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Would you say profitability is an issue per se? It seems to me that users should _want_ their community platform to be profitable in order to sustain, but not
by jll29 3y ago
Would you say profitability is an issue per se?
It seems to me that users should _want_ their community platform to be profitable in order to sustain, but not "too profitable" (=greed) or the sense of community vanishes.
If that is true, is it the responsibility of the online citizen to interact/transact on a platform with the "right" degree of profitability (not too small, or it'll close tomorrow, but also not to greedy, or enshittification occurs)?
PS: How profitable exactly is "right" - reminds me of the family game where the winner is the "most average" person - scoring points closest to the arithmetic mean instead of the person with the max. score.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoThe problem is less "profitability" and more "increasing profitability". The problem is a publicly traded company, or a VC-backed firm trying to target an IPO, doesn't care about how much money a company makes today. They care about their investment continually increasing in value, which demands the company be growing in profits. Enshittification is a direct consequence of this mindset being applied to companies who reach something resembling market saturation. Once your user growth starts slowing down, you need to show that you'll continuously make more money per user than you did before. And that path can only lead to shit.