#switching-costs — Public Fediverse posts

Pluralistic: Tiktokification shall set us free (17 Apr 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/17/for-youze/

Noen som vet om et norsk uttrykk for "switching costs"?
Jeg leser Cory Doctorows "Enshittification" for tiden og det er både lærerikt og deprimerende. Boka får meg til å skjønne litt bedre hvorfor jeg har denne konstante ensomhetsfølelsen som jeg ikke hadde før. Ikke at det hjelper å skjønne det, men...
#enshittification #drittifisering #norsktut #allheimen #switchingsocial #switchingcosts

@constancies @nachtfunke
My problem is #SwitchingCosts. Not money but time and effort.

Long ago I used iTunes but had my local collection destroyed (twice!) by something they called iTunes Music Match. So --> Spotify.

When I started hobby coding I wanted a project in line with my interests, eg, music. The Spotify API was free and understandable by a noob. Apple makes you pay to even see the API. Tidal has no public free API. Deezer did but now it doesn't. (All last I checked; while ago)

1/?

Now that Twitter is a Junkyard, I Need a Way to Deal with the Twitter Posts Cited on this Blog

“Live, ongoing connections to people – not your old posts or your identifiers – impose the highest switching costs for any social media service,” argues Cory Doctorow in a recent post. Well, yeah, but hear me out. 

I’ve abandoned my Twitter account, for all the obvious reasons, but for the sake of good housekeeping on this WordPress site I haven’t deleted it . In the years when I was active on Twitter, I cited and linked to my own tweets in a number of blog posts here, especially those having to do with mining around the Lake Superior region and FOIA production. Now I am looking for some way to preserve those tweets before they disappear or stop working, as Musk continues to break the thing he bought. 

Of course, I should never have counted on it, but I did. 

One answer is to go back through all my posts and convert the tweets into screenshots. Do I have to settle for that? It sounds like dreary work; it also wouldn’t really do the trick. Some of the tweets cited on this blog are parts of longer threads, where I am developing an argument or describing the public record, and ideally I would like to allow readers to click through and read the whole thread, ideally some place other than Twitter. I would also want any media included with those tweets to carry over. 

I understand that I can use Porto to import the whole Twitter works to Bluesky, and I may end up doing that, but then I will still have to go back through all my posts and change those links to Bluesky. More dreary work. Besides, I have serious qualms about Bluesky: it just looks like Zombie Twitter to me, the same online strivers hopped up on dopamine and chasing the elusive brass ring. My qualms only deepen when I read people like Doctorow or L. Rhodes. 

The recent announcement of Series A funding by Blockchain Capital makes noises about sharing Bluesky’s user-first design philosophy that “empowers the people,” but talk from venture capitalists about power and people should always be viewed with suspicion, or dismissed outright, as should their promise not to “hyperfinancialize the social experience,” as if the financialization of social experience is not bad enough, morally, socially, politically, and as if there is a bright line between financialization and hyperfinancialization that won’t eventually be crossed. 

All that means that relying on Bluesky could land me in this same situation a few years down the road. Eventually, the walls will go up, and (to borrow Doctorow’s metaphor) there won’t be any fire exits. 

I see that Shawn Hooper has developed a WordPress plugin that will import a Twitter archive to WordPress. While I am not sure I am technically competent to implement it (probably not! not my bailiwick at all), it looks promising, and maybe despite my incompetence I can figure it out or find someone to help me figure it out.

Essentially what I am looking for is an effective way to host those old tweets right here, on WordPress. Self-hosting, self-reliance, or mutual reliance that allows people to opt out, wherever possible, of the financializing and hyperfinancializing of the social web and social experience, looks like the only viable way forward.

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#collapse #financialization #hyperfinancialization #mutualAid #socialCollapse #socialMedia #switchingCosts #Wordpress

🕵️‍♂️ Investigation: In 2021, Microsoft offered the US gov free cybersecurity upgrades, deepening reliance on its services due to high switching costs. 🖥️🔐 #Microsoft #CyberSecurity #USGov #TechNews #GovernmentContracts #CyberDefense #TechReliance #SwitchingCosts #DigitalSecurity

#corydoctorow on😊 #MastoSunday #MustShare
Bluesky & enshittification
"to resist #enshittification, you've to impose #switchingcosts on yourself. Tt's where #federation comes in. On #Mastodon u can easily leave one #server & go to another, & everyone u follow & everyone who follows u will move over to e new server.. I don't know why #Bluesky hasn't added e federation systems tt wld enable #freedom of exit.. So long as Bluesky can be a trap, I won't let myself be tempted"
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

"The CFPB economists used a very conservative methodology, so the number is likely higher, but let's stick with that figure for now. The switching costs of changing banks – determining which bank has the best deal for you, then transfering over your account histories, cards, payees, and automated bill payments – are costing everyday Americans more than half a billion dollars, every year.

Now, the CFPB wasn't gathering this data just to make you mad. They wanted to do something about all this money – to find a way to lower switching costs, and, in so doing, transfer all that money from bank shareholders and executives to the American public.

And that's just what they did. A newly finalized Personal Financial Data Rights rule will allow you to authorize third parties – other banks, comparison shopping sites, brokers, anyone who offers you a better deal, or help you find one – to request your account data from your bank. Your bank will be required to provide that data.

I loved this rule when they first proposed it:"

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

#SwitchingCosts #USA #Banking #Banks #FinancialData #Interoperability #OpenData

@pganssle

This doesn't explain why that #ProprietaryPlatform (#Discord, #Slack, MS Teams, etc.) were initially chosen for that specific group of people. The person who made that decision did it for other reasons.

But it does explain what you asked: Why is this so popular, i.e. why are *so many* people continuing to use it?

#NetworkEffect and #SwitchingCosts. Nothing much to do with the properties of that particular platform.

#ProtocolsNotPlatforms avoids those problems.

@pganssle

#SwitchingCosts: One people are on #Discord or #Slack or whatever, they've got their group meeting there, often primarily and by default.

It's a #ProprietaryPlatform, so they're hostage. Leaving would require abandoning *that group* of people. For many people, they really need or want to stay in that social group.

And that means they must stay on the platform with the proprietary bloated surveillance client.

And, worse, bring new people in and hold *them* hostage too.

@pganssle
> How is this platform [#Discord] so popular?

I lean on the old reliable explanations:

Network effect, brings people in.

Switching costs, prevent them from leaving.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/

#NetworkEffect #SwitchingCosts #ProtocolsNotPlatforms

@pluralistic has made clear that #SwitchingCosts are a major impediment to big name accounts leaving #twitter, #Facebook, #YouTube, etc.

But, there are also #NotSwitchingCosts for refusing to adopt #fedi

For example, I've stopped all donations to my favorite #blog sites that continue to maintain #CSM accounts and cross post corporate cancer.

You can too.

@yakkoj

It was too late a while ago.

The youth exodus from #TikTok is already underway. Gen Z is abandoning it in droves, leaving their parents (Millennials) the largest demographic remaining.

As usual, children seek to hang out in places their parent's generation are *not*. TikTok lost that a while ago.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/#evacuate-the-platforms

#Enshittification #PlatformExodus #VendorLockIn #SwitchingCosts

Fool Me Twice We Don't Get Fooled Again: There's a crucial difference between federatable and federated.

https://doctorow.medium.com/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again-20074e311f1f

#Bluesky #Threads #Mastodon #Fediverse #Federation #SwitchingCosts #UlyssesPacts

Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

📝by Cory Doctorow

Embedded video link:
https://youtu.be/_Fni5YmMRzc

Alternative YouTube viewing sites:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=_Fni5YmMRzc
https://piped.video/watch?v=_Fni5YmMRzc

Alternative Medium viewing site:
https://scribe.rip/@doctorow/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

🔗Original Medium link:
https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

#FireDebt #Enshittification #SwitchingCosts #Threads

#QT - https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110685015975675476

Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

#FireDebt #Enshittification #SwitchingCosts #Threads

#BigTech #Capitalism #NetworKEffects #SwitchingCosts #Economics: "While it’s possible in theory for competition to work well even when network effects and switching costs exist, it’s probably best to assume that they are gumming up the works. Paul Klemperer, one of the pioneers of switching-cost models, has argued that antitrust authorities should try to ensure compatibility between rival platforms, reducing switching costs and pushing against the ability of any one company to monopolise a network.

That means maximising interoperability: the ability to send posts to your Facebook friends, and read their posts, even if you’ve decided to leave Facebook and use a different social network; the ability to take your eBooks and audiobooks out of Amazon’s ecosystem (you paid for them, after all); the ability to put any kind of ink in your printer, any kind of razor blade on your handle and any kind of bread in your toaster.

Interoperability cannot be guaranteed by law. There are too many hard cases, too many grey areas, too many legitimate technical obstacles. But regulators can operate with a presumption in favour of interoperability, as they do for switching phone providers or making transfers between banks."

https://www.ft.com/content/acaf3fb1-d971-48ad-8efb-c82787cdd2fc

"… #antitrust authorities should try to ensure #compatibility between rival platforms, reducing #SwitchingCosts and pushing against the ability of any one company to monopolise a network. …regulators can operate with a presumption in favour of #interoperability, as they do for switching phone providers or making transfers between banks."
https://www.ft.com/content/acaf3fb1-d971-48ad-8efb-c82787cdd2fc?sharetype=blocked
#enshittification #NetworkEffects

Social Quitting

https://craphound.com/news/2023/01/22/social-quitting/

#platformcapitalism #enshittification #networkeffects #switchingcosts #locusmagazine #post-facebook #corydoctorow #post-twitter #socialmedia #spokenword #surpluses #webtheory #Articles #podcasts #Podcast #exodus #audio #locus #News

@aom bueno, la cosa es que siguen habiendo #SwitchingCosts enormes, y hay gente que usa su cuenta de tuiter para promocionar sus libros, charlas o negocios. De hecho yo creo que debo ser el único imbécil de tuiter con más de 100.000 seguidores que no ha monetizado aquello de una manera u otra.

@euklidiadas 🙋

Aunque te digo desde ya que va a ser una batalla perdida, las grandes redes forman parte de sus vidas y ni se plantean que existan alternativas. IG, TikTok, BeReal... forman parte de su tejido social y todas sus amistades están allí, y en la adolescencia perder esos vínculos es impensable. Es lo que @pluralistic llama #SwitchingCosts llevado a la enésima potencia.