This is an article by Cat Valente during the Twitter Migration, discussing the cycle of enschittification and the history of social media.
We found it very perceptive and helpful when leaving Twitter, and I think people leaving Reddit may feel the same.
This was an interesting piece, thank you for sharing.
This is an open question: are there any lemmy communities with think pieces and discussions like this from a broad “How we got to this state of the web, and how/what paths we can move forward” perspective"?
I suppose this is true of many disruptions/movements from devolving services to alternatives, but the past couple weeks have given me (more than usual) reason to pause and think about how I’ve participated in the net writ large - both pre- and post-“social media” - over the course of my life. Problem is, I find myself at a loss for words/concepts to articulate/work through this thinking effectively. At the same time, I know people are thinking about this, and have been for a while, from a variety of perspectives. There’s also the fact that, as this article demonstrates, there’s a larger history here that is instructive.
It many ways, watching different communities and instances actively wrestling with questions about content moderation, who gets a say on what concerns relevant to instances, and the consequences/merits of defederation is instructive. But we’ve been here before - with this in mind, I’d love more broad perspectives on … idk, I guess the sociology of networked communities over internet history including today.