Netstuck

Recently, I was looking at rental properties for an upcoming move. After a couple of days it was obvious that Facebook marketplace had the largest network, and with it, the largest diversity of offers at the best prices. I haven’t had a Facebook account for nearly a decade, however I felt that I had to create a new one for the purposes of apartment hunting—there were no realistic alternatives. Creating the account evoked some interesting feelings. I felt forced to go along with the crowd, even though I would rather do anything else. You cannot always fight the tide.

I had experienced something similar when WhatsApp recently announced the addition of ads for the first time. Despite a worsening product, I didn’t think many people would switch, the network effect was too strong. As opposed to being forced to buy or use a particular product because there is a monopoly, this is different; there are other products that are superior, but no individual feels they can switch in isolation. They are Netstuck.

There are plenty of examples that follow the same pattern. We have technical equivalents to GitHub, however people (myself included) feel compelled to stay on the platform due to the social aspects of it. As Erik Dietrich points out in DaedTech.

Nobody had thought (to my knowledge) to marry the concept of a social network with the concept of code, but they did. They made encouraged you (sic) to share source code — to take pride in it — and to follow other developers.

In job interviews, it is always “what is your GitHub handle?” never “where do you code?”. Some systems are so intertwined with GitHub that they define the source of things simply as account/repo, assuming that the platform is GitHub by default. Integrating a social aspect into platforms was a big shift in tech of the 2010s, almost certainly to introduce a network effect where one previously did not exist. Everything wanted to be a social network.

As these networks grow, we implicitly begin to associate metrics with trustworthiness and prestige, and I felt this with my new Facebook account. “Not going to lie, they might think you’re sketch since you have no friends” was a comment that I heard along the way, and one that I consistently worry about when outside of mainstream networks. This pain of fighting against the grain is why we get Netstuck in the first place. There are real costs by choosing to go a different direction than the majority. If I apply for a job, and they associate a GitHub commit graph with coding ability, I will be at a disadvantage. When using marketplace, it is harder to both buy and sell things when it looks like your profile was setup yesterday.

The collective action problem

The cost of sailing agaisnt the wind is what leads to the collective action problem. Individually, there is an incentive not to switch away, while collectively, we all want to. While the collective action problem is often chalked up to greed, in this case what people are looking for is much more mundane: the ability to look for jobs, to buy and sell items, or to message their friends. The cost is also different, instead of over-utilizing a resource, the downside is that we entrench a network effect further.

Amy Santee, once a fan of being on LinkedIn, writes on their blog

It used to be optional to be on LinkedIn, but for many people that is no longer the case. LinkedIn has grown in popularity with the digitization of communication, the online nature of job searches (remember circling newspaper ads?), and the proliferation of remote work. There is a lack of third places for professional-social interaction, more recently as a result of the collapse of in-person conferences and networking events due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indications of being Netstuck

In thinking of how Netstuck could be compared to other concepts such as enshittification, it helped to create a simple list of indicators to define the idea. Below are the four concepts that came to mind to define being Netstuck.

The user doesn’t want to use the platform

When creating an account, the user does so reluctantly and due to a belief that it is necessary or inevitable. This differs from akrasia in which a user feels powerless to avoid temptation, ultimately wanting to use a platform in the short-term. Examples of akrasia could be signing up for a YouTube or Instagram account to be able to watch shorts or reels, including having better recommendations. I have no individual desire to binge Facebook marketplace or hunt for jobs on LinkedIn, it is because of the size of the network that I feel they are the only options.

Comparable (preferred) alternatives exist

When platforms that we are currently Netstuck on first came out, they represented truly novel technology and ideas. Facebook had a cleaner design than other sites and focused more on real personas. GitHub transformed the way people collaborate on code. WhatsApp was one of the first private messengers. Now, however, it isn’t that there are no alternatives that people could switch to, it is just that no individual feels that they can. Collectively, however, many would opt to swap to a better platform if everyone else moved as well.

People may reduce usage, but insist on keeping the account around

When considering moving off of Facebook, deactivating is a lot easier than deleting. The act of deleting erases metrics that help the user on the network (such as friends, followers, or a post history), and it is believed that a Facebook account is something that you cannot live without. Even for myself, if I felt that finding a new place to move was next to impossible without an account, I would be kicking myself a bit for deleting it^[1].

The network effect leads to a reduction in product development

When companies feel that they are locked in a close competition with a rival network (such as Uber and Lyft when ride-sharing is new) they will aggressively launch discounts, promotions and new features. They do so knowing that users are fickle and will switch to another service in a heartbeat. However, once they are confident users are Netstuck, product develop will largely cease, because nothing is required to keep users on the platform. For example, LinkedIn hasn’t made substantial improvements to their job search functionality in a while, largely because they don’t need to. Aside from Indeed, there are few other places for job seekers to go with the same amount of participants. The network effect will allow for some coasting.

Where we aren’t Netstuck

There are many products that have gotten worse over the past decade, but we aren’t Netstuck on them. Google Search or Google Chrome don’t keep us locked in due to network effects. Rather, it is a classic monopoly structure in which only operators of a certain size can compete. Likewise, being locked into software like Evernote or Notion as prices rise is because of feature-sets that are not interoperable (a solution proposed by Cory Doctorow in The Internet Con), not everyone else using Notion or Evernote.

How do we get unstuck?

This is the final question for this post and one that I don’t have the answer to. Part of me thinks “we could switch tomorrow, the only barrier is collective will”, while another recognizes that while networks grow fast, they decay slowly. It is a huge ask to hop off the network, whereas current participants will simply say “but why not just join back in?”.

Legislation is tricky because there isn’t always an action taken by the company to illegally prop up its network. People like GitHub stars because they have historically liked GitHub stars, and believe others will value them well into the future. Microsoft can point to many viable alternatives for GitHub that show it isn’t a monopoly, if only people would want to use them.

Additionally, most of the large platforms that we are Netstuck on are currently free, and while better alternatives exist, it is unclear whether they could take on the weight of everyone. For example, if everyone switched from X to Mastodon, would enough people donate to keep the servers afloat? What about for Signal?

I’ll end by concluding that I might just be yelling at the clouds, but it is an uncomfortable feeling to have when you feel forced to be on a platform. It has also made me realize why so many of us try so hard to convince others to switch to our preferred app. We recognize the power of network effects, and don’t want the network we enjoy using to fade into irrelevancy.

Nothing lasts forever, and even the giants of today will eventually fade. The million dollar question is; what will they be replaced with?

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1. Luckily, I haven’t found this to be the case. People will still respond to you even if your account was created yesterday. ↩︎