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Tiktok's "Enshittification"

posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 25 2023, @03:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the circle-of-life dept.

owl writes:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

[...] Search Amazon for "cat beds" and the entire first screen is ads, including ads for products Amazon cloned from its own sellers, putting them out of business (third parties have to pay 45% in junk fees to Amazon, but Amazon doesn't charge itself these fees). All told, the first five screens of results for "cat bed" are 50% ads.

This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 26 2023, @02:19AM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday January 26 2023, @02:19AM (#1288633)

    Help me please, I am a good Christian Nigerian Prince who has been cast out by evil men in my country. I have a considerable fortune tied up in the U.S. banking system and I humbly ask your assistance in retrieving it. For your troubles I will reward you with 10% of my US$247 million balance. All we must do to retrieve my fortune, and your fee, is give me your account number...

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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday January 28 2023, @07:06PM (1 child)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 28 2023, @07:06PM (#1289105) Homepage Journal

    In Europe it's pretty routine to give people your bank number, so that they can deposit money in it.
    So the normal practice isn't to write a cheque to pay someone; it's to send your bank a request to transfer money to their bank.
    It has the effect of eliminating NSF cheques.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 28 2023, @08:35PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday January 28 2023, @08:35PM (#1289117)

      Oh, this is just the first step, the ones that respond to this are far more likely to take the next step and pay a "small fee" to release the funds.

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