Exactly. Capitalist platforms will all suffer from enshitification. They will eventually have to make money, and users are products. Their shareholders will eventually force the platforms to extract money from their users.
What do you mean, the users have already doing unpaid work for the platforms from the start. The shareholders simply take that for granted and think they can fuck them over and take twice as much value from them.
When we are talking about enshittification, we’re talking about these stages:
Initial Stage: When a platform starts, it needs users, so it makes itself valuable to users. It provides services that are beneficial to the users, attracting them to the platform.
Second Stage: Once the platform has a substantial user base, it starts to abuse its users to make things better for its business customers. It starts prioritizing its business needs over the needs of the users.
Final Stage: Finally, the platform starts to abuse its business customers to claw back all the value for itself. It starts taking a larger share of the value that passes between the users and the business customers.
That is, Reddit made it attractive for users to come and write content, and moderators worked for free, and Reddit loved that because they didn’t have to pay them. But lo and behold, they have to answer to their shareholders, so they came up with these restrictions to squeeze more money out of users and moderators.
And right now, because of Reddit entering the final (Digg v4) stage, the fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, & KBin) will shortly be entering the second stage. Keep the ad blockers and all shields up, be ready for brand deals, and “sponsored” federation.
Exactly. Capitalist platforms will all suffer from enshitification. They will eventually have to make money, and users are products. Their shareholders will eventually force the platforms to extract money from their users.
What do you mean, the users have already doing unpaid work for the platforms from the start. The shareholders simply take that for granted and think they can fuck them over and take twice as much value from them.
When we are talking about enshittification, we’re talking about these stages:
Initial Stage: When a platform starts, it needs users, so it makes itself valuable to users. It provides services that are beneficial to the users, attracting them to the platform.
Second Stage: Once the platform has a substantial user base, it starts to abuse its users to make things better for its business customers. It starts prioritizing its business needs over the needs of the users.
Final Stage: Finally, the platform starts to abuse its business customers to claw back all the value for itself. It starts taking a larger share of the value that passes between the users and the business customers.
That is, Reddit made it attractive for users to come and write content, and moderators worked for free, and Reddit loved that because they didn’t have to pay them. But lo and behold, they have to answer to their shareholders, so they came up with these restrictions to squeeze more money out of users and moderators.
And right now, because of Reddit entering the final (Digg v4) stage, the fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, & KBin) will shortly be entering the second stage. Keep the ad blockers and all shields up, be ready for brand deals, and “sponsored” federation.