Fool Me Twice We Don't Get Fooled Again: There's a crucial difference between federatable and federated.

https://doctorow.medium.com/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again-20074e311f1f

#Bluesky #Threads #Mastodon #Fediverse #Federation #SwitchingCosts #UlyssesPacts

For most of the history of consumer tech and digital networks, fire was the norm. New platforms - PC companies, operating systems, online services - would spring up and grow with incredible speed, only to collapse, seemingly without warning.

To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, you need to understand two concepts: #NetworkEffects and #SwitchingCosts.

9/

Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

📝by Cory Doctorow

Embedded video link:
https://youtu.be/_Fni5YmMRzc

Alternative YouTube viewing site:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=_Fni5YmMRzc

Alternative Medium viewing site:
https://scribe.rip/@doctorow/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

🔗Original Medium link:
https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

#FireDebt #Enshittification #SwitchingCosts #Threads

#QT - https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110685015975675476

Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

#FireDebt #Enshittification #SwitchingCosts #Threads

Economists have a name for the penalties that platforms inflict on disloyal customers and workers: #SwitchingCosts. Digital platforms have elevated the inflation of switching costs to a fine art, from Facebook and Twitter holding your friends hostage; to Apple holding your media and apps hostage:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Switching costs are at the heart of the staffing agencies' ripoffs of apartment workers.

17/

#BigTech #Capitalism #NetworKEffects #SwitchingCosts #Economics: "While it’s possible in theory for competition to work well even when network effects and switching costs exist, it’s probably best to assume that they are gumming up the works. Paul Klemperer, one of the pioneers of switching-cost models, has argued that antitrust authorities should try to ensure compatibility between rival platforms, reducing switching costs and pushing against the ability of any one company to monopolise a network.

That means maximising interoperability: the ability to send posts to your Facebook friends, and read their posts, even if you’ve decided to leave Facebook and use a different social network; the ability to take your eBooks and audiobooks out of Amazon’s ecosystem (you paid for them, after all); the ability to put any kind of ink in your printer, any kind of razor blade on your handle and any kind of bread in your toaster.

Interoperability cannot be guaranteed by law. There are too many hard cases, too many grey areas, too many legitimate technical obstacles. But regulators can operate with a presumption in favour of interoperability, as they do for switching phone providers or making transfers between banks."

https://www.ft.com/content/acaf3fb1-d971-48ad-8efb-c82787cdd2fc

"… #antitrust authorities should try to ensure #compatibility between rival platforms, reducing #SwitchingCosts and pushing against the ability of any one company to monopolise a network. …regulators can operate with a presumption in favour of #interoperability, as they do for switching phone providers or making transfers between banks."
https://www.ft.com/content/acaf3fb1-d971-48ad-8efb-c82787cdd2fc?sharetype=blocked
#enshittification #NetworkEffects

A decade later, Musk performed the same stunt, asking users whether they wanted him to fuck all the way off from the company, then ignored the #VoxPopuli, which, in this instance, was not #VoxDei:

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-8dac8ae023444ef9c37ca1d8fe1c14df

Facebook, Twitter and other #WalledGardens are designed to be sticky-traps, relying on high #SwitchingCosts to keep users locked within their garden walls which are really prison walls.

6/

FB experienced explosive growth, thanks to two factors: #NetworkEffects (every new user was a draw for other users who wanted to converse with them), and #SwitchingCosts (it was practically impossible to convince all the people you wanted to hear from to leave FB, much less agree on what platform to go to next). In other words, every new user who joined FB both attracted more users, and made it harder for those users to leave.

4/

When a company is neither disciplined by #competition nor by #regulation, enshittification inevitably ensues. If a user or business customer can't jump ship - because of #LockIn, high #SwitchingCosts or #NetworkEffects - then companies are powerfully tempted to mistreat them - not out of sadism, but instead to harvest their surplus and goose the company's profits.

2/

This is where #NetworkEffects and #SwitchingCosts come into play. A service has "network effects" if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

9/

@noracodes Specifically, the level of trust required is lower because the #SwitchingCosts are far lower.

If it turns out we can't trust the admin, we *can* just leave without losing contact with our friends and family.

RT @doctorow@twitter.com

But social media sites stay big thanks to high #SwitchingCosts: the more you have to give up to leave a social media site, the harder it is to go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs 6/

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1604876712600371200

RT @doctorow@twitter.com

But social media sites stay big thanks to high #SwitchingCosts: the more you have to give up to leave a social media site, the harder it is to go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs 6/

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1604876712600371200

But social media sites stay big thanks to high #SwitchingCosts: the more you have to give up to leave a social media site, the harder it is to go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Nature bequeaths some in-built switching costs on social media, primarily the #CoordinationProblem of reaching consensus on where you and the people in your community should go next.

3/

Meanwhile, users are increasingly trapped inside walled gardens, because their media, apps, and data are locked up in mobile silos and switching to a rival means enduring the #SwitchingCosts of leaving it all behind. Mobile companies claim to have built fortresses to keep bad guys out, but those high walls make fortresses into prisons that keep customers locked in.
17/

Facebook long understood this, which is why it spent years creating artificial #SwitchingCosts - penalties it could impose on users who quit, such as the loss of their family photos:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

24/

@sprigden might already know that what keeps users on Facebook is, in the jargon, called #SwitchingCosts.

People who don't like Facebook, find that they can't leave without paying a high cost: the things they can't take with them.

Their data, yes, but especially their connections with family and community who have not yet left Facebook.

And this is deliberate: Facebook (like any platform corporation) wants to keep those switching costs high.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Corporations are private fiefdoms that should not have power over our social lives.

To keep an online community free and inclusive, while also excluding hateful and dangerous behaviour, is a thorny problem with no perfect solution.

One thing is clear: Proprietary platforms make it all so much worse. They lock users in with #SwitchingCosts. Tabletop Simulator users who find it unsafe can't simply bring their games nor their community with them when they leave.