cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/24088740

Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?

Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.

  • IllNess
    43·
    19 hours ago

    Yes. It already started with bots to get people on their shitty websites.

    They claim to be useful to the site but all it is is free advertising.

    For example:

    Food AI Helper:

    “I see you used the term ‘platform’ in your post! Here are links to platform cakes! You’re Welcome!”

    • BertramDitore@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      18 hours ago

      I agree, it’s already happening. The Media Bias Fact Checker bot is another example. Nobody I’ve interacted with wants it, it is functionally useless and inaccurate, and appears to be a cash grab (though we can’t know for sure, because the mods refuse to openly discuss it with users). We live in a capitalist society, so even platforms like Lemmy are subject to its pressures, and require active pushback from users to prevent profits from taking precedence over user satisfaction on larger instances.

        • BertramDitore@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          13 hours ago

          I just subbed, thanks. This is kind of my fundamental challenge with this platform, though. I don’t want to miss anything on the subjects I’m interested in, so I sub to every instances’ version of the same community. I’m probably doing it wrong, but if I sub to just one small sub-community because I like the mods, or the lack of bots, I feel like I’d be missing a lot of content.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
        2·
        16 hours ago

        To be fair, that seems to be more of a Lemmy.world problem, which itself is one of the worst overall instances.

    • 5dh@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      51·
      19 hours ago

      Is this happening on Lemmy? I haven’t seen it

      • IllNess
        1·
        17 hours ago

        I should’ve noted the Food Helper thing doesn’t exist. My bad attempt for a joke. Sorry.

        A real exampls is the Media Bias Bot.