1 Yeah, the management choices around Edge suck a lot. 

Separate but related topic, it is possible that a theorist who coins a term like 'enshittification' might possibly not really be interested in accurately describing and understanding whatever phenomena in question.

It is basically 'stuff is more bad' wrapped in social markers of intellectual activity, but encoding no other information.  It's a term that does not constrain your 'theory' from conforming to what ever you happen to need it to be at the moment. 

The Register's article contains evidence that the guy is actively doing this.  That being the claim that under regulation allows big corporations to charge prices below what new market enterers would need to.  The problem with this is that Amazon's barrier to competition is famous, and is requiring that online sales include local sales tax.  Which is regulation, and a small price increase for the customer, and a large cost increase for the vendor. 

This is precisely what many of the big corporations might have done, in order to ensure that their good old boy networks are able to prevent competitive surprises.

Further support for the 'fool or knave' model for Cory is the failure to note that when law is capricious and based on influence networks, a more powerful legal establishment means that big concentrated influence buyers are better equipped to get real effects from their desired legal outcomes. 

Garbage theory is probably partly downstream of garbage training in theory, IE universities. 

If you are a woman who does not want to be raped by a man, it seems like listening to feminists is the most counter-productive strategy.  If you are a black who does not want to have your home or business burned by 'white supremacists', listening to critcal race theory 'scholars' seems to be one of the most counter-productive strategies.  If you are an individual who does not want 'facists' to 'win', or does not want massive corporate bureaucracies dictating everything, listening to communists seems to be the most counter-productive strategy. 

2 I stopped taking Doctorow seriously in 2005, when he blindly repeated a nonsense story about a 30,000-calorie sandwich. He didn't bother actually reading the original before reposting it, or he'd have noticed that the calorie count included 2.4 quarts of deep-fry oil. Everything I've read from him since reflects the same lack of critical thinking skills.

-j

3 For me it was 2003 with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, where he obviously hadn't examined even the surface level of his premises.