Take PeerTube—great on paper. Can you run ads on your instance to cover bandwidth and storage? No. Can you run ads on the videos you create? No.
The alternative decentralized solutions themselves aren't the problem, it's the economics of it.
Problem being, non monetized things are interesting because they are not monetized. If you make it possible to profit from them, they will go down the path of every other profitable system: all the goodness gets squeezed out to extract profit.
There's no incentive to create/host interesting content if there's no way to recoup the costs for creating it and/or distributing it.
I do agree that non-monetized things are interesting, however a lot of interesting things happen because there's an actual budget and means of supporting oneself and family.
I say this as someone who ran a netlabel that gave away all their content for free, and still regularly gives away plenty of content that isn't directly monetized. The moment a tune saw any kind of popularity, bandwidth for free downloads became a problem in terms of scale (could no longer self-host from home) and then ultimately cost.
Something could be decentralized and FOSS, but also allow you to inject your own ads. That isn't a difficult problem to solve, but PeerTube has no interest in doing it, yet would be a sure-fire way to turn it into a big deal.
Do you have any better ideas? I'd love to hear them!
Enshittification isn't limited to tech; it happens to just about everything in a capitalist society, because it benefits capital.
We have to move past this economic model.
I used to be more edgy and socialist/communist in what I wish our government really was, but I think lately and in writing these article I've realized maybe capitalism isn't the most terrible thing in the word.
Are you arguing for socialism/communism, or some other form of government/economic model in that case? Assuming you're in "the industry" would you personally settle for less pay or privilege to enable this?
I like to think I would, but it's hard stuff, and goes against many people's nature. At this point, I hate to say it, but it's hard to extract myself from this tech ecosystem/system of government. I donate to charities, donate my time when I can, and try to be a good citizen within the system, but I don't see how to change the system overall without something that seems really extreme and impossible. Still want to "fight the power" and all that but honestly, are there real solutions in that?
It's funny to me because we've been here for many years. i.e. Facebook hasn't given two shits what people want or need in a decade. People have been asking for more control of their feed, and complaining about user-hostile decisions made all this time. The other big tech cos are no different, and "trust" has always been low..
It's long overdue to send a serious message to software makers that turn upon their user bases. Congress has dropped this ball too many times. We can abandon Facebutt and InstaGramps over abusive and user hostile changes, but when you have to watch a 5 minute ad before starting your car when your wife's water just broke, it all becomes too real... I know, dramatic example, but it can get that bad if we give it a pass now/
Bro it's called Capitalism, and it's been like this since the beginning.
An angry German guy wrote a critique of it years ago and got his name plastered on everything because of it. It's the same discussions, over and over.
Cory Doctorow gave it a fun name with a dirty word in it, but it's been happening for ages.
I do worry a bit when public stockholders (some of which are "regular" people) are the ones left holding the bag.
I imagined people comically trying to travel up greased ramps, and sliding back down / falling. I think lubricating those ramps is exactly what our corporate overlords do.
ya see there's your problem.
Article literally argues that the system works because it provides 12-15 years of quality community experience, even if thereafter the community gets thoughtlessly torn apart and destroyed. In other words, the author doesn’t understand the true nature or value of community.
Mostly kidding around, but I appreciate the comment and you reading the article! It is sad that communities are destroyed at the whims of gigantic corporations but it just seems to happen super often, I wish there was a way to prevent it.
