Is software enshittified?

Cory Doctorow's notion of enshittification not only really caught on but has been durable. If what I see and hear is representative, many people (including tech people) still think about software this way: software is getting worse and there are special economic forces pushing it to get worse. I am not an economist, but: From a strictly cultural point of view, the stickiness of this idea is fascinating. People seem drawn to the idea that traditional forces of incentives and profits don't apply to software, and that these forces are user-hostile in nonobvious but important ways. The main mechanism Doctorow proposes is that network effects are so powerful that services enjoying network advantages can exploit their users. This seems most relevant to me indirectly: these services tend to be free, so the available ways to "raise prices" involve degrading the experience (e.g., by showing more advertisements or trying to capture more of the economic value that happens on a platform). I…