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I think it's just not possible for a centralized social media service to avoid enshittification long-term, at least not if it has to make money directly. It rem

by Zak 2y ago

I think it's just not possible for a centralized social media service to avoid enshittification long-term, at least not if it has to make money directly. It remains to be seen whether decentralized options can provide a long-term alternative at scale.

lmm 2y ago
I don't think decentralisation is the solution because the problem is as much the lack of central authority as the presence of it. Enshittification happens fastest on platforms that are run by committees, who know they need revenue so take the path of least resistance, without a single clear owner who can resist it. Look at Google's decline since its founders left, compare to Facebook which - say what you like about it - is much the same user experience that it always was. (Hell, look at MySpace for an even more dramatic turndown than Google) Social media sites that are still founder-owned or have strong individual leaders can continue fine (consider e.g. Dreamwidth). Though I guess whether you can sustain that past one person's lifetime is another question.
- Zak 2y ago
  This comment discusses only centralized services. Decentralized services run on protocols such that no one service provider or software project can dictate the experience for all users. ActivityPub, used by Mastodon, Misskey, Lemmy, and Pixelfed among others is an example of such a protocol. BlueSky's ATProto is another, though it's in an earlier stage without mature third-party implementations and service providers. Email, too is decentralized, though it may serve as a cautionary tale; spam, attempts to block spam, and feature stagnation have all degraded the user experience considerably.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    decentralization just multiplies the problem. instead of a gargantuan overlord, a million fiefdoms. it's no wonder that the fediverse is most active on the fringes, especially outside of tech bubbles who use it because they like the idea
    - Zak 2y ago
      I think this is part of what ATProto is trying to solve by decoupling identity provider, data provider, and labeling. That's not to say a million fiefdoms is necessarily a bad approach. A small server where all the members know each other is much more likely to be run in a way that's satisfactory to all its members than a big one. Furthermore, users have the option to maintain multiple accounts.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Decentralized services run on protocols such that no one service provider or software project can dictate the experience for all users. And? I guess that somewhat hinders enshittification just by making it hard for the platform to ever evolve at all. But the cure is worse than the disease, you can't ever build something new that way nor can you really improve something that has any level of traction. Look at how IRC users revolt when you try to fix even the most glaring problems.
    - vidarh 2y ago
      Mastodon, Misskey, Lemmy, Pixelfed are all very different, with different feature sets, supporting the same basic protocols, and evidence you can build something new on distributed protocols. ActivityPub dictates how to meditate relationships between activities on collections of objects, and a few default objects types. It's specifically designed to let you "subclass" (not really inheritance, and more composition as you give a list of types with no enforced hierarchy) objects so you can create new object types nobody else understands but still give them another type that allows them to carry out basic operations on it. It's not perfect but it's far from as dire as you make out.
    - Zak 2y ago
      So far the situation with ActivityPub is that the protocol is flexible enough to allow very different feature sets and user experiences. The most popular so far are twitter-like and reddit-like, with multiple implementations of each. I don't think ActivityPub was designed with the reddit-like use case in mind, yet it works well for that. There's no user revolt because the creation of new software with new experiences doesn't have much impact on users of existing software. Enshittification is hindered not because nobody could create a Mastodon fork (or green-field project speaking the same protocol) that's riddled with ads, but because people can select a different service provider and still access the same network.
  - lelanthran 2y ago
    > Decentralized services run on protocols such that no one service provider or software project can dictate the experience for all users. In theory, certainly. In practice, one instance dominates and all the other instances have to censor accordingly or die.
- mapt 2y ago
  Compare to Craigslist, or for a period of five or ten years after its inception, Google Search.
derefr 2y ago
But why does a social network have to make money directly? Why not start a centralized social-network service as a non-profit / benefit corporation, paid for by donation?
- krapp 2y ago
  For the same reason FOSS projects aren't funded in proportion to their criticality, and why taxes aren't voluntarily - given the option to use the service for free, most people will do so and choose not to donate. Any such project, to stay afloat, will likely end up depending upon a small number of donors who can then exercise political control over the platform. A social network has to make money somehow because it has bills to pay. Hosts aren't free. Servers aren't free. The cloud isn't free. Staff isn't free. Moderators are usually free but shouldn't be.
  - derefr 2y ago
    > A social network has to make money somehow because it has bills to pay. Hosts aren't free. Servers aren't free. Sure, but probably a FOSS social network would need far fewer of these than a paid one, because 99% of the server costs of something like Facebook or Twitter, go toward the backends, analytical DBs, and graphical / ML models used to power "features" that no user wants, but which make Facebook themselves money. And a FOSS social network would just... not build those kinds of features. Instead of, say, a feed constantly rebuilt to drive engagement and rage-bait, you'd just get a simple chronological feed of what everyone you're following is posting; with maybe the ability to dial down the number of posts you see from any given person you're following ("show me the only the most-liked Nth percentile of posts from this user") without unfollowing. But even that kind of filtering — in fact, even the merging of followed users' feeds! — could all be done client-side. The whole "feeds" part could be as simple as a post-triggered static-site-generator pushing JSON into an object-storage bucket hiding behind an edge cache.
    - krapp 2y ago
      That's basically Mastodon, which isn't free. Plenty of small instances that try the donation model or that are just funded out of pocket go under. And I may be wrong but I don't think the recommendation algorithms and other such features take up as much of the cost as you're claiming. I think a lot of the cost of something like Facebook is probably taken up by infrastructure and storage. Recommendation algorithms probably aren't that expensive.
dgb23 2y ago
Enshittification is not a necessary consequence for a sustainable business. But I think social media platforms are susceptible to forces that pull beyond that.
- numpad0 2y ago
  define sustainable - I mean, do non-growing businesses seem allowed to exist these days?
  - anticensor 2y ago
    Yes, they are. Not all forms of incorporation are like publicly traded joint-stock corporation.
ryukoposting 2y ago
It's inevitable as long as the model is "don't charge the users directly, figure out some other way to make money instead."

by Zak 2y ago

lmm 2y ago

I don't think decentralisation is the solution because the problem is as much the lack of central authority as the presence of it. Enshittification happens fastest on platforms that are run by committees, who know they need revenue so take the path of least resistance, without a single clear owner who can resist it. Look at Google's decline since its founders left, compare to Facebook which - say what you like about it - is much the same user experience that it always was. (Hell, look at MySpace for an even more dramatic turndown than Google) Social media sites that are still founder-owned or have strong individual leaders can continue fine (consider e.g. Dreamwidth). Though I guess whether you can sustain that past one person's lifetime is another question.

Zak 2y ago
This comment discusses only centralized services. Decentralized services run on protocols such that no one service provider or software project can dictate the experience for all users. ActivityPub, used by Mastodon, Misskey, Lemmy, and Pixelfed among others is an example of such a protocol. BlueSky's ATProto is another, though it's in an earlier stage without mature third-party implementations and service providers. Email, too is decentralized, though it may serve as a cautionary tale; spam, attempts to block spam, and feature stagnation have all degraded the user experience considerably.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  decentralization just multiplies the problem. instead of a gargantuan overlord, a million fiefdoms. it's no wonder that the fediverse is most active on the fringes, especially outside of tech bubbles who use it because they like the idea
  - Zak 2y ago
    I think this is part of what ATProto is trying to solve by decoupling identity provider, data provider, and labeling. That's not to say a million fiefdoms is necessarily a bad approach. A small server where all the members know each other is much more likely to be run in a way that's satisfactory to all its members than a big one. Furthermore, users have the option to maintain multiple accounts.
- lmm 2y ago
  > Decentralized services run on protocols such that no one service provider or software project can dictate the experience for all users. And? I guess that somewhat hinders enshittification just by making it hard for the platform to ever evolve at all. But the cure is worse than the disease, you can't ever build something new that way nor can you really improve something that has any level of traction. Look at how IRC users revolt when you try to fix even the most glaring problems.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    Mastodon, Misskey, Lemmy, Pixelfed are all very different, with different feature sets, supporting the same basic protocols, and evidence you can build something new on distributed protocols. ActivityPub dictates how to meditate relationships between activities on collections of objects, and a few default objects types. It's specifically designed to let you "subclass" (not really inheritance, and more composition as you give a list of types with no enforced hierarchy) objects so you can create new object types nobody else understands but still give them another type that allows them to carry out basic operations on it. It's not perfect but it's far from as dire as you make out.
  - Zak 2y ago
    So far the situation with ActivityPub is that the protocol is flexible enough to allow very different feature sets and user experiences. The most popular so far are twitter-like and reddit-like, with multiple implementations of each. I don't think ActivityPub was designed with the reddit-like use case in mind, yet it works well for that. There's no user revolt because the creation of new software with new experiences doesn't have much impact on users of existing software. Enshittification is hindered not because nobody could create a Mastodon fork (or green-field project speaking the same protocol) that's riddled with ads, but because people can select a different service provider and still access the same network.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > Decentralized services run on protocols such that no one service provider or software project can dictate the experience for all users. In theory, certainly. In practice, one instance dominates and all the other instances have to censor accordingly or die.
mapt 2y ago
Compare to Craigslist, or for a period of five or ten years after its inception, Google Search.

derefr 2y ago

But why does a social network have to make money directly? Why not start a centralized social-network service as a non-profit / benefit corporation, paid for by donation?

krapp 2y ago
For the same reason FOSS projects aren't funded in proportion to their criticality, and why taxes aren't voluntarily - given the option to use the service for free, most people will do so and choose not to donate. Any such project, to stay afloat, will likely end up depending upon a small number of donors who can then exercise political control over the platform. A social network has to make money somehow because it has bills to pay. Hosts aren't free. Servers aren't free. The cloud isn't free. Staff isn't free. Moderators are usually free but shouldn't be.
- derefr 2y ago
  > A social network has to make money somehow because it has bills to pay. Hosts aren't free. Servers aren't free. Sure, but probably a FOSS social network would need far fewer of these than a paid one, because 99% of the server costs of something like Facebook or Twitter, go toward the backends, analytical DBs, and graphical / ML models used to power "features" that no user wants, but which make Facebook themselves money. And a FOSS social network would just... not build those kinds of features. Instead of, say, a feed constantly rebuilt to drive engagement and rage-bait, you'd just get a simple chronological feed of what everyone you're following is posting; with maybe the ability to dial down the number of posts you see from any given person you're following ("show me the only the most-liked Nth percentile of posts from this user") without unfollowing. But even that kind of filtering — in fact, even the merging of followed users' feeds! — could all be done client-side. The whole "feeds" part could be as simple as a post-triggered static-site-generator pushing JSON into an object-storage bucket hiding behind an edge cache.
  - krapp 2y ago
    That's basically Mastodon, which isn't free. Plenty of small instances that try the donation model or that are just funded out of pocket go under. And I may be wrong but I don't think the recommendation algorithms and other such features take up as much of the cost as you're claiming. I think a lot of the cost of something like Facebook is probably taken up by infrastructure and storage. Recommendation algorithms probably aren't that expensive.

dgb23 2y ago

Enshittification is not a necessary consequence for a sustainable business. But I think social media platforms are susceptible to forces that pull beyond that.

numpad0 2y ago
define sustainable - I mean, do non-growing businesses seem allowed to exist these days?
- anticensor 2y ago
  Yes, they are. Not all forms of incorporation are like publicly traded joint-stock corporation.

ryukoposting 2y ago

It's inevitable as long as the model is "don't charge the users directly, figure out some other way to make money instead."