#decentralize

[chovendopalavras]

Crescer é bem difícil.

Me peguei pensando hoje no banho e me perguntando qual realmente é o motivo da minha existência. Passo o dia fazendo mil coisas e me cobrando para ser mais do que consigo.

Tem um relógio em minha mente ecoando que o tempo está passando e eu vejo pessoas à minha volta evoluindo ao mesmo que me questiono se estou no caminho certo.

Às vezes queria voltar a ser criança. Queria estar no colo dos meus pais sendo confortada e ouvido que tudo vai ficar bem. Mas a realidade é que eu tenho que engolir o choro e enfrentar tudo só.

Ou pelo menos eu imagino que seja assim, conversar sobre sentimentos da muito trabalho e nos deixa tão vulneráveis. Não quero parecer fraca para ninguém. Não sei se já cresci o bastante ou se sou criança demais ainda, mas confiar nos outros é um tremendo tiro no escuro.

A vida adulta é muito chata, porque para ser adulto se deixa de ser criança. Eu quero me tornar uma adulta sem matar a criança que vive em mim! Mas ainda estou descobrindo como fazer isso.

@decentralize + @floresehorrores para @chovendopalavras.

Siga-nos no Instagram ❣️ 

[bickeringwiththemuse]

You know. There are folks on mastodon. You don't have to stay here.

[mamund]

Don't re-centralize, re-distribute. here's why...

i've been seeing posts in the mastodon space about the worry that both technically and behaviorally, mastodon (in partictular) is not scaling well.

i think this is correct.

some are calling for a handful of technical changes that will improve the scaling and reduce the cost of hosting.

that is the right thing to do.

i've also seen some posts calling for a focus on re-centralizing the distributed userbase to a more centralized implementation to level out moderation rules and breing more consistency and order to the management of the mastodon user community.

that is the wrong thing to do.

both the technical and behavioral problems stem from too many users concentrated in the same place (instance). there are several servers (instances) that do an excellent job of moderating. but these are "small" servers <10K or so, not the big ones (e.g. 250K on mastodon.social). there needs to be more effort to bring consistency to moderation. that means publishing guidelines, more tooling, and more transparency (which servers are seeing what kinds of reports & actions, trend tracking, etc.). we don't need more _control_ over the userbase (e.g. centralizing the userbase and moderation work). we need more _collaboration_ (e.g. sharing of moderation practices, support for moderators across the instances, etc.). in the virtual world, scaling horizontally is much more effective than scaling vertically. that is the opposite of what the physical world teaches us.

we need to embrace the realities of horizontal distribution on the 'net.

[decentralize102]

Embracing Decentralization: Shaping the Future of Technology and Society

In a world dominated by centralized systems, the concept of decentralization is gaining momentum as a revolutionary force shaping the future of technology and society. Decentralization involves distributing power, authority, and control away from a central authority, enabling a more inclusive, transparent, and resilient system. From finance to governance and beyond, decentralization is challenging traditional norms and offering new possibilities for innovation and collaboration.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

One of the most prominent applications of decentralize is in the realm of finance. Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, is transforming the traditional financial landscape by leveraging blockchain technology to create an open and accessible financial system. By eliminating intermediaries like banks and enabling peer-to-peer transactions, DeFi is providing financial services to individuals who were previously excluded from the traditional banking system.

Smart contracts, powered by blockchain technology, enable automated and trustless execution of agreements. This innovation not only reduces the risk of fraud but also streamlines complex financial processes, making them more efficient and cost-effective. The rise of decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and stablecoins are reshaping the way we perceive and engage with the financial sector.

Blockchain and Decentralized Governance

Blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, plays a pivotal role in decentralization. Beyond its financial applications, blockchain is being harnessed for decentralized governance models. Traditional governance structures often suffer from inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and centralization of power. Blockchain technology offers a solution by enabling decentralized decision-making through transparent and tamper-resistant systems.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) exemplify this shift in governance. DAOs are organizations run by code and governed by a community of participants, each holding voting power proportionate to their stake in the network. This democratic approach empowers community members to have a direct say in the decision-making process, fostering a more inclusive and resilient form of governance.

The Decentralized Internet

The internet, a cornerstone of modern communication, is also undergoing a decentralization revolution. The current internet landscape is dominated by a few tech giants that control and monetize user data. In response, decentralized technologies are emerging to empower individuals and give them control over their digital identities and data.

Projects like the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Solid aim to create a decentralized web where data is distributed across a network of nodes, eliminating single points of failure and censorship. This not only enhances data security but also grants users greater autonomy over their online presence. As we move towards a decentralized internet, the vision is to create a more democratic and user-centric digital ecosystem.

Challenges and Opportunities

While decentralization brings about transformative possibilities, it also poses challenges. Regulatory uncertainties, scalability issues, and the need for widespread adoption are hurdles that must be overcome. Additionally, the potential misuse of decentralized technologies, such as in the case of smart contract vulnerabilities or illicit activities on decentralized platforms, requires thoughtful consideration and regulatory frameworks.

Despite these challenges, the opportunities presented by decentralization are vast. From fostering financial inclusion to reimagining governance structures and empowering individuals on the internet, decentralization is a catalyst for positive change. As we navigate this paradigm shift, collaboration between innovators, policymakers, and the wider community is crucial to ensure that decentralized systems are built on principles of fairness, security, and accountability.

Conclusion

Decentralization is not just a technological trend; it's a paradigm shift that has the potential to redefine how we interact with systems, institutions, and each other. From DeFi to decentralized governance and the evolution of the internet, the impact of decentralization is multifaceted. Embracing these changes with a mindful approach can lead us to a future where power is distributed, access is equitable, and innovation knows no bounds. As we stand on the cusp of a decentralized era, the choices we make today will shape the trajectory of a more inclusive and resilient tomorrow.

[sprocketblog]

For the first time in human history we have the technology to #decentralize everything - We can create heaven on earth by creating technology that takes power and wealth out of the hands of the few and puts it in the hands of the many! Working on Sprocket we take every opportunity we can to make the app more and more #decentralized to protect your privacy and provide you with more utility. Do the same on your end - take the time to buy $7 in #Bitcoin or #Ethereum and see where the journey takes you 🚀✨ @buterin_vitalik.eth @bitcoinmagazine Sell your bicycles & parts on the Sprocket app. Link in bio www.sprocket.bike/app #blockchaintechnology #blockchain #eth #btc (at Ｗｏｒｌｄ Ｗｉｄｅ Ｗｅｂ) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClvFl24Ou6C/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[wehaveeverythinggreat]

On Decentralize

Part 1 Code is not and cannot be law. We're bad at software. Our current system sucks but this new model is just going back to the worse system the incumbent replaced. You can't code infinite contingencies for unexpected events. This is where central authorities shine. If something is done in error, a trusted central authority should be able to undo the transaction. How do you mint a trusted central authority? No, replacing it with a trustless system doesn't work because trust is the key feature in conflict resolution. Trustless systems work for a whole lot of things just not the problems we're trying to solve with them.

[davidson-eric]

The dollar collapse is happening NOW!"

The Storm is coming sooner than expected. All financial systems controlled by the corrupt government will collapse.

This crash will be felt on a global level, and many currencies, especially the USD, will be worthless.

Fiat accounts, savings and retirement accounts, mortgage, e.t.c will crash down and wipe off from the system once this event happens, Quantum Financial System is the savior.!!!

Convert every money in your possession to digital gold & silver backed coins and move them into the QFS ledger for safety . There will be a Global Reset. All banks and fiat exchanges will be closed, and there will be a lot of uncertainty & confusion. Cash will be worthless and outdated, and all bank accounts will be closed and crash to zero .

All cabal public banks will be confiscated, and foreclosures will be frozen, as will all public and private dept(mortgage,loans, credit, and debit cards).

[defivipmining]

[chovendopalavras]

Você era a definição perfeita de amor. Com você tive a certeza de que iria realizar meu sonho. Eu tinha um sonho. Finalmente dar certo com alguém. Viver um amor duradouro e clichê. Daqueles inspiradores e que causassem inveja aos que dizem que amor é balela.

Mas, acho que somente eu sentia isso. Enquanto imaginava uma vida junto com você, você criava sua própria história. Preferiu se entregar à prazeres momentâneos do que viver um prazer eterno ao meu lado. Devo realmente continuar acreditando no amor?

Afinal já foram tantas vezes fracassadas que meu coração não consegue mais juntar os pedaços outra vez. É como se sempre que eu pensasse em as coisas darem certo, em ter pelo menos uma vida feliz, normal e sem todo o drama de sempre, parece que em algum momento tudo despedaça e eu me vejo na mesma posição de sempre.

Sozinha, poderia até dizer que desfruto da minha própria companhia mas seria mais uma mentira, e sinceramente estou cansada de tentar encontrar esses sentimentos que vendem nos filmes e comerciais de tv. Comecei a aceitar que nasci para ser sozinha, mais uma vez alguém me mostrou isso.

Todos os meus pedaços ninguém nunca irá querer juntar, nem eu mesma quero, acredito que meu destino seja ser quebrada.

[terei que aceitar o fato do amor não existir para mim]

@decentralize + @pecaveis, para @chovendopalavras.

Siga-nos no Instagram ❣️ 

[alcrego]

Digital walls, but walls

I encourage you to have a seat and read this little 'essay' I wrote back in 2014 if you really want to understand what I'm doing today. I would be really grateful and I'm sure you'll have a much better understanding of my whole work.

Digital walls, but walls

On the way to space and public art | came across the digital walls. They can be "painted" but they also have the function of limiting, of delimiting, of separating...

A change of paradigm has been happening for some years now with the arrival of the internet, which has completely changed some aspects and concepts that have to do with the world of art and more specifically with urban art or public art. From the beginning, this type of art has been carried out in public places with the aim of being observed by anyone on the street and thus making it free, accessible and free from any premise or institution when it is created. (not considering the "warlike coexistence” with the advertising).

The appearance of the Internet has changed it. A vast majority of the art is seen online on a screen, what questions that the street is the natural canvas of this art discipline. While it is for the one who creates the piece, it is almost never for the one who looks at it. Public spaces are no longer just physical, in the same way that the plastic arts are no longer just plastic.

Due to the access to technology and its cheapness, nowadays it is inconceivable to think of art without considering the whole digital sphere, whether as a tool, a method of creation or of dissemination. But at the same time, all these centuries of art history condition the understanding of art, sometimes acting as a burden in terms of understanding what art is.

The dragging of already preconceived ideas and the weight of the genetic inheritance makes us repeat concepts about what art is and was. In the face of such a rapid change of paradigm, it seems that we find it difficult to understand that this whole new digital world is still the world. Both virtual and augmented reality are also reality, but the fact that it is appreciated through a screen sometimes causes it not to be considered as something artistic or even real. Thinking that way we could say that looking at a piece of art on the Internet does not have its complete experience, since we are not seeing it in the place for which it was devised, and neither are we perceiving it in a direct way, but with a screen as an intermediary. But at the same time, I think about all the content that we consume today with these devices - movies, series, photographs, news, and even art, current and classic - and not because of that we think or say that they are unreal.

At this point, where the analog space merges with the digital space, a new artistic expression is born that is entirely digital, where the final piece is born and ends up in the digital realm. Conceived through digital tools and deposited in the public digital space. These pieces of art suggest skipping the step of "existing" first in the ‘real reality’ to reach directly the virtual reality, which is also reality, and once from there, to have an impact on the analog reality.

It would also be curious to reflect on the parallelism between urban art and digital art, since, being in public places, both are susceptible to being stolen, altered or appropriated by other people for different purposes. And also, on the idea of anonymity, always used by urban artists to be able to work in the street without risk of infringement, and now also used in the digital environment. Either by often using copyrighted content that we find on the web (street 2.0) for an artistic purpose or by the "erosion of sharing” in which at some point someone does not credit the work, but it is still shared. In this case there should be a new word to define those people that everybody knows, but nobody knows who they are. “Famonimous" characters or the concept of "famonimity"; people or artists who are known precisely because they are anonymous.

Since the beginnings of urban art, the idea was to use public space to express oneself freely, but we must bear in mind that public space is nothing more than the remainder of the space divided by the private, the "leftovers" after the developers pass, the worthless places left open to the common people by institutions, etc., etc..... With the change of social, technological and artistic paradigm, urban art has been normalized and is now used as a method of decoration of places in poor condition, as a complement to a public road or simply as a means of open artistic expression as it has always been. Because if the initial objective was to make art accessible, direct and open to everyone, that idea has moved to the internet and, in some ways, the radical idea of urban art would no longer have that sense.

Therefore, if we understand urban or public art as a type of art accessible to everyone, free of charge and without any kind of condition, | believe that digital art fulfils this role today, since it inhabits all public places, whether analog or digital. Urban art needs this digital sphere to be able to expand and be visible. Because nowadays most urban art is seen through screens, not in the place where the piece has been created, which makes all these works more accessible to everyone at any time. And so, the ’paradox of the graffiti artist’ is born, the one who expresses his freedom in the walls that imprison him. These walls generate private spaces and what is outside them is considered public space by the mere fact of being spaces where people pass through. But it does not mean that this public space is open to intervention. Every public space is under the supervision of a privative entity, whether it is a municipality, a company or simply, the property of an individual. Public space does not exist, neither in the ‘real reality’, nor in the virtual one. It is always subject to something superior that manages it.

Within this dilemma, augmented reality becomes another alternative to the path of public art. It gives the possibility of creating art in public spaces, only seen on digital devices, and using the ‘real reality’ as the piece’s canvas. Until recently, photography and/or video were methods of capturing reality. Now, with this change of prism, these disciplines moved from being the purpose itself, to becoming raw material for the creation of other new artistic expressions. In this direction, | want to focus on the gif format. This format is strictly digital, so it gives us the option to edit, to add movement to pieces that, before, condemned to live still. We can spread in on the Internet and make it accessible to everyone at any time. When adding augmented reality, the two concepts intertwine, urban/public art and digital art, what gives rise to new artistic expressions that call into question deep rooted concepts such as museum, art and reality.

There are already many centuries researching, testing and creating the same type of art, whether sculpture, painting.... Except for the birth of new "isms" within these disciplines, it gives the impression that they are exhausted. At this point it would be convenient to think about the idea of unique work, copy, forgery, recreation... Thinking about the evolution of art we must consider that all new progress is born of the technological options that occur in each era. Nowadays, the difference is that progress happens every day, very fast, and it seems that it is difficult (or unwilling) to understand this change because of the speed of it. This cultural and genetic heritage blurs our vision and sometimes prevents us from conceiving new artistic expressions as such, since there are no previous references to support them.

But, at the end of the day, every new artistic expression, in its beginnings, was not art. "Science develops ideas that come from art that is inspired by science.” The world of classical art enjoys an aura of untouchable deity because when we are born it has always been there, but we cannot forget to think for a moment with perspective that all this classical art was created mainly by the entities of power of each era: kings, church, political powers...

This is why today (without underestimating the technique and the work of the artists) these types of classical art enjoy an invulnerability as, in the end, it was created by and for the power itself.

Then, this type of art collides with the urban and/or public art, along with digital art. In the public and digital space those who decide what is "art" are the people.

I am sure that the first Cro-Magnon who used a tuft of horse hairs instead of his own hands to paint was seen as an art/magic/belief apath.

Now we live in a new paradigm shift, but in this case it is not local or national, it is global and immediate.

A. L. Crego, 2014.

[utopicwork]

Happy pride! As some of you know I'm working on a hardware level (through LoRa primarily at the moment) decentralized internet primarily for trans women to stay connected under increasing censorship of our lives:

This month I'll be pushing hard on this, I've got hardware to test, math to learn, algorithms to write and architecture to invent.

What I'd like is if people could follow me here or bookmark the PierMesh site primarily. In addition spreading the word about this project is extremely helpful. We're also looking for people who want to help from many fields but primarily programming, translation (for UI), law (for a number of questions we have on tech law) and grant writing. You can also help by funding us, either through the links on PierMesh's site or if you want to support us in a consistent way reach out to us at info@piermesh.net.

Please help some trans women put in the work to make a better world!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

[cutecipher]

For lesbian visibility week consider boosting visibility for my (Im a trans lesbian) project to bring new, simple, cheap (mostly free), decentralized internet infrastructure to trans women, other lgbt+ people, and other marginalized people at a time when our communications are being severely cracked down on and surveilled. It's called PierMesh

You can also follow me at @utopicwork for updates

Some recent updates:

Cut packet sizes 70%

Prototype of Daisy (a distributed schemaless database) implemented

End to end encryption core nailed down

I'm hoping to get properly funded soon (we're struggling to keep ourselves afloat at the moment) so if you know someone/an organization that might fund this work please let me know

If you would like to support us financially this works best:

Otherwise there are more ways to donate on the website

Oh and one more thing, if you would like to contribute to this project Ive set up a Matrix chat for that:

Edit: fixed the invite link

[raining-its-pouring]

Rainworld fans when they don’t know how to interact with a female character without calling her a mother or a bitch: “yeah moons too boring :/// I like when she’s a bitch! Let her be mean!”

Moon very rarely displays anything beyond (Understandable) bitterness at her situation and some passive aggression. If you want to make aus or explore an alternate canon where she DOES act more “bitchy” go ahead. I support women’s wrongs. But I find it very disheartening that people see Moon’s sheer willpower, that she chooses to be kind again and again and again, as a weakness. As a “wrong” reaction to the situation she was put in.

I’m not gonna deny that some of her politeness is a hold over from etiquette back in the Ancients’ day. But I simply do not think her peace and kindness is wholly a weakness, or something subconscious she is unaware of. (OR uninteresting. In a world that is DESIGNED to make you feel small, a world designed to be unkind, having a character who chooses to be the opposite is SO interesting imo.) And I do not exactly think reading her angry moments as “bitchy” is a normal thing to do with the only prominent female character in the whole game.

[reportsofagrandfuture]