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Some hard truths from @pluralistic: doctorow.medium.com/https-plur

It misses only one fact: Mastodon was born shitified!

I still believe (maybe naively) that the free software principles are strong and people will eventually unshitiffy it. But this hurdle will cost it a unique moment in history.

A painting of Ulysses tied to the mast, beset by flying sirens. The sirens’ wings have been replaced with the Bluesky butterfly wing logo. On the deck of Ulysses’ trireme is a giant poop emoji.
Medium · Bluesky and enshittification - Cory Doctorow - MediumBy Cory Doctorow

@mpldr @pluralistic The exact same features that keep people away and are driving the mass migration to BlueSky instead of here. This platform has too many restrictions, which makes it more difficult to have meaningful interactions.

For example:

1. The purely sequential timeline means you miss a lot of relevant posts, and it's much harder to keep track of the important conversations.

2. The lack of quotes means you can't link or make references to what others say.

This platform added federation, but unnecessarily removed a lot a features that existed on twitter, instead of improving on them.

Instead of fearing "the algorithm", mastodon should have given the option for users and instances to control the algorithm of their own feed.

Bluesky added the option to "detach" a quote from a post if it turns out it's getting unwanted attention. A simpler, more elegant solution to the (frankly, exaggerated) potential abuse problem, than simply not having quotes at all.

In short, there's less friction there, and here it feels like a pain.

@tiago @mpldr @pluralistic that is not what „shitified“ means. did you read the article?

@kawie @mpldr @pluralistic

Of course I read the article, your condescending creature.

Can't you really understand my argument?

I obviously don't mean that Mastodon is locked in, only that it's a shitty experience.

That's a perfectly valid use of the term "enshitified", and underlies the general problem.

@tiago @kawie @pluralistic I would differ on the "enshittified". To me it has a very clear connotation regarding surveillance capitalism and the gradual decline of product quality. Not having a shitty experience from the get-go. But thanks for clearing up how you're using the term :)