Why every new "Art Community" fails. Equal parts eulogy, condemnation, and mourning.
While there is one part I'd quibble with (and it's not the one you might think), overall I think this is a really good piece on why we've failed to make a new form of the online creative infrastructure that enshittification eroded away.
I think this shows my maxim that to fight enshittification we need to love artists more than we hate AI, because while they cite AI as a problem, they cite as a much bigger one the way attempts at making a new DA have focused on commercial interests rather than the amateur and young artists which were the lifeblood of DA, a miniature form of elite capture.
I will note, one can cite larger economic factors in this failure, in particular the way the bottom fell out of less commercial artistic projects online after the 2008 crash in a way net culture never really recovered from due to Everyone Is Broke meaning the only way you could practice your hobby long-term is Monetizing It.
But I'll also note that this is not an excuse or justification for us abandoning the ethos that created the good artistic ecosystems of the old net in the name of eking out a few increasingly unsustainable dollars in the name of saving our own skins.
It's an obstacle that must be overcome to find something better, and in the example the ending cites, it does show a potential path to there...
