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Dedicated to antisocial behavior of social media corporations, censorship, algorithmic bias, filter bubbles, privacy and psychological effects of mainstream social media.

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Enshittification isn't caused by venture capital (pluralistic.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Critics of zuckermuskian media claim those services are so terrible because they're for-profit entities, capitalist enterprises hitched to the logic of extraction and profit above all else. The problem with this claim is that it doesn't explain the changes to these services. After all, the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun. They were useful. They were even great at times.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun

My brother, that's the entire thesis of enshittification. You optimize for user experience, at first, at the cost of HEAVY operational loss, and you offset that loss with venture capital. Competitors can't compete against a financially-unsound product, unless they play the venture capital game, too. Either way, you either outlast the other competitors, or you end up the last one standing, at which point you have to get the venture capital money paid back, and you can only do that by degrading the product to the point where it's actually financially viable. Usually worse than that, since just being profitable isn't good enough when you have a mountain of debt to pay off, to venture capital investors that demand infinite profit growth.

Yes, I'm aware this is a critique of the enshittification theory by the very guy who coined it, but that strikes me as a terribly bogus conclusion.