"The incentives for the software to be good no longer exist" = perfect statement of product/UX/UXR existential crisis. I like to believe the pendulum swings back but can't deny the long-term reality of enshittification, esp now that non-software companies have copied it as their "growth" model.
@spavel.bsky.socialThis is also where user research is headed unfortunately - it was tolerated by people whose goal was to simply build software, but now they can skip directly to their preferred outputs. The incentives for the software to be good longer exist.