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

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: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday January 27 2023, @02:43PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 27 2023, @02:43PM (#1288916) Journal

    Great first-glance. Let's look deeper. Elon believes in Free Speech

    Bzzzzzt. Elon does NOT believe in free speech. He just uses "free speech absolutist" to virtue signal. He doesn't believe in free speech and never will.

    THERE ARE NO FREE SPEECH ABSOLUTISTS.

    Just like there are no unicorns.

    Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk Pulls Down Documentary About India PM Modi [techdirt.com]

    There’s a new documentary, produced by the BBC about India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. [ . . . . ] And, apparently, it doesn’t make Modi look very good. I know this because India has banned the documentary. And is also demanding that clips of the documentary be removed from the internet.

    And Twitter (and YouTube) have complied.

    Elon has banned other things on Twitter that he personally did not like. So please don't tell me Elon believes in free speech. He just got triggered because someone he worships violated Twitter's well stated policies -- policies that the user agreed to -- and then that person got kicked off several social media platforms for willfully spreading dangerous misinformation.

    --
    Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
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