Mastodon toot:
Daniel Lakeland @dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
Fediverse, the social media system for 40+ year old people who built the world wide web and regret it.
Oct 01, 2026, 11:32 PM
Mastodon toot:
Daniel Lakeland @dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
Fediverse, the social media system for 40+ year old people who built the world wide web and regret it.
Oct 01, 2026, 11:32 PM
Depends… if enshittification just means corporate control and advertising, I have high hopes for the design. If enshittification also includes things like personal insults, echo chambers and gatekeeping, those ships have already sailed as expected.
“Enshittification” has a more specific meaning than just “things getting shitty.” It’s about a product or service being purposefully made worse in order for the company controlling it to extract more profit by means more underhanded and exploitative than just raising the price.
Forum toxicity (sans some algorithm or bot farm egging it on for some nefarious purpose) is categorically a different thing than enshittification.
The Fediverse can’t enshittify in its current state because it’s not controlled by a corporation. In order for it to happen, it would have to be overwhelmed by federating with Threads or something like that.
Alright I understand the distinction now, although I don’t think either kind of degradation creates a worse user experience than the other. I wonder what term will be made up to describe the situation when corporations have spun up their own instances of lemmy etc. and promote them so they attract far more users. Maybe disillusionication?
That is what enshittification means. It is specifically a corporation making it’s product shittier because they’ve cornered the market.
Thanks, silly me assumed a word like “enshittification” would just mean “made shitty”.