Pluralistic: Bluesky and enshittification (02 Nov 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net

"I’m not on Bluesky and I don’t have any plans to join it anytime soon. I wrote about this in 2023: I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will

When a platform can hold the people you care about or rely upon hostage – when it can credibly threaten you with disconnection and exile – that platform can abuse you in lots of ways without losing your business. In other words, they can enshittify their service."

  • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will

    i’ve done this so many times since the 1990’s (before it was called social media) and i think seeing history repeat itself on the lemmyverse because of the liberal/leftist divide is the first warning sign.

    Like: when your service is on the brink of being shut down by its investors, who demand that you compromise on privacy, or integrity, or quality, in some relatively small way, are you really going to stand on principle? … it’s leverage that enshittifies a service.

    i think that this is the key part of the story. every time i left a social media platform it was because of this with reddit being the most recent example. the defederation-happy instances have already started using their leverage from their userbase size and once they start getting money, the enshitification will take off and i want to believe that it isn’t the first nail in the coffin for the lemmyverse.

    at least the fediverse will like still be around, like the article says, after they’ve captured legal control of the lemmverse and i find myself looking for a new platform again.