Give Me a Lightbulb

Snapdrop — another case of “Enshittification”

In my last post on this platform, I came to praise Snapdrop. Today, I come to bury Snapdrop, not to praise it. (HT: William Shakespeare.)

In truth, it seems to me it has buried itself, self-imolated, imploded, or, in tech terms, has become subject to enshittification. In the memorable words of Cory Doctorow:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification...

And this is, more or less, what has happened to Snapdrop. It seems to have been snapped up by Limewire who destroyed it. Instead of being a straightforward file-transfer-within-same-network-in-browser app, it became an upload, file-share, monetized thing.

There are, fortunately, alternatives. Who knows how long they’ll last.