We old-timers are not warning because “it might happen”, we’re doing it because it has already happened multiple times before
The core of the strategy was delineated by Microsoft when they tried to kill Linux and failed because the strategy was discovered, it’s known as [Embrace, Extend, Extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embra
ce,_extend,_and_extinguish). And it only failed because of active pushback for years by Linux users.
Have you tried to run your own email server these days? Many have tried for a long time, and end up throwing the towel, because email is now dominated by a few corporations who can decide to reject your small server at a whim, as a sysadmin i’ve seen this a lot. And email too is an open federated standard, supposedly resistant to failures.
Or XMPP, which was to be the future of chat clients. It was enthusiastically embraced by everyone including Google and Facebook, then once everybody was dependent on their clients they quietly killed support from it.
Let’s envision a future where Meta has the biggest share of the Fediverse, the most convenient clients, the most features, like they used to be. That’s when enshittification step 2 starts, and they start slowly cutting off anything not under their direct control. Just like they did with XMPP, just like it was done with email. And like WhatsApp and various other things, you don’t want to stop using it because you now rely on it for your communication, and when you try to tell people to follow you to the free part they look at you like you’re an alien. They won.
This is not flights of fancy, this all has happened before. Yeah, Charlie Brown, Lucy is not going to take away the ball this time. And we continue to warn it because it’s bonkers to us that you cannot see it.
We old-timers are not warning because “it might happen”, we’re doing it because it has already happened multiple times before
The core of the strategy was delineated by Microsoft when they tried to kill Linux and failed because the strategy was discovered, it’s known as [Embrace, Extend, Extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embra ce,_extend,_and_extinguish). And it only failed because of active pushback for years by Linux users.
Have you tried to run your own email server these days? Many have tried for a long time, and end up throwing the towel, because email is now dominated by a few corporations who can decide to reject your small server at a whim, as a sysadmin i’ve seen this a lot. And email too is an open federated standard, supposedly resistant to failures.
Or XMPP, which was to be the future of chat clients. It was enthusiastically embraced by everyone including Google and Facebook, then once everybody was dependent on their clients they quietly killed support from it.
Let’s envision a future where Meta has the biggest share of the Fediverse, the most convenient clients, the most features, like they used to be. That’s when enshittification step 2 starts, and they start slowly cutting off anything not under their direct control. Just like they did with XMPP, just like it was done with email. And like WhatsApp and various other things, you don’t want to stop using it because you now rely on it for your communication, and when you try to tell people to follow you to the free part they look at you like you’re an alien. They won.
This is not flights of fancy, this all has happened before. Yeah, Charlie Brown, Lucy is not going to take away the ball this time. And we continue to warn it because it’s bonkers to us that you cannot see it.