A grassroots fundraising campaign for the 2024 election is trending towards half a million dollars raised by Fediverse members.

The Mastodon For Harris campaign has raised close to $500,000 within two weeks of being live. It is probably the largest attempt for political organizing on the Fediverse, and may provide a playbook for other efforts going forward.

  • Sean TilleyOPEnglish
    4•5 months ago

    That’s not really enshittification, is it?

    I was under the impression that Cory Doctorow’s definition was largely based on how social media platforms entice people with “free” offerings, then gradually tighten the screws over time to make service worse. This usually happens when a platform becomes the dominant player.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•5 months ago

      Eh, language evolves, terms that follow normal grammar constructions eventually are expanded beyond their niches (see: “forbade” and all those verbs that start with “for”; as well as “embiggen” etc).

      “Enshittify” is literally just “make something shittier” (“en-” + “shit” + “-fy”). Sure it was coined for the idiosyncracies of this absurd timeline, and we are all glad for that – but really it’s just a correct word that has always existed it just went unused.

      Now, if you want to pedant, sure let’s go that way: Mozilla is also a platform that “entices people with a free offering” (Firefox), then “gradually tightens” (or, really, loosens) the screws over time “to make that service worse” (Pocket, Robot, post-Auralis UI, AIs, etc). This “usually happens when a platform becomes the dominant player” (in this case, basically the only big Gecko browser).