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 compan…
  • plz1English
    15•1 year ago

    Saving a click

    • Tell your investors that you’re in this for the long haul and they need to be too.
    • Your community is everything
    • Create more value than you capture
    • Empower your community, and then trust them
    • Find ways to make money that don’t undermine the community or the experience
    • Never charge for what was once free
    • Don’t insult the intelligence of your users
    • AndyEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Thanks.

      Doesn’t do much in cases where people are enthusiastic about enshitification, but it’s good for the outliers.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•1 year ago

    “Find ways to make money that don’t undermine the community or experience” and “never charge for what was once free” sound great, but you’ve left rather a large exercise for the reader there.

    Companies don’t enshittify themselves because they were too dumb to avoid killing the thing everyone loved. They do it because the thing everyone loved has been losing them money for a decade and now the investors say they’re not paying for it anymore.

    • WeirdmusicEnglish
      0•1 year ago

      Did you actually read the article? TL;DR dont kill the community you’ve built over 10+ years and here’s how you do that…

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 year ago

        I don’t doubt that these rules will help you avoid killing your community. But Reddit can’t just not kill their community. They have to not kill their community while simultaneously becoming extremely profitable. And the article’s advice on the second part of that is just “come up with a brilliant solution that no one else has been able to think of”. Cool. Is that all there is to it?

        Example: He says, “never charge for something that was once free”. What advice does he have for you to do instead?

        Instead, always look for something new that is worth paying for above and beyond what you already offered. Make it so that it’s worthwhile for people to pay, rather than acting like they need to pay you for the things they got for free until now. Give them a reason to pay gladly, don’t try to pressure them into coughing up money grudgingly.

        Got it. Come up with a business idea that people will be happy to pay you for. If I could do that, why didn’t I do it 10 years ago instead of borrowing a billion dollars in VC money for 10 years while I hemorrhaged cash?

        I’m a big fan of Mike’s writing, but this article presumes that these companies should just more or less continue as-is. And the whole reason why they’re where they are is that that’s not an option anymore. And to the extent that the article recognizes that, it may as well just recommend prayer. That’s about as likely to yield a result as “come up with a brilliant idea your users will all happily pay you for” and it has the advantage of being immediately actionable.