this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
40 points (84.5% liked)

Enshittification

1567 readers
1 users here now

What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
40
Fediverse enshittification (self.enshittification)
submitted 1 month ago by 5dh to c/[email protected]
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?

Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Enshittification results from Capitalism. More specifically, it's caused by corporations seeking to always increase their profitability by squeezing their customers for as much value as they can.

The very nature of the Fediverse is resistant to this for a few reasons:

  • The Fediverse and most of its infrastructure is open source and copy-left licensed. This creates an immune response that always allows both devs and users to easily leave bad platforms/services for better ones. There is no vendor/provider lock-in.
  • The Fediverse is distributed. Unlike centralized platforms that concentrate power and influence into smaller and smaller groups/decision makers, the Fediverse is spread wide accross thousands of servers in many different parts of the world with no centralized organization or group that controls them.
  • The Fediverse is not designed for monetization. The motivation for the Fediverse is in large part, to create an open and inclusive space for communities of many kinds to connect. Most instances and projects are supported in large part or completely by donations.

The Fediverse is like a rainforest. It's a lush, vibrant, and chaotic ecosystem with thousands of different food chains and micro-ecosystems within it.

There are large fires and die offs sometimes, but new things grow out of them, and every part of the system is interconnected with other parts.

Proprietary social media platforms like FB, Insta, Xitter, etc. Are like a curated garden, where a small team of gardeners wall off a section of land, pick what kinds of plants are allowed to grow, and kill off anything else that they don't want in there.

[โ€“] 5dh 4 points 1 month ago

The Fediverse is like a rainforest. It's a lush, vibrant, and chaotic ecosystem with thousands of different food chains and micro-ecosystems within it. There are large fires and die offs sometimes, but new things grow out of them, and every part of the system is interconnected with other parts. Proprietary social media platforms like FB, Insta, Xitter, etc. Are like a curated garden, where a small team of gardeners wall off a section of land, pick what kinds of plants are allowed to grow, and kill off anything else that they don't want in there.

I really, really like this analogy. I spend my time in the online jungle!

load more comments (4 replies)