Cory Doctorow called it “enshittification”. Are things getting worse? Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
Matt, I'm currently listening to "Rubicon" by Tom Holland (on the Roman republic), and it's pretty good! You seem to enjoy Roman history a lot; are there some books you've really enjoyed?
I might have a few others to recommend if you're interested as well. There are plenty of analogues with today's world and Rome, to be sure.
It's probably easy to overreach and apply the idea of "enshittification" everywhere even when it is a stretch, but it clearly seems true with the Meta family of products. Facebook and Instagram used to be decent and occasionally useful platforms, even with all the boomers and political BS. But in the past couple years they really jumped the shark and clogged the feed to the point that I rarely even see anything from friends and family, it's all a mix of ads, terrible "suggested for you" content and Reels; I can't spend more than a minute or so before I get annoyed and close out. The fact that they chose to rebrand their core product to a speculative moonshot really just shows how toxic their identity had become.
Its easy to forget whats important when all your objectives, visions and missions seem to be less important than investor ROIs, self promotion, and other money related goals.
Balancíng requirements, powers, interests and aligning these towards a real objective, seems like too much for a single person.
Matt, I'm currently listening to "Rubicon" by Tom Holland (on the Roman republic), and it's pretty good! You seem to enjoy Roman history a lot; are there some books you've really enjoyed?
I might have a few others to recommend if you're interested as well. There are plenty of analogues with today's world and Rome, to be sure.
It's probably easy to overreach and apply the idea of "enshittification" everywhere even when it is a stretch, but it clearly seems true with the Meta family of products. Facebook and Instagram used to be decent and occasionally useful platforms, even with all the boomers and political BS. But in the past couple years they really jumped the shark and clogged the feed to the point that I rarely even see anything from friends and family, it's all a mix of ads, terrible "suggested for you" content and Reels; I can't spend more than a minute or so before I get annoyed and close out. The fact that they chose to rebrand their core product to a speculative moonshot really just shows how toxic their identity had become.
Its easy to forget whats important when all your objectives, visions and missions seem to be less important than investor ROIs, self promotion, and other money related goals.
Balancíng requirements, powers, interests and aligning these towards a real objective, seems like too much for a single person.