• BobQuasit@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    All this has me wondering. Lemmy and other fediverse sites should be resistant to enshittification. But how could American corporations screw that up? Could they start their own servers and instances, and somehow make them dominant? Or would that not be worth it to them?

    It seems to me that capitalism has pretty much been trying to take over everything, with a lot of success. So I find myself wondering if it could happen here.

    • sw4nky@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Theoretically some large company could use the “embrace, extend, extinguish” model to take over “open” standards. Microsoft was famous back then for using this strategy. It would look something like this:

      1. Embrace: large company creates a really stable and well moderated instance that federates with almost everything to attract users

      2. Extend: large company adds custom features to the instance that are incompatible with other instances

      3. Extinguish: people stop using other instances as incompatibilities start impacting user experience. Big instance might also stop federating with other instances, so users are forced to use their instance to see content. After this, big company starts making the platform shittier to make more money.