It has nothing to do with my own personal opinion on vulgar words. It's a basic understanding of how the political system works.
The name of a political movement matters. Always has, always will. It's no different for adjacent concepts that describe a phenomenon the movement is organizing against.
There's nothing more powerful than using the real word for how the companies are treating us.
Like shit.
The word spread in common usage about as fast as wildfire because everyone immediately knew what he meant. And the companies are too polite to even be able to say the word! If you can't swear in response to being degraded, pissed on, pissed off, used and thrown away, then you're the kind of sheep they want that they can abuse more and more and more and more and more and more and more without ever facing any consequence.
God forbid that rudeness is involved in collecting the power to stand up to it
I think I get your meaning, but it cuts both ways. The angsty populists of today celebrate the transgression, ie. showing bad manners, dumbing down language, or flaunting low concepts.
Giving something a derogatory name that the yellow press (or rather some Telegram group) can sling around to vent their frustration and fear could be a win in this place. Of course, leadership persons of such groups are usually just demagogues looking out for their personal gain, so it might just as well be another rallying cry leading to really bad policies hitting those that vote in favor the most. But such is the world today ;)
I can see this angle, and agree it can be useful as a word to center frustration around. But I don’t think that actually leads to real political change.
I disagree that your personal opinion isn't tainting your perspective. You presume that this name negatively affects the political movement opposed to enshittification - even when faced directly with the fact that sovereign governments are engaging seriously with the term.
> What laws have been passed that explicitly use vulgar words in their names?
Is that the argument? I understood your argument to mean that the term "enshittification" is holding back the movement because nobody will use it. As others are saying, I don't think there's any issue people take with some drop-in term being used if actual laws are passed discussing the topic.
Plenty of movements involving vulgar language, however, did result in laws being passed - "Fuck the Draft" comes to mind, the attitude surrounding which led to the draft ending (after all, why else would it end?), but also was a central fixture in a supreme court ruling that furthered defined 1st amendment rights in the USA.
So again, I just don't understand how one intellectual describing one aspect of the digital rights movement could negatively impact the movement as a whole, which I interpret as your argument.
There is a phenomenon that is very clearly happening. Doctorow and others use a vulgar term to describe this phenomenon.
Because this vulgar term is used, it limits the ability of lawmakers, academics, and other "serious" people to care about, discuss, or pass laws that aim to address this phenomenon.
As an analogy: imagine if the concepts of inequality or social injustice were primarily described by a vulgar term. Instead of discussing, "democratic backsliding" or "failure of democracy" we said "democracy shit the bed." This would limit the range of the critique, which if one is interested in actually solving the issue, is an immensely impractical move.
I don't understand, Doctorow of course uses enshittification all the time but I've see "platform decay" used plenty of times as well. But also, plenty of "Serious" people seem to be discussing it
ABC Radio National interviewed Professor Inger Mewburn, Director of Researcher Development at the Australian National University, and titled the interview "'Enshittification' and social media for academics" https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/saturdayextra/enshitt...
These are individual media articles, not laws, not academic papers, not think tank reports, or anything that has actual legislative influence. Note that I wrote:
> it limits the ability of lawmakers, academics, and other "serious" people to care about, discuss, or pass laws that aim to address this phenomenon.
Now, to be fair, I don't think the word is going to sink the whole attempt. But I think it's just juvenile and unhelpful. Why pick a word that is deliberately impractical, and then critique anyone that says, "I agree with your ideas, but maybe pick a more political-friendly name, so it's easier to do something about it?"
There is a whole branch of policy that generally covers enshittification, it's just not called that. Consumer Protection (laws, agency and enforcement) are the answer.
The name of a political movement matters. Always has, always will. It's no different for adjacent concepts that describe a phenomenon the movement is organizing against.