Enshittification isn’t what happens when something becomes popular, it’s what happens to disruptive tech and commodities that get increasingly fine-tuned for profit after competition inevitably floods in. It’s a product of monetization.
Lemmy is FOSS so that won’t happen, plus you can splinter off into your own walled garden instance like Beehaw if you want.
You make it sound like monetization can’t happen on a FOSS platform. Bots are a form of monetization, it’s just not by the people who created and control the platform.
As it gets popular, bots will come for the purpose of creating an audience and monetizing them.
That’s true, but it’s just not enshittification because it’s not done by the platform itself. It’s a different word.
Hmmm interesting. I was under the impression that enshitification was “making something shittier in the pursuit of (eg) greed”, I didn’t realize that it only applies to when the creator (controller? owner?) of the thing does it.
Has it always been used for this specific case? If so, what is the word for the more general case I described?
Ey used the wrong word, but this in fact is correct. Once lemmy gets popular, bot farms will definitely will siege it, and the amount of “bots and shills” will rise
Enshittification also happens because of government propaganda, like the authoritarian propaganda Lemmy.ml spreads for the CCP.
Aee you suggesting people on Lemmy.ml are paid by the Chinese government to spread propaganda?
That’s a single instance, they can be blocked and avoided. The FOSS community is way more resiliant to enshittification.
Not really, their users make alts everywhere else too. It’s also quite easy just to keep setting up new instances too.
