It’s really hard to stay in business, in a land where people are willing to pay for junk, unless you produce junk.

But...Pizza?

I have NEVER had any such problem. Subway puts what you want on the sandwich. You tell them directly. You watch them make it. If you ask for soggy things on your sandwich, it will be soggy.

I do not ask for soggy things on my sandwich. That is why I have never eaten a soggy subway sandwich, EVER.

I did have a fairly loud argument with one - only one - of their sandwich artists ONCE, who refused to microwave the bacon (add bacon to any sandwich for $0.50) before putting it on sandwich, per STANDARD SUBWAY PRACTICE. I finally walked out on the dirty bastard, but I did not file a formal complaint with Subway mgmt. I am a busy person. Maybe next time. Perhaps the sandwich would've also been soggy, had I agreed to uncooked bacon, which I will NEVER do, but I don't know why that would make it soggier.

But I digress: Soggy sandwiches have specific reasons. Wanting a cheaper sandwich is not one of them. Bacon will make your sandwich slightly crispier, if that helps. It also tastes EXCELLENT.

EDIT: To be clear, it is important to be SPECIFIC about how much of something you want. The average sandwich artist has a tendency to dump the contents of an entire bottle of a given condiment on your sandwich, which I admit, could cause sogginess. This is because they think they are doing you a favor. I often use bold & dramatic hand gestures while bent over slightly, face pressed against the glass enclosure of the sandwich-making zone. "STOP! RIGHT THERE!" I will yell, several times, if necessary. Then again, I assume everyone knows this. Or else now you do.

It took a lot of wrangling to get them to be safe. They were coffins on wheels for decades.

This one doesn't even fit

The dating example is an example of the Shirky principle. The others are not.

Who is "we"?

When was the public vote where a democratic majority of all airline customers rejected the idea? I must have missed the memo.

How much is that 3% in dollars?

Who came up with the initial seat number in the first place that the airline now "has to compensate" by raising prices?

The airline would reduce both revenue and costs, but somehow the raised prices only factor in the lost revenue and get to ignore the reduced costs. That's not even a question for the author?

I like pizza, but the usual is that you are getting 2 meals with one pizza.

People use to believe they would burn in hell for all eternity, now even their prayers are selfish.

LOL

You need OEM parts, or you can't simply buy a piece that broke, but you need a whole module.

The trend seems to be locking crap with software.

So in a way, while they improved greatly in terms of safety, maintenance and parts it's completely absurd.

The moment someone does things better, he can be ahead of the competition.

This also creates a perverse incentive to use the media to condition your customers to have bad taste.

The gap between noticing something is unsatisfactory and successfully doing something about it (capital, time, effort, risk, market share, …) is massive. It’s really only the second line they have to worry about. If the customer is unhappy but it’s too hard/expensive to switch, or there’s no other options, etc that’s really not a problem. It might even be good for “engagement” or whatever.

The gap is even wider when there’s extra barriers like network effect (dating apps) or legal rights (tv, movies, music). And the more things tilt in that direction - inherently cheap products with huge artificial moats - the more power they have. Every tick up of market capture fundamentally justifies another tick down in quality and/or an increase in price, when needed. This is just the ‘enshittification’ concept we’ve come to know.

Worst case, like another comment mentioned, when the market occasionally does produce something notable - let them do the legwork then buy it. And the bigger entities get the easier that becomes. They get harder to catch up to, while gaining more money and influence to purchase a competitor.

This isn’t 2005 where you can just make a social network or streaming platform with no consequences and take over the world. You’re not even allowed to make the app without permission.

AND as the article mentions, our only classical defense is ‘vote with your wallet’. Which presumes that a critical mass of people would be informed, willing, organized, and able to structurally boycott. Clearly we’re not equipped for that kind of economic warfare on every front from burritos on up.

And as the consumer continues to weaken economically, we actually get less power.

> But if they are actually doing that (which is unclear to me) or if they are bad in some other way, then how do they get away with it? Why doesn’t someone else create a competing app that’s better and thereby steal all their business? It seems like the answer has to be either “because that’s impossible” or “because people don’t really want that”. That’s where the mystery begins.

Pretty much all the article’s examples are known to be happening. As to why - it’s essentially because it’s impossible, just not because no one can code a dating app. Consumers have no real leverage. There is structurally no back-pressure on this in any way, by design.

I've read that Japanese companies focus on making great products and diversifying in order to expand. This is why Yamaha, for example, makes pianos and motorcycles. I believe that American companies hyper-focus on particular markets and try to squeeze every penny that they can out of them. Combined with the short-sightedness of quarterly targets and a lack of competition through things like regulatory capture, there's less incentive to create great products.

Business, particularly under capitalism (where ownership is detached from operation) is about making a profit, not making great products or services

So price discrimination, corner-cutting, price gauging, vendor lock-in, planned-obsolescence, monopoly power, are all tools to increase profits.

userbase and brandname is everything in dating apps, making it near impossible to start one without VC funding for a massive ad campaign (which will be the seed of the enshittification cancer if your platform blows up)

AKA because the competing business will have to invest so much to break into the dating app game that it will be impossible to leave that start up phase uncorrpted by the current big money powers that be.