> But what was created as "ride-sharing" was in fact a way to 1) destroy competition and 2) make a shittier service while people producing the work were paid less and lost labour rights. It was never about the social!

Framed this way, sure. But for the most part, I like Uber. The competition it "killed" was monopolistic and stagnant, and the "shitty service" was the legacy taxi industry that Uber forced to modernize. Yellow taxis got phone apps and credit card processing devices because Uber forced them to keep up.

I remember trying to order a taxi to the airport 15 years ago in one of the most populated cities in the world. I had to look up taxi companies on Google, call their dispatch, and ask for a ride. 40 minutes and several calls later, none arrived, so I had to call a different company's dispatcher as I scrambled to catch my flight.

Now, I've called countless taxis with the push of a button in several countries. I get an estimate of pricing and arrival times up front.

For me, Uber/Lyft is an incredible service. I'll leave the labor rights discussion for a different thread. (inb4 a HN contrarian jumps down my throat about this.)

But that was a long winded way of saying: to me, the author's analogy seriously weakens his point. I could argue that highly personalized entertainment is way better than 800 cable channels of bleh. We still have plenty of non-enshittified communication (I text and call and Whatsapp and Telegram my friends).