<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/21/seven-rules-for-internet-ceos-to-avoid-enshittification/>
"It seems that we’ve had a rash of formerly loved internet services going down
the enshittification curve. As coined (brilliantly) by Cory Doctorow,
enshittification is the process by which a company gets gradually worse. As he
puts it:
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.
And the progression down this curve is often driven by the (short term) demands
of investors, but too often CEOs themselves embrace this curve. And, really,
it’s not difficult to see how it happens.
In the early days, you’re an upstart. You’re building users and fans, and it’s
the “don’t be evil” stage of an internet company’s life, where the focus is
almost entirely on building users. And you do that by providing a great
service, better than anything else out there (maybe even disrupting the
business models of what’s out there). This excites everyone, including the
media and investors who pour in money, subsidizing the company’s existence and
rapid growth.
The second stage, then, is when you realize at some point all of this userbase
and goodwill has to turn into some sort of business, so that often involves
some “compromises” to make sure that you can actually make money. It may start
innocently enough: you add in a few non-intrusive ads, or come up with some
more creative business models, such as selling data from your users.
But, then the third stage comes, and the investors, who were so happy to give
you that money to subsidize everything early on, start demanding their return.
They need to see much more growth, and not just in the size of your userbase,
but in how much money you’re able to make. You start learning acronyms like
“ARPU” (average revenue per user) and such. And then you’re being measured on
how much you’re increasing those metrics, which means you need to squeeze more
out of each individual user, and you’re now deep within the enshittification
stage, in which you’re trying to squeeze your users for more money each quarter
(because now everything is judged in how well you did in the last 3 months to
improve that number).
It’s happened to lots of platforms, but we’re seeing it happen in somewhat
spectacular fashion with a few these days, mainly Twitter and Reddit, though
I’d argue that Netflix could be included as well."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
