I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this morning, following a few links that started with a post from Inger Mewburn that caught my attention: The enshittification of academic social media.
Telling academics they can achieve career success by using today’s algorithmic-driven platforms is like telling Millennials they could afford to buy a house by eating less avocado on toast. It’s a cruel lie because social media is a shit way to share your work now.
Like Mewburn, I’d spent a lot of time building an online social media academic presence, and helping colleagues do the same. And, like Mewburn, I realised that it’s been a long time (a very long time) since it’s felt like the effort needed to cultivate that social media presence is worthwhile. Academic social media – for me – no longer has anything like the feeling of community that I felt for about a decade or so, from about 2010 – 2020.
I’d hoped that Mastodon would be the saviour of academic social media, and I experimented with it for a while, until I got to a point where it just felt like a lot of work for very little return. It reached a point where I’d be feeling pressure to update 5 platforms every time I wanted to share something. I still enjoy sharing links and thoughts with anyone who might find them useful, but now I only do that here. Granted, fewer people see it, but I’m OK with that. I was never trying to ‘build an audience’.
Mewburn’s title, which is what originally caught my attention, comes from this post by Cory Doctorow, about the enshittification of TikTok.
This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
It’s a long read, but prefaces something that’s captured well in this quote from Om Malik:
Every day on social media, I am reminded that if I have half a brain, impulse control, and respect for my intelligence, I should not be on any social media platform.
And this is why I haven’t rushed to sign up for Threads, even though it sounds like a social media platform that’s delivering value to users. When I quit Twitter, I poured time and attention into Mastodon, before eventually deciding that even that was a distraction. I realised that it’s not the social media platform I’ve come to object to, but the concept. I can’t bear the thought that I need to sign up with another platform, write another bio, seek out the same people I followed on other platforms. And, I don’t see any reason why Threads will be immune to the enshittification of social media that we’re seeing everywhere else.
I used to agree with Stephen Downes, when he says that the future of social media is decentralised. The idea is that we’re not going to see a move from one platform (e.g. Twitter) to another (e.g. Mastodon or Threads). Downes make the point that we’re more likely to see a diaspora, where people disperse to many different platforms, all of which are aware of each other and where content posted to one platform can be federated to others. And maybe this is how it’s going to work.
But I I’ve decided that I just don’t want to spend any more time and attention creating value for other companies, products, and services, until we reach the inevitable point where it no longer adds value to my goals, and then have to start again. If there’s any value that’s going to be created by work that I do, I want that value to accrue to organisations and people who make society better. And the only way I can think of to do that is to create stuff on the platforms that I control, like this blog, the In Beta project, and the Head space programme. I’m less certain about my Thinking in Public YouTube channel, and don’t love the idea of hosting it there. But I’m not sure what my other options are.
I like to think that the work I do here isn’t going to be come enshittified. In that spirit, here are 7 rules to avoid enshittification, which I’ve modified so that they’re less focused on the CEO community they were written for:
- Tell your community that you’re in this for the long haul, and that they need to understand that progress may be slow. Whatever you’re building needs to be a long-term project if it’s going to make an impact.
- Your community is everything. No-one built anything worthwhile on their own.
- Create more value than you capture. There’s no problem capturing value from your project, as long as your community gets more value out of it than they’re investing (whether it’s an investment of time, money, attention, and so on).
- Empower your community, then trust them. Your network is one of the things making your project impactful; let it evolve and maybe even create value that you don’t capture.
- Explore opportunities to capture value (i.e. make money) that doesn’t undermine the community, or their experience. Monetise, but don’t overwhelm.
- Never charge for what was once free. This is the epitome of taking value away from your community.
- Don’t insult the intelligence of your community and users. If you need to charge for services, be upfront about it and explain how this helps you create more value.
I’ve had a quick read through this post, and I get that some of it is a bit rambling and unstructured, and maybe not especially interesting or useful. But, it’s helped me figure out a few things for myself, which is ultimately what I started the blog for. To think in public. If there is any value in this post, at least it’s not being captured by a company. If you’ve read this far, and any of this is valuable, it’s all yours.