Enshittification

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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.

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Fediverse enshittification (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/enshittification

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

if an admin becomes tempted with letting sponsored content to filter into the network, they will face defederation and an diaspora of their users.

that's why it's also important to support your server admin financially so they don't have an incentive of looking for third party financing in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I very much agree. But what if a very important Lemmy community is on a server that decides to allow sponsored content or something similar, it'll be hard for the community to move. Maybe Lemmy should implement tools for moving communities when it's necessary.

[–] Draconic_NEO 4 points 1 month ago

Allowing for mods to be able to move communities is definitely something that is needed, though the same could also be said about moving accounts and their post history. Neither of which has much work done and isn't considered "important enough" by any of the platforms, even Mastodon which is relatively far along compared to Lemmy doesn't consider moving accounts and their post histories to be worth while.