I'm assuming this is in the scope of this community since Newgrounds was founded almost 30 years ago, tho I did notice posts here focus more on the small we than on bigger websites, so sorry if this post is perceived as inappropriate.

Newgrounds is a site for posting art, animations and games where I've had an account for a few years and I quite enjoy it. Since last year it's been becoming more pressing about asking for donations and morphing into a kind of "premium" model, where only donators get access to some stuff. I'm feeling a bit conflicted because I tend to shun sites with this model, but I also kinda understand that it might be necessary since hosting all that content probably costs a lot. But then again, it must have been costing a lot for a long time, and this comes up surrisingly close in time to the enshittification of Twitter and Reddit. Does anyone have any thoughts? Or maybe some more background knowledge about why Newgrounds has been making these decisions now in particular?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

$5 says the problem is the ad revenue they were living on has dried up and/or dramatically shrunk.

This has happened to a LOT of sites, and a more niche site like newgrounds probably doesn't command high rates, so they have to figure out how to fund themselves now.

Edit: Also, I don't think sites asking you to donate/pay for features is "enshittification". If anything, getting revenue from you, the user, is a hard counter to enshittification.

Enshittification is exploiting you for the benefit of capital: you become the product, and are pimped out to anyone who wants to pay.

If you're the one paying for the service, you're maintaining the relationship as a customer, and you keep the power in that dynamic, which is a power 'free users' on enshittified platforms don't have: you can take your money and leave, and that will actually hurt them.

This isn't globally true, of course - what is? - but telling you they need money to keep the site up and offer you a method to pay and provide something for your money is very very honest compared to what most of big tech pulls.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, I was applying the term "enshitification" directly to Reddit and Twitter but not to New grounds... Or rather, I had some doubt on whether or not New grounds was the same phenomenon as the others or something more legitimate (and your comment confirms that it's the latter)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Doesn't Tom Fulp still own it? As far as I know he's pretty open about things and generally approachable. Might be worth sending him a message on Twitter/X/Whatever social media site, assuming there isn't already a blog post or forum thread where he talks about the changes.

I'd imagine that the site is having funding from ads dry up over time now that flash is dead and they get less traffic. I'm impressed that it's still around.

It might be blind nostalgia, but Fulp is one of the few admins I would trust not to go to the dark side, so to speak. Then again, m00t sold 4chan, which I never could have imagined.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Hey, whatever they need to get away from their dependence on ad revenue.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Better to pay than be bought and sold yourself. Anyway, it's not like you can't change your mind later.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I suspect flasb animations were smaller?