@Okuna Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's remark on #disintermediation, with the idea we had in the early days of the WWW to link people directly with what they want.

Now we (well, most of us) are back to doing everything via platforms that want their cut (of money, or personal data) :-)

@u0421793 Spookily enough, I was just reading #Enshittification again, just after this bit on #disintermediation
"If you’re old enough to remember the early excitement about the coming digital age, you’ll recall how enthusiastic we were
about the prospect of disintermediation—­that is, cutting out the middleman."

I remember soldering my first RS-232 cable for a borrowed modem. I had to *phone* my friend Chris and write down the 9-pin and 25-pin assigments, like a savage, to get connected :-)

The value then was in the end point, not the platform/middleman (unless you count the phone bill), and I gladly paid some of those endpoints, such as CiX.

Now we have the most visible parts of the web being giant platforms, "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four" in the words of Tom Eastman.

Yesterday I was trying to design the DEN (DisENshitternet) and the problen I have, as ever, is how to put the money where the value is, without breaking the open source dynamic.

I may be some time.

@herhandsmyhands
> Go to the website using a browser, so that more money goes to the person you are supporting (Patreon is already taking a large bite of that pie as it is)

As is the payment processor that Patreon uses to interact with your bank account. There are so many layers of intermediaries clipping the ticket.

I can totally sympathise with the CryptoBugs who want to make payments P2P. Problem is, DeFi is full of ticket-clipping grifters too.

#disintermediation #DeFi

@simon_brooke

Platforms have emerged as the endemic form of internet-based business, which is ironic, because a platform is just an intermediary - a company that connects different groups to each other. The internet's great promise was "#disintermediation" - getting rid of intermediaries. We did that, and then we got a whole bunch of new intermediaries.

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