Doctorow's definition of "enshittification" has always rubbed me the wrong way. Platforms oscillate between good and bad for all sorts of reasons, and the best platforms (imo) live and die on the culture of their userbase. There have been truly godawful social media systems out there, like Nintendo's Miiverse or the old Dark Souls message system (or even HN, in a way). They're still immensely fun to use, though - mostly because of the culture of their userbase. You could argue they might leave if their surpluses are directed back to the shareholders, but many of these platforms don't need much surplus to exist in the first place. The $40 billion Twitter valuation is a joke, it's undeniable that there is some form of imposed value outside of what the company is actually worth. In other words, the enshittification of TikTok correlates directly with the enshittification of it's userbase. Same goes for all of these other lowest-common-denominator platforms.
Plus, his examples seem to contradict his thesis:
- Mobile app stores have always been controlled by their vendors, there is no illusion of non-shittification there
- Steam has no real shareholders, and exploits suppliers to cater to users and and themselves
- Facebook has a half-dozen different platforms that have all arguably launched in pre-shittified states
- Twitter lives a constant repeating lifecycle of enshittification and resurrection, mostly because most people can't be bothered to find an alternative
It all feels like trying to unify these concepts under one formal thesis of shit is a bad idea. Our expectations of the internet are constantly changing, and our cultural landscape is shifting to realize that we've had a pretty raw deal for the past decade. Now we want to lash out at the platform-holders, when deep-down we know that we're partially to blame.
I just wish Doctorow didn't use this idea to peddle the idea of helplessness to Twitter/Tumblr/Whatever users. There are alternatives, TikTok should not be the be-all-end-all of internet interaction anyways.
> There have been truly godawful social media systems out there, like Nintendo's Miiverse or the old Dark Souls message system. They're still immensely fun to use, though - mostly because of the culture of their userbase.
I think large, modern, free social like TikTok are often built to be more to be advertiser-friendly, and that prevents such a culture from emerging in the first place. Curation and moderation -- natural ways are to form a bond or culture with other users are prevented by TikTok since the default feed is a stream of videos (and according to the article, selectively controlled by ByteDance). Another thing that these platforms are sneakily controlling is hyperlinking itself -- you cannot actually post a link in a comment on TikTok or Instagram.
> There are alternatives, TikTok should not be the be-all-end-all of internet interaction anyways.
Well, hopefully users read the article and discover new ones! Not sure how old you are, but my understanding is that TikTok and Instagram are pretty much the places to be for teens and college students in the US -- they are basically the Facebook for this generation. And you can't even post a hyperlink on Instagram.
There's no resurrection to Twitter, its been a cesspit since day one, it's just that there's no meaningful competitor.
I'll agree on Steam - it has its problems, but the users, as a rule of thumb, don't hate it. It works, its reasonably convenient, most users don't get burnt by its policies, and nobody wants to install crap like Origin and UPlay.
Look, I hate Twitter. I've tried using it 4 different times over the past decade and it never stuck with me.
For everyone else though, it's like digital crack. It was the place to be for a while, even though it's users would chafe over minor changes. And of course, there was the original Cambrian explosion of microblogging movies and blind dates and garage sales and haircuts et. al... mostly replaced today by politics and related vitriol.
It's 100% the fact that there is no meaningful competitor, exacerbated by people being lazy and distrustful of other private platforms. And good - these people should be wary, and Cory Doctorow should be on his soapbox telling people how to live in a post-social-media world rather than riling them up to go yell at clouds online.
> For everyone else though, it's like digital crack
I'm not sure Twitter ever was a universal thing. I barely know any people in real life that actually use it. It's only tech nerds/people working in media, and the others don't exist in real life because they don't go outside. It's easy to ignore Twitter drama completely, because nobody cares about Twitter except the people that use Twitter.
Instagram and TikTok however really did capture the mainstream.
IMO, part of having a social platform actually retain quality long-term is not ever making it too good. You've got to discourage the masses of people who mainly post memes, puns, and jokes to everything if you want the people who actually make insightful posts to stay around and write posts, and for them to be visible and upvoted.
Reddit is kind of an example of both - how low-quality the discourse is in big default subs and on their new interface and app, and how quality is still retained in some places with much smaller memberships with users who mostly prefer the old UI or mobile apps that are more friendly towards reading and writing longer posts.
> There have been truly godawful social media systems out there, like Nintendo's Miiverse
Miiverse was never going to be the next Twitter… but then, Nintendo didn’t want it to be. It was a pretty niche thing, but for its niche it was unique and clever.
You might think it was godawful, but I wish there were more experimental networks out there like it.
Yes, as an abstract hypothesis it would need to be proven each time. A historian could write a long article giving extensive evidence about how well it applies in each case. That’s how you’d do it if you wanted to be taken seriously, and you might run into complications like each service evolving somewhat differently if you pay attention to the details. Real history is complicated.
But most people won’t want to bother with that. We will often just call something names if it seems right to us. That’s how words (and in particular, insults) normally work.
So, another way to look at this is that Cory Doctorow came up with a middlebrow justification for calling things shit, and people liked it enough to ask him to write more about it. The justification isn’t necessary though. You could just call it shit, and it’s pretty much equivalent. (Although it leaves out the generic anti-capitalist ideology.)
Plus, his examples seem to contradict his thesis:
- Mobile app stores have always been controlled by their vendors, there is no illusion of non-shittification there
- Steam has no real shareholders, and exploits suppliers to cater to users and and themselves
- Facebook has a half-dozen different platforms that have all arguably launched in pre-shittified states
- Twitter lives a constant repeating lifecycle of enshittification and resurrection, mostly because most people can't be bothered to find an alternative
It all feels like trying to unify these concepts under one formal thesis of shit is a bad idea. Our expectations of the internet are constantly changing, and our cultural landscape is shifting to realize that we've had a pretty raw deal for the past decade. Now we want to lash out at the platform-holders, when deep-down we know that we're partially to blame.
I just wish Doctorow didn't use this idea to peddle the idea of helplessness to Twitter/Tumblr/Whatever users. There are alternatives, TikTok should not be the be-all-end-all of internet interaction anyways.