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>... or was the enshittification of search inevitable? My bet is on the latter. Enshitification is a direct product of greed. No crafts person or creator I kno

>... or was the enshittification of search inevitable? My bet is on the latter. Enshitification is a direct product of greed. No crafts person or creator I know of goes into something they enjoy creating with the intent to make it this monstrosity of money extraction. Most creators have a drive for their creation to be shared and experienced by many. Yes, you may want to get a reward in the process and for some creators, their motives may change over time if they see an opportunity to turn their creation into a wealth machine for themselves so they can do whatever after. Enshitification I believe is a secondary effect of something that becomes successful for the owners of something and either they or others change motives towards value. Optimization is no longer about the creation, sharing, experience, humanitarian, whatever motive and shifts to money. The second that becomes the goal, enshitication is just part of the optimization journey. In my line of thinking, it's the same reason monopolies or near monopolies tend to form, these are merely further states along optimization strategies in the monetary/wealth extraction goal. Part of that process is that when something starts to succeed, it attracts people with these goals so the goal of something shifts pretty rapidly.

andrei_says_ 3y ago
This is beautifully written, thank you. As a creator, my money ambitions fit between “does this thing provide enough value to pay for itself” and “could this provide enough value to pay for my needs”. The drive to create the thing comes from sincere enthusiasm + excitement that simply don’t leave me alone. Shifting the thing’s purpose from the original one that filled me with enthusiasm to the purpose of simply extracting money, corrupts its original purpose. I call this corruption. it is my observation that one kind of people create, and another kind of people corrupt. Unfortunately the economic system we have accepted as normal, leans toward corruption and extraction.

andrei_says_ 3y ago

This is beautifully written, thank you. As a creator, my money ambitions fit between “does this thing provide enough value to pay for itself” and “could this provide enough value to pay for my needs”. The drive to create the thing comes from sincere enthusiasm + excitement that simply don’t leave me alone. Shifting the thing’s purpose from the original one that filled me with enthusiasm to the purpose of simply extracting money, corrupts its original purpose. I call this corruption. it is my observation that one kind of people create, and another kind of people corrupt. Unfortunately the economic system we have accepted as normal, leans toward corruption and extraction.