Followers Forever

The Broken Promise of End-to-End Exchange Between Creators and Audiences

The internet once held the promise of transforming society by enabling direct connections between creators and their audiences. This dream—of disintermediation, where creators could engage with consumers without the need for gatekeepers—seemed not only possible but inevitable. Creators, be they artists, writers, or entrepreneurs, imagined a future in which they could control their own destinies, set their prices, and engage directly with their audiences. However, the initial promise of this end-to-end exchange has been broken, as corporate giants such as Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon have not only re-intermediated the relationship between creators and audiences but, in many ways, have degraded it through a phenomenon Cory Doctorow coins as  “enshittification.”

Disintermediation: The Early Internet Dream

The rise of the internet in the 1990s was accompanied by the hope that it would eliminate the middlemen who dominated traditional industries. Disintermediation would allow creators to directly distribute their content or products to consumers, removing barriers such as publishers, record labels, and big-box stores. This was a time when platforms like early eBay, blogging tools like WordPress, and even YouTube seemed to allow for unmediated access between creators and audiences. In theory, anyone with an internet connection could become a publisher, a business owner, or an influencer.

This disintermediation led to optimism, as it gave independent creators the chance to reach global audiences without going through major companies. Musicians could upload their work directly to platforms, independent filmmakers could bypass Hollywood studios, and small businesses could sell products without being subject to the terms of major retailers.

Re-Intermediation: The Rise of Platforms

Despite the promise of disintermediation, what followed was an era of re-intermediation. Large tech companies positioned themselves as new kinds of gatekeepers, intermediating these previously direct exchanges. Platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon claimed to connect creators with their audiences but, in reality, began to control every aspect of that interaction, from how content is discovered to how much creators are compensated.

Facebook, for example, initially marketed itself as a way for people and businesses to directly reach their audiences. Pages, groups, and individual profiles allowed users to share content with their followers, theoretically bypassing traditional gatekeepers. However, Facebook soon realized that it could monetize these interactions through its advertising model, inserting itself as the gatekeeper. Organic reach was throttled, forcing creators to pay for ads to connect with their audience. Today, the vast majority of a creator’s audience will not see their content unless the creator or business pays Facebook for visibility, effectively reversing the promise of disintermediation.

Similarly, TikTok, a platform that appeared to democratize the reach of short-form video content, increasingly functions as an opaque intermediary. Although TikTok’s algorithm may initially push a creator’s video to a wide audience, the platform tightly controls who sees what and when, rewarding some content and suppressing others based on its internal priorities. TikTok controls monetization by paying creators based on views from the For You page, making creators dependent on TikTok’s decision to push or “cool” their content. This algorithmic gatekeeping has sparked criticism, especially from marginalized creators whose content is disproportionately shadow-banned or suppressed.

Amazon, originally a straightforward marketplace where independent sellers could reach customers directly, is another example of re-intermediation. While Amazon allows sellers to list products on its platform, the company now exerts immense control over who succeeds. It competes directly with sellers by offering its own private-label products and undercuts third-party sellers by leveraging its vast amount of data. Moreover, the fees that Amazon charges sellers for listing products, fulfillment, and marketing effectively make it impossible for small businesses to bypass Amazon’s intermediary role.

One of the most significant examples of the internet’s broken promise is Google, whose original mission was to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Initially, Google revolutionized the internet by providing a search engine that delivered relevant, high-quality information directly to users. However, like other platforms, Google has succumbed to enshittification. Over time, it has increasingly prioritized paid search results and advertisements over organic content, often burying the most relevant information beneath layers of sponsored links. This profit-driven shift has degraded the user experience and stifled the visibility of smaller websites and creators who can no longer compete with companies that pay for prime real estate in search results. What was once a tool for democratizing access to knowledge has now become another vehicle for corporate exploitation, as the quest for profit overtakes Google’s original mission of accessibility and usefulness.

YouTube is another platform that has strayed far from its original promise of empowering creators and facilitating direct connection with audiences. When it first launched, YouTube was a groundbreaking space for independent creators to share videos, grow followings, and monetize their content without the constraints of traditional media. However, over time, YouTube has become heavily commercialized and enshittified for profit. The platform’s algorithm now prioritizes content that maximizes ad revenue, pushing creators to optimize their videos for length and engagement rather than quality or creativity. Moreover, small creators are often drowned out by corporate media and YouTube’s own promoted content, while many struggle with demonetization due to opaque and inconsistent community guidelines. Ad-friendly content dominates the site, and creators are incentivized to produce clickbait, sensationalism, or repetitive content to satisfy the algorithm. The platform that once championed creative freedom now places profit and ad dollars above the interests of both creators and their audiences.

Enshittification: How the Platforms Degrade the Experience

A term that encapsulates the culmination of these processes is “enshittification”—a state in which platforms deteriorate over time as they become increasingly exploitative of creators and users alike. As these platforms grow, they prioritize profit over the experience of both creators and consumers, leading to a cycle of decline.

This process typically follows a predictable trajectory:

Initial User-Friendly Stage: Platforms initially focus on attracting users and creators by offering a superior experience. They provide free or easy access to features, a high degree of visibility, and minimal interference in creator-audience exchanges. In this stage, the platform acts as a useful tool, allowing creators to build relationships with their audiences organically.

Exploitation Phase: As the platform grows in power and market share, it begins to prioritize advertisers and shareholders over its users. Creators are forced to pay for visibility, or they must navigate increasingly complex algorithms designed to serve the platform’s profitability, not their success. During this stage, platforms extract value from creators, often without offering fair compensation or transparency in how they moderate and distribute content.

The Collapse of Quality: Eventually, platforms reach a tipping point where the user experience deteriorates significantly. Audience engagement declines because the content served is more about keeping users on the platform than providing quality experiences. Creators become increasingly frustrated by the lack of control and fairness, while audiences are bombarded with ads, irrelevant content, or manipulated algorithms designed to maximize the platform’s revenue.

TikTok’s shadow banning of marginalized creators—under the guise of content moderation—is one example of enshittification. This suppression is carried out with little transparency, affecting the reach and income of creators who rely on TikTok for their livelihood. Similarly, Facebook has been accused of favoring sensational and harmful content because its algorithm optimizes for engagement at all costs, even when it leads to the spread of misinformation or hate speech.

Amazon, too, has degraded the experience of independent sellers and buyers. By prioritizing its own products in search results and creating a marketplace dominated by copycat products, Amazon undermines the success of smaller sellers. Additionally, the growing dominance of ads on Amazon makes it more difficult for users to find products organically, turning what was once a streamlined marketplace into a cluttered, pay-to-play environment.

The Broken Promise of End-to-End Exchange

The original promise of the internet—that creators could connect with their audiences without interference—has been systematically broken by these tech giants. Instead of facilitating direct exchanges, platforms have inserted themselves as powerful intermediaries, dictating the terms of engagement and extracting as much value as possible from creators and audiences alike. Whether it is TikTok determining which videos succeed, Facebook charging creators for audience visibility, or Amazon stifling small businesses, the outcome is the same: the end-to-end exchange is blocked by a wall of corporate gatekeepers.

What once seemed like an empowering new paradigm has been co-opted, re-intermediated, and degraded. The creators who dreamed of reaching their audiences without interference now find themselves at the mercy of platforms that prioritize profit over creativity, fairness, and community.

So what now?

Disintermediation, once a hopeful promise of the internet age, has given way to re-intermediation, where tech giants control the flow of content and profit from it. Even worse, the enshittification of these platforms erodes both the user and creator experience. Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon have transformed from tools for liberation into gatekeepers, capturing profits while undermining the quality and fairness of the relationships between creators and audiences. Tools like Followers Forever make the relationship between content creators and audience more direct. The dream of an open, direct internet has been broken, and it is now up to creators and consumers to demand more transparent, ethical alternatives.