These platforms are getting worse because of monetization.
Corey Doctorow wrote a great piece on the “Enshittification” of TikTok that applies in general to social media platforms as a whole
No. You’ve missed the mark. There was no monetization strategy for Usenet. It was free, open, and distributed. And it was grand, until too many people came along and started shitting it up.
Every lame attempt to copy Usenet that has come since has ended up in the same place. They’re all find and dandy until too many people come along and start trying to pull it in so many undesirable directions, at which point using the service becomes awful and people move on to the next isolated community that is yet to be shitted up.
No matter what platform you put in front of the people, if they come, they are going to ruin it. A new, unpopulated, platform only buys you time as you wait for its Eternal September moment. It does not solve the actual problem.
What you’re talking about is called the tragedy of the commons and the eternal September is just one example.
I think we’re talking past each other. I’m talking about different problems with social media - not with the users, but the platforms themselves.
Here’s a few examples: Reddit cracking down on third-party apps, platforms requiring you to log in before viewing content, relentless tracking and privacy invasions, TikTok turning into a firehose of ads and sponsored content, and Amazon’s gradual transformation into a sketchy marketplace with systemically faked reviews and false advertising on products. These are less to do with the growth of the platform, and more to do with the pressure from management to extract money from users.
But yeah, I do get your point on how a relentless influx of new users can disrupt an existing community and create severe moderation challenges
I think we’re talking past each other.
I don’t think so. All I see in your examples are symptoms of a critical mass entering a platform and the inevitable tug-of-war that follows when disparate interests start tugging in their own preferred directions, at odds with the preferences of others on the platform. In other words, only a small community is able to maintain a shared set of interests for the platform.
and more to do with the pressure from management to extract money from users.
This is the same thing. If there is a money making opportunity, that can only be if some segment of the community want to give up their money. There was a tug-of-war and somebody won – the segment who want to pay for a certain kind of service, much to the chagrin of everyone else. Again, this is the outcome of a community growing too large and no longer being able to maintain a unified set of interests.
A new platform can buy you time because a new platform starts small and allows a community to establish a shared set of interests, but it is not a solution as once its Eternal September moment takes place someone will start the tug-of-war and shit it up in the process. It is not a technical problem that can be solved by throwing more technology at it. It is ultimately a people problem.
So, bringing us back to the beginning, why keep reinventing the wheel thinking this time will somehow be different? It’s not like we haven’t been here hundreds of times before.