Are there examples of sites/platforms that are doing it "right"? (however you interpret 'right' to be, I guess). Ones that have been around for a while and haven't enshittified?
hm, maybe the crowdfunding platforms like kickstarter and indiegogo? as far as I know those haven't started down the curve yet. but I would guess it's inevitable once you take vc money and are beholden to your investors to squeeze out every drop of revenue you can :(
it would require a really strong mission statement baked into the company to say "we are here to provide value to our users and everything else has to come second to that". if nothing else you eventually get acquired, e.g. tumblr, and everything goes to hell then.
Kickstarter and Indiegogo have quite a few charlatans selling a tech version of snake oil, and they don't care because they get 10% (or whatever their fees are).
I don't think Kickstarter "doesn't care", they just don't care enough to proactively find out. Indiegogo will keep outright scams up. Kickstarter says "eh, someone will flag it if it is a scam"
I am not sure how much vetting you want the platform to do? If someone says they can synthesize gasoline from air for $.02/liter, should Kickstarter shut it down? Send a guy to investigate? Where does the arbitrary this-is-probably-wrong line land?
Well that example wouldn't be allowed on Kickstarter, because they require a prototype to exist for electronics campaigns. I think that's a fairly reasonable arbitrarily chosen line.
I wasn't joking, actually. I still visit Slashdot, though not as often. Ownership has changed over the years, but in principle, the site its features haven't changed.
