Today’s links Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR’s traffic: The brittle equilibrium of stage three enshittification. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR’s traffic (permalink) Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three): https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys Enshittification isn’t merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can’t be reconfigured in an eyeblink the way that purely digital services can. A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men I call this process “twiddling”: tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the…Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic (14 Oct 2023)