I think that's a good take. Market pressure for durability decreases with brand awareness. Though I think the article argues there's little market pressure regardless.
I'm also worried it's all survivorship bias. If you acquired 100 items in 2010 and 5 of them lasted until 2025, it's hard to say if the 5 surviving would be the same 5 from another household or if the items you still have were all on the hardier end of that particular items quality distribution. Another house with 100 items from 2010 will have a different 5 remaining in 2025. If that's the case, the chance you'd buy those 5 again and even have 3 with the same 15 year life span is (1/20)^3 (I think. is that math right?)
Survivorship bias is an important thing to consider, but the weird thing about it is that although sometimes (usually?) people have a blind spot for it, other times I think it gets used as a kind of "just so" explanation for degradation in quality because it's hard to refute.
My experience with clothing kind of suggests it's not just survivorship bias. I once had a pair of pants that lasted maybe 10 years or so with regular washing, each use (yes I know, not ideal, I don't do that anymore), and I had to replace them. When I ordered a new pair, from the same company, same model, I noticed the new ones didn't last nearly as long, maybe 2 years, and seemed thinner. I emailed the company about this, and they acknowledged that they had made the fabric thinner, and even gave me the old and new fabric densities. I think clothing is one area where new brands have come in to partially move the needle back toward quality a teeny weeny bit, but experiences like that, tracking the actual material quality of the same products over time, leads me to conclude it's not always just random survivorship bias.
I wouldn’t mind that much if switching to another brand/model would solve the problem. But sometimes I order half a dozen of the most well-reviewed alternatives, and they are all worse in some way in comparison.
This comes up for me most often with running shoes. By the time the model shoe I've loved wears out, it'll be out of production and the n+1 iteration re-balanced whatever decisions to make the shoe a worse-for-me fit.
(It's tempting to think the big-sneaker cabal conspires to ensure consumers are perceptually exploring options)
I'm also worried it's all survivorship bias. If you acquired 100 items in 2010 and 5 of them lasted until 2025, it's hard to say if the 5 surviving would be the same 5 from another household or if the items you still have were all on the hardier end of that particular items quality distribution. Another house with 100 items from 2010 will have a different 5 remaining in 2025. If that's the case, the chance you'd buy those 5 again and even have 3 with the same 15 year life span is (1/20)^3 (I think. is that math right?)