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.

  • pjwestin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    12 hours ago

    Yeah, if I were ever to switch instances, that would probably be my next move. It’s still really small, though. Green Text seems like the only decently sized community.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        28 minutes ago

        Fair enough, but the point is that the instance would still be cut off from a large portion of most users’ content if it were to defederate from ml or world. And while tankies and centrists libs are the schism developing right now, it seems like that’s a symptom of tribalism people have around instances, which I think could undermine the entire principle of federation in the first place.

        sh.itjust.works seems to be doing well, playing nice with world, ml, hexbear, and grad, I just worry that a culture cliqueish I’ve seen so far could keep fracturing Lemmy so it can’t develop a sustainable user base. But as I said, I haven’t been on the platform that long, and this is just my guess of what Lemmy’s version of enshittification might look like after being here a short time.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        Right, and as long as I’m wrong about petty tribalism fracturing Lemmy, that’s good. But if your insurance winds up cut off from World or ml because of petty infighting, that will be a problem