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Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

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Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#121

Post by ClumsyPilot »

fsckboy wrote: post #101
wunderland wrote: post #65

A perfect example with the recent changes at Twitter: > 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 exactl…

> enough to be willing to pay $8 a month you realize $8 a month is nothing to the majority of adults who would be in the "knowledge worker" category? a month? a couple of coffees is $10 and that's a day.

Lets see, for $8 a month I can subscribe to a real Journal, like Which. They hire proffesional writers, fact check their content, buy actual consimer products and test them. And they are a charity to boot.

Or I can pay Elon for delivering tweets that he got some rando to write for free. The latest content is a right - wing conspiracy that nuclear weapons do not exist, and thay video footage of nuclear ezplosions is staged.

https://join.which.co.uk/join/subscribe

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#122

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Proven wrote: post #88
wunderland wrote: post #65

A perfect example with the recent changes at Twitter: > 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 exactl…

Garbage "analysis". Heavy users I follow tweet more than 3 times a day. > The problem wasn't a biased liberal algorithm, it was that their tweets are no good. No, it was a biased algo that's still being removed (as recently as 2-3 weeks ago they discovered another throttle which was impacting many users, including Elon). The main problem is that all centralized platforms have to deal with government-mandated censorsh…

> government-mandated censorship in large markets such as the EU

Twitter censors nudity and pornography, and import American neo-puritanism to the rest of the world. No-one in EU mandates this.

But american brain is incapable of putting two and two together, they have it wired into their brain that opression cannot be private, only government.

If modern right-wingers existed in 1500, they would be defending the rirht of a feudal lord to sleep with your wife because he isnt a government and your signed up for it when you were born as a peasant.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#123

Post by capybara_2020 »

glun wrote: post #72
_eypq wrote: post #44

I've been thinking about how enshittification, venture capital, shareholders and the life cycle of a company are in some ways related. Any company that has external investors is bound to go through this cycle of - building a great product - taking in external funding money - growing and then either being acquired or going public (or more commonly shutting down) - then all the head scratching decision making starts It…

This only happens when the users are the product or its a marketplace. Most business models dont suffer from shittification. But VCs love investing in the ones that do.

It seems to be happening everywhere. Give the worst product you can get away with while using marketing to get people to keep upgrading before they realize how bad the product is. While progressively lowering the quality of the product each year. "Planned Obsolescence" is the physical product equivalent of digital enshittification.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#124

Post by ClumsyPilot »

pjc50 wrote: post #107
Proven wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garbage "analysis". Heavy users I follow tweet more than 3 times a day. > The problem wasn't a biased liberal algorithm, it was that their tweets are no good. No, it was a biased algo that's still being removed (as recently as 2-3 weeks ago they discovered another throttle which was impacting many users, including Elon). The main problem is that all centralized platforms have to deal with government-mandated censorsh…

I'm interested to know what your examples of content would be that is (a) good and (b) banned by "government-mandated censorship in large markets such as the EU". > relatively more impacted than social networks that focus on art and have no political content Funnily enough a lot of artists also want uncensored platforms so they can post NSFW art, but this is completely orthogonal to the political questions.

> uncensored platforms so they can post NSFW art, but this is completely orthogonal to the political questions.

Its not orthogonal, the center of american politics is neo-puritanism. This is specifically the attitude of american elites, and they force it on the rest of the world. They deny access to banking and payment to anyone who does not comply.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#125

Post by cubefox »

rsynnott wrote: post #118
wunderland wrote: post #65

A perfect example with the recent changes at Twitter: > 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 exactl…

I'm still amazed they went with the $8-for-attention model. Everyone _already knows_ this doesn't work well; the dating site industry has been trying to make it work for literally decades. It's also kind of a Pandora's box; even if they removed the attention boost, the taint is already there, and people will be suspicious of bluetick replies forever.

They get also other features like longer tweets and editing.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#126

Post by rightbyte »

ralph84 wrote: post #100
rightbyte wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is some sort of scam I think. The shareholders don't have the detailed knowledge and insight into the everyday work so the managerial class can squeeze out a dime for a dollar of some hard to measure asset like consumer trust or whatever. Also, I got this feeling bigger shareholders might think they are smart and part of the scam and that they will jump ship (sell the stock) before smaller shareholders notice. I g…

> bigger shareholders might think they are smart and part of the scam and that they will jump ship (sell the stock) before smaller shareholders notice Absolutely. Decades of “you can’t beat the market” propaganda has created a large class of “investors” whose only strategy is buy all of the stocks and hope for the best.

"It is hard to beat the market without insider info" is not as catchy.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#127

Post by trabant00 »

lmm wrote: post #82
_eypq wrote: post #44

I've been thinking about how enshittification, venture capital, shareholders and the life cycle of a company are in some ways related. Any company that has external investors is bound to go through this cycle of - building a great product - taking in external funding money - growing and then either being acquired or going public (or more commonly shutting down) - then all the head scratching decision making starts It…

IMO: Consumers will adapt to the reality, as humans always do. Once people adjust to the fact that popular brands are generally strip-mined for profit, brand loyalty will drop and keep dropping, consumers will become warier of lock-in, and the enshittification playbook will be less and less effective.

There's always going to be room for an un/poorly regulated gold rush somewhere somehow. If we drop the loyalty to major brands they will open small proxy ones and flood the market. Just an example.

I think there's a cultural problem. Companies are made of people not papers. It's people that are pushing for profits no matter what. And as lots of money with no value get made, the value of the money drops, so you need more of it. So people start thinking in terms like "I have a family to raise so fuck principles", "If I don't do it someone else will" and so on.

I'm not talking about major figures, people always focus on those. I'm talking about regular people who have no problem working for an online casino for example when they know a significant portion of their customers are underage.

So we are adapting, but in a downward spiral. That's how I see it.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#128

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

cubefox wrote: post #125
rsynnott wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still amazed they went with the $8-for-attention model. Everyone _already knows_ this doesn't work well; the dating site industry has been trying to make it work for literally decades. It's also kind of a Pandora's box; even if they removed the attention boost, the taint is already there, and people will be suspicious of bluetick replies forever.

They get also other features like longer tweets and editing.

Far, far more than that, now. The ability to organize your own feed via Tweetdeck is also being limited to blue checks, as well as security options like MFA.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#129

Post by djmips »

javajosh wrote: post #102

Enshittification is a (very good) name for when you start off with naturally non-scarce information resource, and later impose artificial scarcity on it in order to make the moneys. It's like building a theme park, and only later adding walls and a turnstyle that checks for tickets. Of course people are going to hate you for doing that.

That's a really nice metaphor.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]

#130

Post by gadders »

_eypq wrote: post #44

I've been thinking about how enshittification, venture capital, shareholders and the life cycle of a company are in some ways related. Any company that has external investors is bound to go through this cycle of - building a great product - taking in external funding money - growing and then either being acquired or going public (or more commonly shutting down) - then all the head scratching decision making starts It…

15 years ago I bought a ride-on lawn mower that gave me 12 years of service, but was getting a bit long in the tooth.

I decided to buy the next model up from the same company, not knowing in the mean time it had been bought by a PE company and the quality had gone to shit. The mower is bigger, but the engine is smaller and they are notorious for blowing a head gasket any time the mowing blades stall out.

I was thinking of starting a web register of all PE PortCos (private equity portfolio companies) so people would know to treat the products with caution as the main way of reducing costs seems to be a) sacking people and b) cutting corners on product quality.

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