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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]

#141

Post by Chris2048 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #121
fsckboy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

> Or I can pay Elon for delivering tweets that he got some rando to write for free

I thought the $8 for Elon was for publishers, not consumers?

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

#142

Post by Chris2048 »

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.

But dating is a totally different context; and Bumble (dating/bff) seems to be doing OK at the moment for charging more than $8.

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

#143

Post by lmm »

trabant00 wrote: post #127
lmm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> If we drop the loyalty to major brands they will open small proxy ones and flood the market. Just an example.

The point is those small brands won't be trusted. People will make more effort to check reviews, or demand stricter warranty laws, or the like.

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

#144

Post by trabant00 »

lmm wrote: post #143
trabant00 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> If we drop the loyalty to major brands they will open small proxy ones and flood the market. Just an example. The point is those small brands won't be trusted. People will make more effort to check reviews, or demand stricter warranty laws, or the like.

The reviews are already useless. We had plenty of discussion here about that, won't go into details. Again, it was just an example, don't get stuck on it, there are a million ways to fool the public because:

1. There is just too much information to obtain to make an informed decision. There is not enough time for a regular customer to dig into all that. We know these things because we are insiders. That's why you need regulation bodies made of experts to pass legislation to protect the customer.

2. The information gatekeepers are the same who are pushing the enshittification. Where are you going to search for better service? On Google's search engine. Who processes the reviews and decides which to show, which to flag? Again, Google, Amazon, etc. You can not rely on their tools to help you inform about their service. This is why we need regulations about search results.

In conclusion we can not simply rely on customers adapting.

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

#145

Post by hotpotamus »

gadders wrote: post #130
_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 thinki…

I have an old cohort of co-workers who I went through the PE experience with and we pretty much use PE ownership of a company as a heuristic to avoid buying their products. Duracell batteries would be an example. A list would probably be helpful but depressingly long.

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

#146

Post by Fricken »

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.

In Canada the once beloved brick and mortar retailer Mountain Equipment Coop shittified itself straight to (pandemic) bankruptcy hard and fast not long after the Harvard MBA types got their hands on the business. MEC was late to the party. Much of mall retail had already shittified itself ages ago.

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

#148

Post by resuresu »

The internet is so lame and boring now days, its become so predictable and routine. I remember the internet back in the 90s and 00s, it was a completely different place, it felt massive and mysterious like each door you opened led to a another universe with all kinds of stuff going on, discussions on any topic you could fathom were taking place 24/7 all the time. Now we have discord servers with hundreds of users but no one speaks.. the cool myspace culture that promoted individualism and self expression has been replaced by the souless uniformed facebook experience. Rather than being able to speak your mind you have to walk on egg shells everywhere you go now as to not upset the corporations or status quo mentality.

The internet was the mysterious wild west, Now its just a boring corporate meeting room.

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

#149

Post by troupo »

yarg wrote: post #68
troupo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The need to have a for profit platform leads to perverse incentives. The need to have profit is the goal of any business. The problem isn't that. The need for profit has been entirely replaced with the need for continuous unimpeded growth. Which is decidedly not the same thing, but no one cares anymore, and profit doesn't even come into equation anymore.

When the goals of the customers and the goals of the company are at odds, things will never work out long term. But I disagree that the continuous growth model is the cause, although I certainly believe that it frequently adds fuel to the fire (growing a company when it's making a loss on a per customer basis frequently leads to accelerating death spirals as well as all manner of desperate measures).

> But I disagree that the continuous growth model is the cause,

When is the last time you've heard a company evaluated on profits (the actual measure of a successful business) and not on growth (of random metrics)?

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