this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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from Cory Doctorow's article on 'enshittification', which has become mandatory reading.
That was a good read, the thing is that it seems that all of a sudden a lot of tech companies are getting more and more anti-consumer. I mean it’s not only the whole Reddit and Twitter thing, now Youtube is getting more aggressive with adblocking, Stackoverflow and their mod protest, Google dropping support for the open source diaper and messaging apps on Android…
Many companies are getting more aggressive against their customers, and in the end it feels like the internet as it used to be is really dying, and we might end up with the whole “dead internet theory” becoming reality. I don’t know it just feels very depressing.
If you haven't already, I suggest reading Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media, a blog post by Catherynne M. Valent. (It's actually referenced in the article above.)
It's long, funny, and angry and damn, did it strike a chord with me. It was written in December, '22 so pre-Reddit meltdown but still very relevant to it.
Some highlights include:
It does end on a hopeful note, though.
OMG those quotes mention so many of my early internet memories. Dreamwidth. And before that, Livejournal before it sucked. And Diaryland. And Diary-X. And egroups. I miss those days so much. Twitter and Reddit weren't the first to jump the shark, by a long shot.
I cannot read that and feel how short-sighted it is. The death of online communities due to money sucks. But how about the actual death of physical people and their physical communities due to literally the exact same thing? It seems douchey to complain about capitalism killing message boards and not connect the idea at all to how it has been killing everything on earth since humans became a thing.
Here it is: good ol' "Whataboutism", I almost had hope that one discussion could survive without someone going "wait, what about this other thing that people know and probably care about, but is completely irrevelant to the current conversation at hand?" but ah well, today just wasn't the day, I guess.
Seriously tho, to borrow your first sentence: I can't help but read something like "But how about the actual death of physical people and their physical communities" and think...are people just incapable of caring about two seperate issues of different scales at the same time? I don't know, maybe I'm weird because I don't suddenly think of the all starving people around the world and bring them up when the topic of the closing of the food joint a couple of blocks down gets brought up by the regulars...
Interest rates. Money isn't free anymore. It's still not super expensive but it's 5x more expensive than what it used to be since 2008.
This is the answer. The age of free money is over and now we are seeing the effect; rampant inflation and high interest rates. The chickens come home to roost, always.
As a result, the burn rate and runway is starting to be factors in all businesses that aren’t making a profit.
Yep, VCs are unwilling to just fund any old thing hoping they'll hit the lottery right now when money is "expensive".
Thank you for answering the "why now, and why so suddenly" part. I've been really confused by this, too. Expensive money makes a lot of sense.
2022-'23 really has been the year of enshitification
But I think it all started with Tumblr
A few companies open the floodgates and takes a lot of the blame, flak, and focus (see: Netflix, Twitter). Other companies can seize the moment and ride the wave to potentially increase profits with less blowback than they might otherwise receive.
I mean Netflix has the community and producers thing and all but starting charging money for shared accounts and offering a cheaper version with adds is not really enshittificstion to me.
The deliver a service I pay for. That's ok.
I think you mean dialer.
Many companies are realizing they can screw their users over and turn a profit for their actual bosses, the shareholders. Whether that's true only time will tell.
With all the distributed social networks getting popular only among tech-literate people it feels like we're getting a reverse- Eternal September as well.
Oh no, they are getting more friendly to their customers. The thing is, you’re not the customer, the ad companies are the customers. You’re the product they’re selling. And they want to improve the product by controlling it more.