Best explanation I’ve seen so far of why platforms like Reddit tend to get crappy after a certain amount of time.
This long, well-written rant talks a lot about how we end up in this situation. It really resonated for me. The more we have people trying to extract maximum shareholder value on the backs of all of us, the more inevitable the death of any centralized social media platform becomes.
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Wonderful piece of writing that takes the internet as a place for human connection so seriously; I almost teared up at the end. Thanks for sharing it with us!
Cory Doctorow is a treasure. One of the biggest shames for the internet over the past decade has been users flocking to proprietary corporate platform after proprietary corporate platform while they all ultimately meet the same fate in the end. At least this time around people are choosing FOSS non-profit alternatives in higher numbers.
Past two decades, you mean? (I’m still mad about the crowd choosing MSN Messenger over open protocol chat programs back in '00)
Eh, there were some floating around. XMPP was fairly common, as LiveJournal, Google, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Xfire, and lord knows what else all had varying degrees of support for it.
Take a look at Matrix.
Interesting read. It explains a lot. So Reddit is pivoting away from providing value to communities towards providing value to advertisers and (soon to be) shareholders#
Corporate-owned, for-profit platforms, I think you mean. No such thing has happened to Wikipedia, TV Tropes, or Debian. All of these have had their share of drama over the years, with many an angry declaration that it’s ruined forever by one questionable decision or another, but they’re still around and they’re not being intentionally made objectively worse for the purpose of monetizing users.
(I realize Debian is an operating system and not a website, but I mention it because its corporate-owned for-profit descendant Ubuntu is an example of non-website enshittification.)
For many years, even Tiktok’s critics grudgingly admitted that no matter how surveillant and creepy it was, it was really good at guessing what you wanted to see.
I never could get into Tiktok, but this is definitely true. It’s interesting to see that even communist-bound companies are still companies at the end of the day and will eventually go through the process the opinion post describes.
What I wonder now is if these federated communities are immune to this. For example, can I host an instance that publishes ads to subscribers feeds once I reach a critical mass of users? I would imagine, as the admin of this hypothetical instance, I could. So this “ensh*tification” process could happen even here. (I doubt it will though… for a while at least)
What I wonder now is if these federated communities are immune to this. For example, can I host an instance that publishes ads to subscribers feeds once I reach a critical mass of users?
Yes, this is a thing an instance admin can do, though some Fediverse platforms make it harder than others. A very large chunk of the Fediverse is then going to defederate with that instance because they hate that shit. So in this regard, there is at least some counterplay in that users still have a decent amount of control over their own destiny. If one big instance goes to shit, the other instances can still maintain their standards and aren’t forced to abandon the platform if they don’t like the trajectory of one particular instance. Users of the big instance who don’t like said instance’s approach also have the option to migrate to other instances, so they’re not held hostage.
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This nails how platforms like Amazon, Facebook, TikTok, and now Reddit, shift from user-focused to hardcore profit-chasing. I can’t say that “Enshittification” is my favorite word, but the essay paints a convincing picture of the web overrun by monopolies. It’s a worthy read if you’ve been feeling used by these platforms lately.
Anyone have a link to bypass the paywall?
Thanks!
This was a good read. Heard about this article for a while, as well as a mention of it on the WAN show and then later on Mastodon. Sums up neatly in my opinion why social spaces should not really be run by private companies, and instead by individuals.
As for Amazon… not sure what the solution for that would be, but the current situation benefits neither customer nor seller. They’ve practically monopolised retail outside of groceries imo
Good read!
