Platform Collapses

[ysabetwordsmith]

 greywash has described a robust pattern in platform collapses.  This is a problem because people put a lot of time, energy, and money into building an online presence.  When those platforms are unreliable as a concept, that wastes a lot of effort every time they collapse, discourages people from investing that effort again, and thus makes cyberspace less functional for everyone.

Comments

[capri0mni]

This is, of course, happening as we speak (type?), over at Tumblr, thanks to their "No NSFW" policy, going into effect in 6 days, relying on bots to do all the work, and those bots have either not been trained, or have been minimally trained, having been shown only what porn looks like, and nothing else for comparison (Artificial Intelligence Deployed, Real Intelligence, Not so Much).

In any case, yesterday, I came across an interesting take on the dynamics here.

Snippet quote:

Tumblr was a ‘success’ because it was too poorly managed to sufficiently atomize us, and so we actually had conversations and communities instead of being the best products for advertisers.

The only problem is, that in order to survive (or not be deliberately murdered) the only model the CEOs of these companies recognize is to turn users into products for advertisers -- kind of like the bots that have only seen porn, and nothing else.

(and yes, I've been making posts to nudge people in Dreamwidth's direction)

[ideen_elster]

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing :)

[arlie]

The pattern certainly seems familiar to me, and I see it in places like online computer games too, except minus the OMG P*RN aspects - sold to "monetize", result removes the main attractions of the game, sold again ....

[mdlbear]

Thanks! I ran across that one last week but apparently forgot to log it.