by Trouble_007 on 7/6/23, 4:22 AM with 266 comments
by wunderland on 7/6/23, 7:04 AM
> Most Twitter users barely tweet and don't care about followers - a "heavy user" tweets on average less than three times a week. So if someone is posting regularly enough to be willing to pay $8 a month for a blue tick, but has not built up a sizeable following organically, this is a very strong signal that the posts they are producing are no good.
> It is exactly that content that Twitter's new model relies on promoting - and those newly-minted blue ticks are quickly learning that there is no magic behind the checkmarks. New followers are not magically heading their way. The problem wasn't a biased liberal algorithm, it was that their tweets are no good.
> That means lots of blue ticks stop paying - but everyone else is forced to read the low-quality content that the remaining blue ticks produce. This is what is powering the enshittification of Twitter.
(From: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/the-slow-sad-death-of-twitt...)
by DrScientist on 7/6/23, 11:31 AM
Ie a lot of these are the equivalent of giving away free ( investor funded ) banana fritters, getting decent uptake and using it to declare that the market in banana fritters is huge, but when you start to charge for them it turns our the market is quite small.
Another way the business models don't work is the companies start off assuming no costs around policing - like a shop with no security whatsoever. Works fine for a while, but as it grows and people realise it's got no security they start to get targeted, and costs go up.
by _eypq on 7/6/23, 6:13 AM
It's head scratching to users and outside observers, but the incentives are such that there is pressure to grow on a quarterly basis, get those charts looking good and individuals in the management chain are doing what they can to optimize their career growth leading to short term decision making at the cost of users and customers.
The big picture thinking and long term decision making are incredibly hard. Very few companies are able to do this over the long term. Micosoft and apple are doing great currently and it will be interesting to see how stripe and openai navigate this process.
My current opinion is that only small founder owned companies or foss organizations can avoid this trap over the long term and it involves not trying to squeeze out every last bit of value. Both of these require a certain level of financial security + there's the opportunity cost vs just going the vc route.
VC funding is incredibly valuable and it opens up a lot of possibilities that small orgs can never hope for. I guess what I'm saying is: expect enshittification and enjoy the ride while it lasts and then jump ship when trouble starts. Jumping ship becomes incredibly hard with network effects, so that's the challenge we are seeing with social media companies now. Also once companies become too big to fail, it's a drag on society.
Personally I would still go the VC route since I don't have a few million lying around and tell myself this is just the cycle of life (for corporates) to avoid existential questions and going down the rabbit hole of questioning everything around me. Sorry about the disconnected thoughts.
by Trouble_007 on 7/6/23, 4:22 AM
"Enshittification" - Wiktionary : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification
Cory Doctorow - Enshittification : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Enshittification
I downloaded the podcast from here (mp3) : https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/audio/01/jo/...
by javajosh on 7/6/23, 8:47 AM
by amatecha on 7/6/23, 5:29 AM
by yarg on 7/6/23, 6:42 AM
This seems to be universally true, and when it becomes apparent that advertising doesn't work and isn't profitable, dark patterns are the best that you can hope for.
Short of a company having the internal need for a generally useful distributed communications platform, as well as a willingness to release it relatively freely, I struggle to see how this gets resolved.
by ggm on 7/6/23, 6:00 AM
* autotesting music for 'hit worthy' == music blandifies to the bangers and you never get interesting voices any more. but .. it works (for profit)
* kindle genres like 'in the style of' and the tendency to more and more but worse and worse in fiction because.. it works (for profit)
* politics descending to the lowest grab, not the highest goal.
by ftxbro on 7/6/23, 5:17 AM
by andyjohnson0 on 7/6/23, 8:22 AM
by resuresu on 7/6/23, 11:07 AM
The internet was the mysterious wild west, Now its just a boring corporate meeting room.
by brezelgoring on 7/6/23, 5:48 AM
In the first, cash is burnt/used to give free goodies and provide good quality services. Rents are a byproduct and not a goal during this phase of the operation, the goal here is to build goodwill and market share through measures that the competition can't match. All in all, it is a good experience to use the service during this stage.
The second stage of the operation is all about rent-seeking. Portions get smaller, ads are deployed in full force, all of the bridges in and out are lifted so value can stay inside the ecosystem. Prices in general go up and it is time to cash out all of that goodwill and market share for money. Owners and founders generally sell during or before this stage, as the business will lose consumer confidence and competitors will gnaw at its heels until it becomes just another bad app/store in a very saturated market.
I remember reading a multiwork series on The Office (US) and it used terms like 'psychopaths' and 'sucker' to describe how organizations grow and die when the 'psychopaths' at the top decide to cash out, I'd point to their exit as the turning point in my text.
I can't back up what I feel with books or research, just what I've seen by looking at the progression of big businesses in my country. Apps, burger boutiques, consulting firms, even the furniture builder guy that lives around the block, all of them went through this cycle.
by cschmidt on 7/6/23, 10:21 AM
by OscarTheGrinch on 7/6/23, 6:11 AM
Managers need to feel powerful, hire more managers.
Managers need to meet their performance targets or just want to carve their own little Mt Rushmore face in the product, wacky user hostile decisions ensue.
by fzeroracer on 7/6/23, 10:17 AM
Family owned businesses, employee owned businesses, privately owned businesses etc all manage to better avoid this problem because they don't have to listen to outside voices telling them grow or die.
It's not enough to be profitable and successful, but also you need to siphon as much value out of consumers as you can so you can pass along the money to these vultures. Then once the company has picked everything dry, they write it off as a failure and move on.
by christophilus on 7/6/23, 1:20 PM
No point to this comment, other than that I find it interesting how these things spread.
by ChrisArchitect on 7/6/23, 6:12 AM
by smoldesu on 7/6/23, 5:39 AM
I don't like the word enshittification. People glom onto it because they like shaking sticks more than solving problems, and Corey Doctorow is excellent at exploiting that desire. It's annoying how he enables that sense of defeatism when he's obviously aware of resilient and game-changing alternative software (like FOSS) that has revolutionized the world in his lifetime. Putting pearls before swine makes for nice fiction, but it's a bad tool for explaining real life phenomena like this.
"Enshittification" is a very fun and usable thesis. It also obfuscates the problem and fetishizes it's own victimhood instead of enabling users to resist lock-in.
by nologic01 on 7/6/23, 7:47 AM
by sturadnidge on 7/6/23, 6:14 AM
1. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/co...
by jononomo on 7/6/23, 11:06 AM
by karmakaze on 7/7/23, 5:34 PM
None of this should come as a surprise though and we can merely see it as one mode of capitalism working as intended. The problem wouldn't be nearly as bad if the companies were family owned rather than by venture capitalists and investors.
by RandomLensman on 7/6/23, 7:38 AM
Classic literature: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095101
by FrustratedMonky on 7/6/23, 12:07 PM
It is Moloch again, driving to lowest common denominator, what is the worst thing we can do (cheapest), that people will still buy.
Twitter was never a bastion of democratic free speech, and was never going to be, they were always a corporation selling advertising.
For a brief time when Trump was on twitter, a lot of people got riled up and though it was supposed to be a free 'town square' of discourse. But, it's just advertising and eye-balls. I think Musk got caught up in this 'free speech and democracy' hype and thought Twitter was more than it was.
by sharas- on 7/6/23, 11:18 AM
by fsckboy on 7/6/23, 9:23 AM
The word "enshittification" seems to be a Maxwell's Daemon designed to concentrate all the stray negative thoughts into (this) one huge snipe session.