That's the crux of enshittification. Companies don't enshittify – making their once-useful products monotonically worse – because it amuses them to erode the quality of their offerings. They enshittify them because their products are zero-sum: the things that make them valuable to you (watching videos without ads) make things less valuable to them (because they can't monetize your attention).

Amazon’s own electronics are cheap, hard to repair or recycle, and destined for the shredder. How does this giant hardware maker get away with it?