Mastodawn

As a child of the 80s I find it weird to want to defend Microsoft but… I don’t think so.

What happened with Reddit and Twitter is they were small enough that incompetent short-termists VCs or delusional fascists were able to take them over without restraint.

Will MS try to squeeze a bit more revenue from GH in ways that are mildly annoying? Probably. Will they lay waste to the whole business by doing things that obviously destroy valuable good will? No.

https://social.kernel.org/objects/d0a8dc76-e5cf-423d-8f38-081b7569fe67

K. Ryabitsev (@[email protected])

Everything happening with Reddit will happen with GitHub.

Ben Cohen Jun 14, 2023

Not keen on the enshittification trope, because it can be so lazily applied.

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift was just discussing with a friend how good the word itself is. And me telling him “I don’t even remember the case Cory wrote about it”; and then re-reading it and realizing I was using it differently.

I am afraid the word will take on a life of its own. All I can do is enjoy the debates over it now :-)

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @airspeedswift my understanding of enshittification is that it describes the three-phase process by which a middleman establishes a monopoly before ramping prices and cutting quality.

The canonical example is Amazon, who first provided a cheap deal to buyers so they'd only want to get their books from Amazon, then provided a compelling deal to suppliers so they'd only want to sell through Amazon, and finally, once they'd sown up the market, they were free to swindle everyone.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @airspeedswift it seems like that could potentially apply to both Reddit and github.

They're both effectively middlemen between content providers and content consumers, who make that connection available for free (while running at a loss) with a presumable long term goal of monetizing it once they've made it sufficiently hard for users to jump ship if they don't like the changes that monetization effort brings.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @airspeedswift of course I'd expect Microsoft to do it less hamfistedly than Reddit has done because they value their reputation more highly and they have other revenue streams to allow them to ramp up more slowly before needing to reach profitability.

I can't imagine that their strategy with github is just to keep running it as a loss leader forever so it can act as a halo effect for their other products and services though (although I suppose it's possible).

Ben Cohen Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @Migueldeicaza I'm not even how much of a loss leader it is at this point. They said it makes $1bn ARR last year, but they don’t break out its operating costs afaict.The segment they lump it into has revenue of $15bn and income of $6bn.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza I guess they already moved to phase 3 with copilot. Maybe that's as far as it will go (which I could probably live with tbh, since I don't use it and none of my code is GPL anyway).

Ben Cohen Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @Migueldeicaza this kind of perfectly describes my problem with the term. People will say “aha copilot is enshittification!” because either a) they believe any service that isn't free is enshittification or b) they have some absurd "everyone must follow my principles" notion of how you can or cannot use open source software or c) they're a GPL fanatic (a particularly annoying subset of b)

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza I mean, I really want to believe that

a) a company like Microsoft can make more money by focussing on creating new innovative products than by extracting ever increasing rent from their existing back catalog, and

b) once they find a way to make a fair profit they'll stop trying to extract more and more revenue at the expense of the user experience.

However, this belief kind of runs contrary to the reality I've witnessed. ("Responsibility to shareholders", etc).

Uli Kusterer (Not a kitteh)Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza See also: The ClipChamp video *file* editor and everything else on Windows 11 suddenly demanding you log into an online account … Yeah, I’m guessing it will just get worse from there and it won’t be as easy as just not using ClipChamp.

Jonathan Joelson Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza imo market competition is really the only thing that can check a for-profit corporation’s thirst for profits in the the long run.

That’s why for services that have natural network effects the only way to avoid a degraded UX in the long run is to have them be stewarded by organizations that are not for-profit (e.g. Wikipedia), or to build on federated protocols that prevent any one company from controlling the entire network.

Jonathan Joelson Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza in regards to GitHub specifically, Git itself is the decentralized protocol that might act as a bit of a check, but the more they leverage their dominance into devops features beyond git itself, the more likely it is that the enshitification process will proceed.

Ben Cohen Jun 14, 2023

@jjoelson @nicklockwood @Migueldeicaza maybe this isn't what you're saying, but I'm skeptical of claims that what has made github the defacto monopoly provider is network effects. Nobody really gives a crap about stars and follows, and you don’t miss out for not being “on github" when you put up your PR, unlike your tweet. If a project was on NotGitHub and I wanted to work on it I would just go there and fork it there.

what makes github the only game is e.g. their PR UX is excellent

Jonathan Joelson Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift In my other toot I argued that git itself is the “open protocol” that acts as a check on GitHub, so I think we’re in agreement.

But as @nicklockwood pointed out, companies are always looking for ways to gain control, like Google controlling Android with Play Services and the Play Store.

GitHub has lots of functionality built on top of git that is starting to create a network effect of its own, and that is something to be wary of imo.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@jjoelson @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza or legal regulations, antitrust, etc.

It remains to be seen how well federation works as barrier. Being built on top of IRC didn't stop Slack from enshittifying, nor is Gmail or Chrome's dominance significantly limited by being built on open standards.

Jonathan Joelson Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza I would argue that Gmail and Chrome are solid free products with generally good UX. Federation and open standards have ensured they have enough competition such that they can’t just flush their UX down the toilet in the name of profits.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@jjoelson @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza Chrome can affect the entire web with a single UX decision - for example they broke basically all web games a few years back by disabling auto-play audio.

They can also break the web for other browser users by implementing bleeding edge standards, or implementing things in a nonstandard way because devs only test on Chrome.

Gmail's dominance means they can break email for non-gmail users by blocking an entire ISP domain because of one spammy user, etc.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@jjoelson @airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza obviously these are not examples of enshittification per-se, just demonstrations that being built on open standards are not a cast iron guarantee against a company gaining enough power to become a monopolist.

Android is perhaps a better example - from a nominally open platform Google has locked it down to the point where they can effectively ban ad blockers for the majority of users.

NeoNacho Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @nicklockwood @Migueldeicaza how *isn’t* it enshittification? They made something that already worked fine worse, with the sole purpose of being able to charge for it. They just managed to latch onto the right hype train.

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@NeoNacho @airspeedswift @nicklockwood I am confused at the particular case study here. When I tweeted this, it was regarding the cash-cow dynamics around .net developers (it’s a long story).

Not sure where GitHub got here, and generally, I think copilot being a paid service is ok, you don’t have to buy it.

The management of GitHub is the same for the shenanigans above, and there might come a day that it switches to cash cow mode - and we get to experience the consequences.

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@NeoNacho @airspeedswift @nicklockwood two thoughts I had while showering:

1. Having a word empowers people to name a problem. We have used assorted essay-length expressions to describe our concerns, and now there is a bumper-sticker version we can use for a spectrum of corporate actions.

2. The weaponization of woke was very much a punch-down move, while enshittydication is a punching up. Perhaps it will be used unfairly, but the targets can take it.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @NeoNacho @airspeedswift @nicklockwood very well put!

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @NeoNacho @airspeedswift @nicklockwood clearly I need to take more showers

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @NeoNacho @airspeedswift I just noticed you accidentally wrote "enshittydictation" which seems like a good word for what's happened to Siri over the years (although I suspect the issue in this case was enshittyautocorrect)

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @NeoNacho @airspeedswift few people called out my spelling a few days ago, and I battled what to write from memory :-)

Ben Cohen Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @NeoNacho @nicklockwood maybe "fake news" would be a closer analogy thank woke.

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @NeoNacho @nicklockwood oh man, yes, that word just lost all the meaning

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @airspeedswift @NeoNacho that was, again, deliberately co-opted by the right though. I guess the equivalent would be if they started referring to companies celebrating Pride month as enshittification

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @airspeedswift yeah, that is my understanding as well. But before re-reading the piece, I used it as a placeholder for all kinds of downgrades that might be adjacent, but not exactly the same: like airline fees and monopolies.

Ben Cohen Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @nicklockwood trouble is, like "woke”, it'll eventually degrade to “whatever I don't like”.

Tedious tweets about late stage capitalism not getting enough likes? Enshittification! Sad they got rid of the poof of smoke when removing things from the dock? Enshittification!

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza I think it does serve the valuable purpose of both giving a name to - and specific explanation for - the process by which virtually all successful startups become terrible in the end.

I think that's useful because it counters the perception that somehow this is something that sometimes *just happens* to a previously good company (like a bad CEO, or a private equity acquisition), as opposed to being designed into their growth arc from the very beginning.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza previously I think we used to think of startups in terms of "making it" or "not making it". Like, maybe they'll be a Google or maybe they'll be a Yahoo.

But the reality is actually that if it checks all the boxes of:

1) basically a middleman
2) free (or running at a loss)
3) propped up by venture capital

Then the question is not "will it succeed or fail?" but rather "will it fail before or after becoming a worthless rent-seeking leech that everyone despises?"

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @airspeedswift good point, internally at companies there are expressions for a class of business that won’t evolve, but you can squeeze capital out of it, and you don’t really care about nurturing the users: “cash cow”.

This is a word that merely describes the visible impact from an internal strategy.

Nick Lockwood Jun 14, 2023

@Migueldeicaza @nicklockwood @airspeedswift it's funny - I took a different connotation from the term "cash cow". For example, in the early days, Microsoft's cash cows were Windows and Office, and what I took that to mean were that a) those were "safe" products that they'd be careful to nurture and avoid ruining, but also b) the reliable revenue from those products was what funded their somewhat predatory behavior in other markets like the Web, because it meant they could run IE as a loss leader

Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jun 14, 2023

@nicklockwood @nicklockwood @airspeedswift in management land the term is used to make funding decisions, different than say growth assets. Variations for these businesses include “landing the plane”

Jordan Kay Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift @Migueldeicaza @nicklockwood Funny you should mention, the term “capitalism” itself has done exactly that in certain online circles 🙃

I Can't Believe It's Not Zero!Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift GitHub can’t be enshittified in the original meaning because to large extent the content producers are the consumers. You can’t lock one in and lever that to lock in the other with shitty terms. It may all go to hell, but it will be a fundamentally different process than Amazon or FB or Twitter.

Antwan van Houdt Jun 15, 2023

@airspeedswift Yeah it was a great article but throwing it around is a bit lazy. Re github stuff, there are issues with MS but given how easy it is to actually migrate away from it I doubt they'd ever try to burn too many bridges.

Jaanus Kase Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift past behavior is good predictor of future behavior. Looking pretty good for MS and GH right now. MS bought GH 4 years ago. GH since then has continued to operate quite independently, with no visible impact to their products since the acquisition.

I do wonder, though, when will Apple release their version control? Xcode Cloud already does the CI part. Version control is the only part of Apple developer journey where I must currently use an external non-Apple service.

Scott Perry Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift "China will win because their plan spans the next 100 years instead of the next election cycle"

Sven A. Schmidt Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift Also: GH has a bussiness plan and existing service revenue from it and is post-acquisition (i.e. effectively post-IPO). That takes certain pressures off the table.

Elijah Yap Jun 14, 2023

@airspeedswift not to mention GitHub enterprise.

B2B is basically incompatible with Twitter’s fickleness