I think we're at the MSN messenger adding flash games part of the chat program new app gets growth, stagnation, add weird features, strip out free functionality, everyone leaves, new app gets growth cycle.
it bugs me when people use 'enshittification' to just generically mean "my experience has degraded", because like that can happen in lots of ways that aren't related to the original essay. The original essay uses the term to mean "a business which starts out producing value for its users, then sells out its users to provide value to other clients, then sells out its own clients to provide value to itself."
So, like, removing the dislike button is not "enshittification", it's just cowardice. Locking comments on videos for kids is not "enshittification", it's just lazy and ineffective. Banning people for showing their boobs but allowing untagged unblurred gore in video thumbnails is not "enshittification", it's just ethically bonkers and should probably be illegal on both counts.
Enshittification specifically refers to behavior like
- injecting ads into content created by free users for other free users. (value from users -> clients)
- locking third-party apps out of your API so you can sell that access to LLM scrapers (value from users -> clients)
- algorithmically favoring some advertisers over others (value from clients -> site owners)
- putting your own products on top of user-generated content (value from users -> directly to site owners)
so yes, what discord is doing now is exactly what Cory Doctorow was talking about. And the reason Discord is doing this is that it's easy and it's free. We can change both of those things.
In his talk, An Audacious Plan, Cory Doctrow describes a plan to halt this cycle by taking away the profit motive. The EFF has already started to put this plan into action, starting with the EU since they seem a bit more willing to negotiate at the moment. Put simply: if we keep ramping up the price of "shitty" behavior, eventually it will be more profitable to turn users into customers than it is to harvest users for the advertising machine. Eventually it will be more profitable to make a chat program that users actually like instead of trying to trap them into a proprietary service and banning anyone who uses a third-party client.
And we can also make it easier for users to switch. If you have a bit of free open source software that actually works for you, write about it! And not just in that kinda condescending "techies talking to techies" way, but like, take the time to write for a beginner audience! Users are generally not stupid, they just don't know what options are available, because most modern software doesn't come with a manual or a user guide. Write one! Distribute it! People only use Discord because everything else is harder. We can change that!
