this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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You do know that there were static ads on the pages, right? And the whole aggregate viewer data thing? They were never producing the service for free; they had regular old advertising and metrics to sell to fund it.
What they didn't have were garbage intrusive unskippable video ads before and during the video I wanted to watch.
And times change. No one is paying top dollar for a static ad.
What they also didn't have was positive cash flow.
And decent video quality, do we want to go back to the days of 240p?, cause that's the only resolution a static banner ad model can support.