Lemmy.World

Many more Apps will suffer the same fate. Capitalism is good for progress and innovation but unrestrained greed is bad for everyone.

A healthy, delicate balance between capitalism, socialism, government oversight and user freedom sustains a healthy sustainable growth, a commentary that extends to the real world, beyond Apps and the internet.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/487849

"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 didn't know Cory Doctorow was still around, but he is, and he's spot-on. It's an extremely insightful analysis of why Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Slashdot, Digg, and now Redhat and Reddit, tend to go down the exact same inexorable-business-logic pathway which makes their platforms less and less useful over time until people abandon them.

Eye-opening article from Wired's Cory Doctorow on how Amazon pushed competitors out of the market and forced sellers to sell with them, all WITHOUT violating anti-trust laws. Amazon is a perfect example of subtle "enshittification".

Did I mention that AMZN is a big-time corporate supporter of Planned Parenthood? Supporting Planned Parenthood, which is just another corporation that happens to sell human body parts along with its many other revenue streams, is just one of the ways that AMZN corners the market, concentrating their customer pool over time and ensuring that YOUR money doesn't go to your children or your chosen charities through tangible and intangible inheritance, but straight into their corporate pockets, where it will never come back to communities, charities and families. Families are not their most valuable profit centers. Single, desperately lonely 40 year olds living in condos are. It's in their best interest to keep you buying at the store of everything, distracted, frightened and compliant. It's hard to break away from their tentacles, but this year of our Lord 2023, let's promise our loved ones that we will work a little bit harder to find funny socks or a baby shower gift. We can all do better, because Doctorow's piece about what Amazon has become sounds like an analysis of an abusive relationship.

Very good read about what's seemingly happening to every web platform right now