I do think they will essentially die. They will morph into completely different websites, but I think they will be around for a long time, and I think their userbase won’t shrink even a bit.
Big websites are slowly adopting the facebook model: All the content is hidden and requires you login to view it. Creating an account requires some sort of personally identifying information like a phone number, photo of ID, mailing address, etc.
The old model simply turned out to be unprofitable. It was always done under the motto of “bring the people and the money will come” and so they made it as easy as possible to build up a large user base, but it turns out that motto is false on the internet, and investors have finally realized it. There is no point in having a massive user base if they don’t actually generate a profit for you. Anonymous internet users do not do this. They are indistinguishable from bots. If they don’t use adblock, they don’t click on ads. They don’t donate money. Yet they use up the majority of the server resources.
It used to be that you at least needed anonymous users to generate content for you, but (in part thanks to facebok) non-anonymous usage of the internet has become normalized. If anything the best content will come from someone who has their real name, and profile picture attached to the content they submit. The anonymous nobody is much less likely to post anything valuable.
I think the internet as we know it is dead, and tbh I don’t even blame big corporations for this. I blame mass tech illiteracy, and people’s willingness to sacrifice their privacy for some dopamine hits.
Reddit hasn’t made many significant changes yet, but Twitter is working hard to fail.
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If large companies and influential people move to Mastodon […] and no ads.
large companies and influential people are in the commercial platforms because of the ads. There is literally no reason for them to move in a place without ads.
Main advantage I see with reddit is it fragmented in to many subs with years of content that people can join as per their preferences, not only that but they also serve you suggested subs and posts keeping you mindlessly scrolling
I think the fact that more information is becoming readily available on federated platforms due to more people moving over to Mastodon and Lemmy for example is definitely making the platform grow as well. With Twitt- sorry, “X” locking down threads to an account, the information on there, as well as other sites eventually, I guarantee, will become less accessible over time. The fediverse hardly has that issue of it’s information becoming less available, and if anything, the structure of hosted instances makes that near impossible for the time being to be phased out. If Threads, for example, went through with adding fediverse support, it probably would not be as widespread as others like Mastodon as such, because the sites that power ActivityPub were designed with users in mind instead of profit.
the problem is we don’t have the critical mass of users to make it not a ghost town, and that problem’s starting to get solved. the only moat the twitbooks of the world ever had was their large userbases and once enough people migrate the rest can do so easily
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I mean, yeah. Even Yahoo is still around. Somehow.
Bro Yahoo has a thriving email and news network, search engine, and finance platform, among other services.
It’s surprising Craigslist is still around if anything. I don’t even use Yahoo but I think you’re out of your depth.
Edit- lol nevermind gen z has spoken Yahoo has no business functions and makes no money. Fucking idiots.
All we can do is our best to create a positive user friendly place for them to migrate when they lose their favorite emoji or are unwilling to mine Bitcoin on their machine or don’t like the idea of having themselves cloned to moderate r/popping or whatever their breaking point is.
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If anything the best content will come from someone who has their real name, and profile picture attached to the content they submit. The anonymous nobody is much less likely to post anything valuable.
I couldn’t possibly disagree more. The reverse of this is true.
I dunno, the biggest viral sensations I’ve seen in the past few years all feature very identifiable people. I think we’re starting to move past the 4chan era of anonymous memelord content.
Maybe give an example? For me, “viral” content isn’t usually something that holds my attention for more than a moment. It’s the random strangers posting really interesting content or questions that I care about
I think the internet as we know it is dead, and tbh I don’t even blame big corporations for this. I blame mass tech illiteracy, and people’s willingness to sacrifice their privacy for some dopamine hits.
So, you’re blaming the victims? Not the billion dollar corporations, leveraging their immense power and wealth to drain as much value out everything they touch just to discard what remains the second it’s not creating enough money for them? Instead you blame the tech illiterate, that never had a chance? The poor and exploited, caught in the hamster wheel of capitalism barely able to plan until the next pay check?
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Louis Rossman has said this stuff for a long time, and with each passing day it seems more accurate. The enshittification has just accelerated I due to higher interest rates on loans.
At least it made me realize I’m just not their target customer. I always ask myself why people still use tiktok, twitter, reddit, facebook, youtube, etc when they continually fuck with their users. The reason is simply that they are the target audience.
There’s currently no alternative to YouTube
I mean of course. Even MySpace hasn’t actually died yet.
I agree with you for Reddit.
For Twitter, it will burn under Musk’s leadership
lol
Are you sure about that? Spez seems like a huge fan of Musk.
The difference is in obscurity and vanity. Everyone online knows who Musk is, people outside Reddit (and even those on Reddit, some of them) don’t know who Spez is. The scale is different, and so are the severity and publicness of the negative changes. Like hell, a total site rebrand is a pretty noticeable thing.
EDIT: Case in point, everyone refers to him as Spez instead of his name, Steve Huffman.
That’s exactly what I think when I say they will die. That’s how this shit has gone for decades. Many “dead” websites still exist, but are no longer relevant, no longer used by a majority, or completely different than what they originally were.
