Like many people I'm here because of reddit going to shit. Twitter has increasingly been shit. gycat is shutting down in September. To me it seems like lots of bastions of social media are crumpling, but as a previous active reddit user, I've been personally effected. Is this just a frequency illusion or has something changed in...
YouTube disallowing adblockers, Reddit charging for API usage, Twitter blocking non-registered users. These events happen almost at the same time. Is this one of the effects of the tech bubble burst?
This is a slight tangent now, but Tik Tok's Enshitification by Corey Doctorow describes another great example of long-timeline corporate "playbooks" or patterns that are... not good but increasingly common. That's where Reddit seems to be going unfortunately, but at least we can see why.
Or as Cory Doctorow calls it - "Enshittification". They're now in the second stage - open the gates for other companies to market to Discord users:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
I mean there's Reddit ofc, as well as Twitter in its entirety, Discord is implementing some dumb updates, there are issues with Tumblr as well as everything to do with Meta, and I'm sure there are plenty more (and I haven't even touched other digital media, for example the Sims). Why is it all happening in the span of about a...
As a phenomenon you'll see a lot of people call it "enshittification." The term seems to originate with Cory Doctorow who writes, "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
They’ve also made a lot of shitty decisions. Reddit decided to invest in NFTs when they had cheap money. That’s been about as successful as a lead balloon. That also burned a bunch of user good will in the process. Meta went all in on VR and the Metaverse. They’ve admitted that’s been a bust. This seems more like an A and B with A being cheap money evaporating and B being bad decisions.
I’m reluctant to call the latest Reddit thing enshittification, but it really seems like they’re between steps 2 and 3.
On a slightly different note, does any think enshittification will be the word of the year?
Defederate from threads/meta
Hi guys,...
Are lots of websites really going downhill and/or closing or does it just seem like it to me? (kbin.social)
Like many people I'm here because of reddit going to shit. Twitter has increasingly been shit. gycat is shutting down in September. To me it seems like lots of bastions of social media are crumpling, but as a previous active reddit user, I've been personally effected. Is this just a frequency illusion or has something changed in...
Why all of a sudden tech companies are not being favorable to their users?
YouTube disallowing adblockers, Reddit charging for API usage, Twitter blocking non-registered users. These events happen almost at the same time. Is this one of the effects of the tech bubble burst?
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Google execs admit users are 'not quite happy' with search experience after Reddit blackouts (www.cnbc.com)
Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.
IMF reports inflation driven by corporate profits (www.imf.org)
Is kbin.social anti-corporation? Should it be? (kbin.social)
I'm seeing discussions on other instances about how a "federated" corporate instance should be handled, i.e. Meta, or really any major company....
Discord is opening the monetization floodgates: get ready for microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes' (www.pcgamer.com)
Is this the beginning of the next tech bubble bursting? (kbin.social)
Original take found on another forum....
Why does it feel like we're at a point where every social media + other digital media are making shitty decisions and falling apart?
I mean there's Reddit ofc, as well as Twitter in its entirety, Discord is implementing some dumb updates, there are issues with Tumblr as well as everything to do with Meta, and I'm sure there are plenty more (and I haven't even touched other digital media, for example the Sims). Why is it all happening in the span of about a...