Great piece on BlueSky and enshittification by Cory Doctorow . “I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.” I also really appreciate his point that it’s not the blockchain venture capital that leads to enshittification, it’s the venture capital.

Cory is a fellow POSSE-er (and major inspiration to me when I adopted the practice), and has opted not to use Bluesky. Personally, I’ve gone the route of using the platforms that interest me, even the enshittification-prone ones like Bluesky and Threads, but hedging my bets by plugging them into my POSSE system where they can just as easily be unplugged if need be.

“our lead shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse

this is why they focus on blockchains, a technology basically always used at the expense of its users”

i do think the degree to which bluesky is stressing that they do not use blockchains really underscores how toxic even a faint whiff of blockchain has become to any normal platform

This was one of the best podcast episodes I’ve listened to in a long time. Put it on if you’re feeling despair about the state of the internet and tech industry.

This post about Substack's possibly precarious financial position was a good read, but one thing really stuck out to me:

I hate how this has become the dominant perception of how tech platforms should do business. Rather than making a product people love to use, adjusting their pricing to something more sustainable, or knocking off the bullshit that makes people want to leave or hesitant to join, Substack should... force people to stay?

In all fairness to Powell here, I think he's describing what Substack thinks they need to do (rather than what he thinks Substack should do), but it's frustrating that this is the default remedy.