This is how platforms end, not with a bang, but a poop…
By: Enrique Dans
On January 21st, Cory Doctorow posted a lengthy piece on his website called “Tiktok’s enshittification”. It’s not specifically about TikTok, but rather about a pattern of behavior that has affected, one by one, all platforms as they develop, as they go public, and as they come under increased pressure to generate revenue.
I read it that same day because I have subscribed to Cory’s updates since time immemorial, and I thought it was a very good article, especially because it was in tune not only with my views on the evolution of TikTok, but that it went much further: it applied the same reasoning to Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, reminding me of things I have experienced first hand, with people I know at companies like Yahoo! or Google, among others.
Since then, the article has been re-published in Wired, the term “enshittification” has become word of the week, and it has been commented by people like Mike Masnick or Jason Kottke. I have also recommended it in class and at conferences, and it has gone moderately viral, something unusual for an analytical article of that type and that length, but which is what it really deserves: the more people understand this aspect of human ambition and how companies that we once loved are now garbage and that we have no choice but to hate. So I thought it appropriate to use the multi-version emoji of the poop with eyes to recommend that my readers also take the time to read it.
What is the fundamental argument of the article? Basically, that platforms die when they go from, being good for their users to abusing them so as to improve their value proposition for their advertisers, and then end up abusing those advertisers to capture all the value for themselves, at which point they die.
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So simple, but so true. Cory provides examples such as Amazon, which started out as a fantastic online store that is now a hellscape of advertisements, lying to its users and also the companies that want to sell their products on its platform; or Facebook, which went from being a social network where we could keep in touch with friends and that is now a hellscape of advertisements, news and assorted junk aimed at attracting your attention at any price, while tricking its advertisers into believing that their ads or content reaches exactly the right target.
All true. And moreover, proven again and again: I saw it with Yahoo!, a company I knew when it was fun and concerned about offering its users value, and which ended up becoming a grotesque and unrecognizable caricature of itself. I saw it with Google, which betrayed each and every element of its mission, ending up being an evil empire that tried to pass off its ads as results and pursued you the length and breadth of the web.
I won’t say any more about Facebook, because I’ve already written enough about it over the years. In all those cases and in many others, I have not just observed and suffered their decline and fall: I have had the opportunity to analyze and discuss it in class over the years, which comes to mind like some terrible, slow-motion train wreck. In all cases, they started out with positive analyses about their innovations and huge potential, only to end up sooner or later the focus of myriad negative comment. In many cases, and since I write every day and never delete or modify my copy, you can follow their evolution here.
Cory’s article certainly echoed my concerns: as I read it, I not only found myself agreeing with him, but saw how he was describing things I have lived through; and not just once, but over and over again. How supposedly intelligent people have been turning good ideas into garbage, becoming indecently rich in the process, but destroying their original creation and turning it into a caricature of itself, of everything they defended only a few years before.
This is the article that everyone this week is talking about. Deeply pessimistic by dint of being simply the truth. Almost existential, as in philosophical existentialism. And certainly highly recommended.
