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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Bluesky is working on a subscription. (www.theverge.com)

submitted 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/enshittification

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Well that didn't take long. Looks like they're going the discord route and locking uploads + basic customization behind a subscription. You know, because we don't already have enough of those.

Bluesky is working on a premium subscription that will add features like higher-quality video uploads and some profile customization options.

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[–] donuts 47 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

If they want to keep existing they are going to need to make money somehow. Cosmetics and power user features without any ads would be the most favorable, right?

It's that or donations, I guess. But with the people running it, I don't think they'd crowdfund a lot of money.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

If only there was an already existing federated microblog that somehow figured this out a decade ago! Maybe BlueSky and ATP would work better if, you know, it wasn't entirely centralized as it currently is.

[–] donuts 16 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Definitely. The fact that it's centralized will eventually lead to ads anyway. That's why they can't throw millions at something like Mastodon or Lemmy, because then they can't control it when it's mass adopted.

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

I feel you can support a few thousand users as a hobby. Hundred of thousands, rapidly trending towards millions? Get the fuck out of here. I’d question your motives quite a bit harder if you were running a social media site at a loss and seemed to have no true desire to change that.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Mastodon supports over 10 million accounts because ActivityPub is actually decentralized instead of BlueSky/ATP's "I have the concept of plan."

[–] the_toast_is_gone 8 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Mastodon itself gets about $21,000 per month through Patreon alone, and Mastodon.world gets about $900 per month. They're not running the services for free. Also, there are currently just under 1 million active users - a far cry from the 10 million you quoted.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

If they were a true decentralized platform they wouldn't need to worry as much about monetization, but that never really was what they cared about. It's another centralized corpo dom daddy that you suckers will fall for time and time again.

[–] the_toast_is_gone 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

One would think that, if they wanted to be a "centralized corp dom daddy," they wouldn't have added federation to the software. It's not like there's a massive market for federated social media in particular that rivals that of Big Tech platforms. Most people have no idea what federation even means, and they don't care.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago

We have yet to see any decentralization of Bluesky, and I doubt we will.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

They get quite a bit of money from donations. At least, .world and .social used to when I checked last year. I don’t see bluesky getting the benefit of charity.