💾 Archived View for voidcruiser.nl › log › 2023-09-13.gmi captured on 2024-05-26 at 14:47:14. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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There is something happening in the software hyper reality, starting roughly in 2022 when Elon Musk took over Twitter. Since then, the pace of the AI development has been nothing short of revolutionary and platforms have started to spontaneously combust (beyond what Musk has been doing with Twitter). First it was Reddit paywalling their API to an extortionate degree. Then it was Twitter following suit and making the platform completely useless without having an account. Even Discord's domination over mainstream online communication wobbled a little bit, due to a change in their display name system.
Wizards of the Coast attempted to lock down their D&D ecosystem to an absurd degree but actually made the smart choice and walked back most of their cocaine induced decisions; instead opting to publish the D&D 5th Edition rules under CC 4.0 BY SA of all licenses.
There is also of course the war that Putin started in Ukraine. I cannot see the scope of how this factors into internet politics and the seemingly suicidal actions of large cooperate mainly digital entities, but I'd be baffled if it didn't.
Somewhere in between all this madness, YouTube got a new CEO who still believed NFTs could prove a fruitful business model a few years after they'd gone out of fashion. I'm ignorant as to whether YouTube has tightened the thumbscrews on it's creators any more since then. After all, that's a story that's been happening every few months since somewhere around 2016 if my memory serves correctly.
Now the latest baffling action is Unity deciding to add an install count cost on top of their older model of only charging game developers after raking a certain amount of money. The initial results at time of writing are utterly fascinating. A huge amount of indie game developers and small publishers have been very publicly bitching about this being a breach of trust. And since indie game developers aren't the most professional types, there have been a lot of meme responses as well. Its amazing to see.
This is also the second time where I can see the shitstorm caused by the community being successful as Unity deals with normal people in "nerd central" -- aka opinionated, loud-mouthed assholes (such as yours truly). The result being that a significantly bigger percentage of the people their are pissing off right now have the ability means to move over to another product; namely Godot.
Having lost interest in using the Unity game engine a few years ago, I have personally grabbed a proverbial bowl of popcorn and am enjoying the fireworks display of caused by the latest digital forest fire.
One of the things that interests me the most is seeing how long people will still take this limiting of the internet services before they step away. Another is how this parallels how the economy in the real world is -- while more slowly -- also shifting. As I am less versed in non-digital economics, I don't really have any other useful commentary here.
I have the feeling that there is something huge that is going to snap somewhere within this decade. I don't know what and I don't know when. I get this feeling due to politics becoming more and more heated; with fascism making its terrifyingly swift return in mainstream western politics; yet at the same time, many previously apolitical people around me slowly forming opinions and a political understanding opposing fascism; the climate marching to a breaking point with the proverbial gun of consumerism and industrialisation at its head. I'm sure that there are at least half a dozen more items I could add to this list that presently escape me.
The nihilistic accelrationist in me is downright excited to see what will snap first. The rest in me is terrified of the outcome.
Regardless of all that, there is one thing I can say with certainty: "We are living in mighty interesting times".