Fediverse enshittification - eviltoast

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/24088740

Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?

Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
    10·
    1 month ago

    I’d say that it’s possible but extremely unlikely. Acc. to Doctorow enshittification requires three things:

    1. “Consolidation” - i.e. the corporation gets too big and powerful
    2. “Unrestricted twiddling for them” - i.e. using power to prevent being legislated on.
    3. “Total ban on twiddling for us” - i.e. enforcing the legislation to prevent competition.

    The Fediverse is designed in a way that it’s more resistant to #2, as inter-operability decreases the cost of switch for users - if you see an entity (person, corporation, group, whatever) twiddling too much it’s relatively painless to pack your things and leave.

    However, I believe that if an instance consolidated so much power in #1 that it’s enable to enforce an “it’s me or them” on the users, even the Fediverse could be enshittified. And by “so much power” I don’t mean something like Lemmy World, I mean a couple orders of magnitude bigger than the rest.