Discussion
A bigco techie I was DMing with described the current state of the web as a “tragedy of the commons” (per Wikipedia: “…if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether”).
I think this is actually a better description of now than “enshittification”; because if creative people stop publishing to the web, that depletes the “pasture”. Human creativity & passion is no longer valued.
@ricmac I can see it as both things. But specifically enshittification to me is someone buying up then selling a commons back to us, while also undermining the plot making the whole thing unstable.
Creatives see this bizarre bazaar and look for another place to go.
The web without these large corps is akin to an infinite commons…. It’s too bad it feels like we are all vying for resources on a few large plots
@booc0mtaco
@wtrmt @wjmaggos
Also, I keep thinking about this Wired piece on Ed Zitron (who, btw, I am NOT a fan of):
“You see something getting shittier and shittier, worse and worse, you see your authentic engagement with the core product just sort of dying, you see a shittily rotting thing, and you have this moral instinct that, therefore, it will all come crashing down.” But the crash rarely ever comes. It didn’t come for Facebook or Twitter.” https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-ed-zitron-profile/
The rot won’t stop.
@ricmac @booc0mtaco @wjmaggos The platform stops being a reference, it keeps working, but for a diminishing audience, or now it serves a different audience.
It's hard to identify how many people vs bots are driving those engagement numbers.
It exist as a place to publish advertising.
They become myspaced, and are so huge due to consolidations, that their half life does take a while.
The only one that's still relevant is WhatsApp (IMHO). Let's see what happens to it.
@ricmac I see both phenomenons running in parallel:
- The big platforms decided to enter, all of them at once, in late stage enshitification, and AI is a new helper in that effort.
- The AI companies decided to nuke the commons to get easy money, and now they can't stop. They are exploiting both the open web and social media platforms.
Creative people are getting caught up in these two, to the point where it makes little sense to share anything of value.
the incentives are to create content for big tech platforms. to work for them. to get promoted by their algos and paid by them. we have a fedi coming together re an fair playing field for discovery, but we all need to come together to make #WebMonetization happen too. #PublicPatron
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