this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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IDC about your conspiracy theories, and love that my software is improved by telemetry, ads are made more efficient to keep prices down, and developers of my favorite programs get paid for their work.
Wait, wait, you believe ads lowers the cost of products? In this day and age?
Are you still waiting for that wealth to trickle down too?
Woosh -right over your head! They help ensure quality and lack of abandonment (a huge FOSS issue) through incentive.
Woosh is right! Anybody catch the license plate of those goalposts flying by? You said ads keep prices down. That's what I responded to. Now it's about abandonment incentives. Goalposts moving faster than the speed limit.
But since you've moved there: ad revenue doesn't prevent abandonment, it makes abandonment contingent on ad market profitability instead of user need. Google Reader, Google Stadia, Flash, Vine, the entire Google graveyard. All ad-supported or commercially incentivized. All dead. Users abandoned.
When a FOSS project gets abandoned the code stays available. Anyone can fork it, maintain it, or build on it because the license allows it. Ressurection is possible and happens all the time. When a proprietary project dies it just dies and takes your data with it. The abandonment argument actually favors FOSS structurally.
Once again, proving that technical illiteracy of yours across all your comments. You're doing half the work for me! It's easy when you use common capitalist cuck tactics like moving goalposts and just stating easily verifiable facts so confidently incorrectly.
Your trolling is slipping into comedy, you should be careful.