this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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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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Naturally, almost any time somebody claims to point out a trend they use a collection of cherry-picked examples.
This assumes the speaker is dishonest/motivated.
That's true in a lot of spaces here. And it's a bad thing. But it isn't true everywhere or of everyone.
No need to assume anything, just look for yourself at the examples given with most claims. You'll typically find one or maybe two solid ones, and a collection of much less impressive outliers added to bulk it up. A list of 5 reasons, even if 4 of them are weak, always seems to give an argument more weight than one reason. Cherry picking is totally normal. But what makes a claim really impressive is when you can go down their list of evidence and say yep, yep, yep... all good points. That's the kind of thing that changes my mind.
Ah; I understand you. Descriptive, not a defense or a normative statement.