Hey everyone, I see a lot of people throwing around the term “enshittification” to describe the long-term and systemic decline of many of the centralized social media platforms, most recently Reddit. I commented this elsewhere, but thought everyone might benefit for reading Cory Doctorow’s original article coining the term. The first sentence here sums it up nicely:
“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’m a big proponent for tracing and crediting the origins of ideas, and I think this one speaks to a lot of people right now. For all its flaws and occasional user-unfriendliness, I think the main draw of the Fediverse is an escape from this profit-driven cycle.
You can also follow the Mastodon account for Cory’s blog @pluralistic (yay federation!).
I wonder if we could find a better word than “enshittification”. Maybe something more descriptive?
@narF I doubt it.
I’m asking because some people (ex: my mom) would react badly to using such word just because there’s “shit” in it. But with a different word, she might get it and use it.
I’m not good enough in english to find something better…