Those of us old enough to remember BBS servers or even rainbow banners often go down the nostalgia hole about how the internet was better “back in the day” than it is now as a handful o…
Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.
Did you also have a robustly enshittified consumer business?
I’m thinking of his classic users —> advertisers —> shareholders model and struggling to come up with companies that have that model but also thrive on government contracts.
Yelp is a pretty classic case of enshittification. What government contracts do they have?
They built a reputation by being one of the first in the space, but they’ve squandered that reputation and I’m pretty sure someone else could start up a competing “reviews” product.
I’d like to have one that actually showed the history of things like restaurants, because if the head chef leaves and the reviews have gone to shit it turns out that the reviews since the new chef are much more relevant than the 1000+ 5 star reviews of the food of the old guy, and that isn’t discoverable anywhere on yelp or anything like yelp.
I’m not sure how you’d protect against enshittification long-term. But I think one of the things that has largely poisoned the spirit of the Internet in general is that everything is always about a “sustainable business model” and “scaling” before anyone even dreams of just writing something up and seeing if they can get it to go popular.
That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.
But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.
Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.
That hasn’t been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don’t (can’t) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.
Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn’t my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.
Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.
Did you also have a robustly enshittified consumer business?
I’m thinking of his classic users —> advertisers —> shareholders model and struggling to come up with companies that have that model but also thrive on government contracts.
Yelp is a pretty classic case of enshittification. What government contracts do they have?
Isn’t yelp a pretty easily replaceable thing?
They built a reputation by being one of the first in the space, but they’ve squandered that reputation and I’m pretty sure someone else could start up a competing “reviews” product.
I’d like to have one that actually showed the history of things like restaurants, because if the head chef leaves and the reviews have gone to shit it turns out that the reviews since the new chef are much more relevant than the 1000+ 5 star reviews of the food of the old guy, and that isn’t discoverable anywhere on yelp or anything like yelp.
I’m not sure how you’d protect against enshittification long-term. But I think one of the things that has largely poisoned the spirit of the Internet in general is that everything is always about a “sustainable business model” and “scaling” before anyone even dreams of just writing something up and seeing if they can get it to go popular.
Google maps is already good enough as a replacement. In fact in some countries it’s the best review aggregator
That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.
But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.
Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.
It’s because they pay big dollars for comparatively little work with little validation of the quality of said work.
That hasn’t been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don’t (can’t) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.
Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn’t my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.