How TikTok, Amazon, and other platforms go through “enshittification”, helping users before abusing them to help business customers, then abusing those as well
Sadl find myself disagreeing more and more with @doctorow these days but this is worth a read. He is directionally right of platforms increasing “take rates” but a) the answer to this is actually in decentralization and b) competition + capitalism. https://pluralistic.net/...
Excellent stuff. “Today, Facebook is terminally enshittified, a terrible place to be whether you're a user, a media company, or an advertiser.” Also true of this place. https://twitter.com/...
Great piece in Wired by @doctorow. But enshittification eventually causes the company to die, so isn't in the best interest of the company. It's definitely not maximizing shareholder value or long-term profits. So why does it happen? 1/4 https://twitter.com/...
In which @doctorow explains his grand theory of why big tech platforms all get worse over time: their market logic means they inevitably end up abusing first the users and then the business customers on whom they relied for their success. https://www.wired.com/...
“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.” https://www.wired.com/...
Why all social network companies degrade to junk. This is one of the best pieces I've read in years. And pay attention to the game Amazon is playing. https://www.wired.com/...
This rambly article could be edited down to about half its size, but it makes very good points about the cycle of sites like Amaz, FB, and TT becoming worse and worse for their users due to company choices pushing stuff at you instead of showing you what you actually want. https:…
New word: “enshittification,” coined by @doctorow: “Once you understand the enshittification pattern, a lot of the platform mysteries solve themselves.” First they cater to users, then business customers, then claw back value for themselves. https://pluralistic.net/...
In the #enshittification cycle, a #platform lures users with a good deal at first, then it lures business customers (advertisers, sellers, creators) by handing them the #surplus; finally, it takes all the surplus for itself, creating a pile of shit: https://pluralistic.net/... 1/…
Tiktok “is just another paperclip-maximizing artificial colony organism that treats human beings as inconvenient gut flora. It is only going to funnel free attention to the people it wants to entrap until they are entrapped, then it will withdraw that attention to monetize it.” h…
“Google Search was based on principles set out in founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin's landmark 1998 paper, ... in which they wrote, “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.” 😳😳 https://twitter.com/…