I think part of the reason the word has caught on so much recently, especially in 2023, is that we are fully in a new era that I like to call the “solid internet.” The internet as a predominately web and mobile accessible media and social media landscape emerged after 2010, and for about 10 years continued to grow and evolve. I remember fleeing to reddit after Digg died (see the original famous case of enshittification). At the time, the internet was far more fluid. Facebook was popular, certainly, and Twitter was gaining in steam. YouTube was the de facto video hosting platform, but it still had some degree of nominal competition. Same with reddit as a content aggregator. The monoliths of the modern internet were growing, but still rising in popularity. And they were good. Better than anything we’d had before. Easier to access than usenet, but still strange and spontaneous and ever evolving. A brave new world, filled with brave new people (as well as a shitload of racism, homophobia, porn, and gore). This is a period I call the “fluid internet.” As of 2023, the internet has solidified and congealed around the current monolithic services as we know them. And now that competition is dead, they get to squeeze - they get to set prices, block VPN connections and unpaid API access, ban problematic or dissenting content, and create a truly corporatized, milquetoast experience - something that caters to everyone, but truly appeals to no one. Like the world’s dullest theme park.
The one thing that Cory Doctorow was wrong about in his definition of enshittification is that the final step is that a platform dies. Platforms used to die when they enshittified in the fluid internet, because competition existed and people would throw venture capital at plucky startups. But the reality is that we live in a post-competition world, and people are less adventurous and more “on rails” in how they expect to engage with the internet than they used to be. Google will continue to get worse, but it’s still going to be the de facto search mechanism here on out. Same for videos and YouTube. Because that’s what people use now and there are no other options. There’s not going to be some “hot new platform” that pulls the rug out from under YouTube as a video hosting solution. And if you think the Fediverse and its various alternatives is going to ever be anything other than a niche microcosm of the internet, you’re dreaming.
This is it. This is the internet we wanted, I guess, because this is what we made for ourselves, with the only thing to look forward to is it getting worse with time. Eventually Valve will go public at some point in the future and its marketplace will become horrible. Eventually Firefox will shutter its doors and if you want to access a web page, you’re going to have to sign a blood contract with Google for use of a chromium browser. I imagine there will come a day when I don’t even really use the internet anymore because it’ll be so terrible and unrecognizable to me.
You nailed it. A big factor in this is just the general public. The lowest common denominator. Time was, to use the Internet, you had to be at least to a degree, a certain kind of person. You’d be an alternative-seeker, you’d be open minded, prone to critiquing, somewhat technically capable. Less and less so as time went on, sure.
Commodification was always the end game for the track we were on. Well, we got it. Something easy, something you don’t have to think too hard about, or work too hard at. Those things are just barriers to more eyeballs, which means barriers to revenue.
The only solace I can take here is that, yeah, fediverse, foss, and free culture might be doomed to the niche. But maybe that’s ok. Maybe that’s the place for the sort of people who were native to the older iteration of the web (regardless of their age.) We don’t really want the same thing to happen to this niche, we just want to keep our place on the web.
The internet became mass adopted via phones. Or rather, the internet as we understand it warped itself around mobile devices. Phones and communication have always been cool. If you were “cool” in the 1990s, you had a beeper. People wanted to engage with you. Talk to you. Fuck you. Do drugs with you. Whatever. But computers were always nerd shit. And when the internet was dominated by computers, it was a nerd space. Phones allow you to have constant, but physically limited access to the internet. There’s no full keyboard for typing out long replies. Not a physical one, at least. It’s all algorithmically generated text responses. Engagement on the modern internet is clicking a “next” button on a social media website.
I say this as someone who loves computers and hate phones, and it feels like the internet is less and less of a place for me as time goes on. I like talking to people and having discussions, but that’s more and more ghettoized as time goes on. And that’s sadly what the Fediverse sort of is. It’s a ghetto for us oldheads who loved how things used to be and thought what we had is what we’d always have. We didn’t realize the high water mark when we were floating in it. And now that the tide has receded, we’re left stranded on an island in the middle of a very shallow ocean.
While I think it’s a good word and due the attention: this is just the normal cycle of capitalism.
A new brand hits the market. It’s innovative. It’s made in America. It’s exclusive to at least some degree (whether it’s supply, cost, or some sort of cultural or knowledge barrier to entry). Early adopters are “elites” due to their money, location, culture or knowledge.
Soon enough, the brand reaches public knowledge and then general desire and/or accessibility. A couple things happen in a variety of orders. The brand either gets sold for a lot of money, or the people who have a shit had their fun building the business and move on to something else. Supply cannot keep up with demand, so they change production methods, materials, and/or locations. A ton of competition shows up forcing the brand to compete in new and difficult ways.
And then soon enough, you have a Made in China facsimile that every kid in America gets for Christmas, that bares little to no resemblance to the original state of the brand.
The new and novel facet for tech enshittification is how they pivoted from a “losing money during a low interest rate period” model to a “making money by focusing solely on advertising dollars now that we have a monopoly” strategy.
You saw it with american made tools, Doc Marten boots, Chipotle turning into the new fast food, Gucci et al becoming brands for poor people…
You see it with baby names even. Rich people start a baby naming trend, poor people pick it up, and then rich people stop. In this example it normally skips the middle class altogether as we aren’t willing to risk the cultural capital to name our child AeonFlux.
It’s a pretty apt word to describe a lot more than just technology/platforms right now unfortunately. It fits into too many things.
Also…
In a companion vote, sibling organization the American Name Society selected “Gaza” and “Barbie” as Names of the Year for 2023 in its 20th annual name-of-the-year contest.
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