The community web is enshittified. And we're allowing it to happen.

Last night, I was asking myself whether I'm too old to stay up into the wee hours. This was after I fell down a community AI slop rabbit hole.

And as a result, I think I've come to the realisation of what my current motivations are in the world of community:

I want to help people see how beautiful community is.

Right now, community does not feel that way. I saw things that made me reflect and realise how much I love what we are building right now. I feel that community is beautiful. But we need more examples.

⚠️ Of course, what I say does not apply to all communities, but it's on the up, and I refuse to ignore the problem. The reality, is that deeper I dive into building our own community platform, the more I realise other communities are missing out on.

The community web is completely enshittified and we're accepting it. Some of the most popular communities of yester-years are an overwhelming mess of disappointment, overwhelm and AI slop.

How is it that, collectively, humanity believes in community, however, the online spaces, just don't seem to deliver? We no longer know whether we are interacting with real people or AI. We may be able to spot it at times, but it's only going to get harder.

It makes me want to double down on the human aspect. People shouldn't show up at a community and need to question whether they are engaging with a real person or not. I know I wouldn't want that. The kind of communities I want to build need to have people at the heart. Not AI.

It doesn't mean no AI. It means humans first. And quite frankly, clear boundaries to protect and invest in ourselves as people with real needs.

AI slop. Everywhere.

I visited one community and for a moment I was pleasantly surprised that there were signs of an increase in engagement. I was a bit excited to explore the 100+ comments. The first signs were positive. Then the more I scrolled, the more it just became a stream of AI slop.

Sad Rosie.

And then I went to another community, where a news piece had been shared. And people were commenting on it, relating to the incoming change. One person highlighted about the AI slop, they weren't happy with it, but they were understanding of the situation and willing to put up with it.

Sad Rosie again. It's super interesting that people are willing to put up with an enshittified community product.

I'm not naming them, because that's not the point. Both communities are 'free' communities. They bring unique challenges. And as the world changes and the big tech scrape their data for AI, unless they can command million dollar deals (like Reddit does), what chance do they really have? Free communities are a really hard space to be in.

And honestly, we glorify free communities. But behind the scenes, they are abused. We are allowing them to be abused. They also struggle with business models and sustainable revenue. Most of them don't survive in a meaningful form.

These challenges are not unique to community. The whole world is challenging right now.

The people who run them are constantly putting out fires. And they don't even realise it, because that burning feeling is the norm. We've forgotten, or perhaps never known what joy in community looks like.

They're also not able or willing to make hard change decisions, "because engagement" and the false belief that it will negatively change the outcomes of the community. Because of fear too. And most likely, because of a lack of support or runway.

The real reason people won't close down their Meetup group? The fear of losing out on the people in the group that never show up anymore. So they stay and keep paying the fee. 80% of people in every Meetup group will never properly show up. (And yes, I did make up that "80%" number, from experience, it's roughly true). Let people go, it will be ok.

Honestly, communities could be so much more, if they could be brave and find a way to work through them. But there's a serious lack of examples to aspire to.

Over the past 2.5 years, with the MoTaverse, I've been questioning everything. I really wasn't sure if I could or wanted to keep going. Ultimately, and somehow, I did. But bloody hell, it's been tough to adapt to the world.

We've been working through it. Fixing, changing, iterating, one thing, one day at a time. I keep thinking each year will get easier. It doesn't, but I show up every day realising new things, building confidence and investing in creativity.

In some ways, our product is 100x better than 2 years ago. Is that reflect in revenue? Not yet!

Will it get better? I genuinely believe so, but there are no guarantees. And I've also come to accept that. So many communities and startups have disappeared. We're still going, and hope to. But the world is nuts.

But if we hadn't changed, I really believe we simply wouldn't be here.

Then something amazing started happening. Joy. Creativity. Beauty.

We're optimizing for beautiful sustainable community. It feels good. I fucking love it. I've never felt so good about our work and where we are heading.

I see things. And it looks beautiful.

But it looks nothing like it did in the past. That's what makes it hard, but a good kind of hard, and the kind of hard that I jump out of bed every day for.

And then other things elsewhere started happening. AI slop. Enshittification of the community web. The broligarchy. Moltbook, then the acquistion of moltbook. Like seriously, wtf.

Maybe this is our future world. But I'm opting for something different. The doubling down on the people. To be more human than ever. To light that candle and help others see that we've barely touched the surface of what community can be.

I've been sharing my community thinking as I've been going, as we're doing the work within the MoTaverse. I'd love for more of you to come along on the journey. My work is 95% behind a wall, for reasons of care and protection and respect of my own time. And really, I'm just trying to make a living.

I don't do slimy sales pitches. I don't have clear cut answers for the future. Nor a model that you can copy and paste. What I do have is the experience and the work I am doing today, that I share within Rosieland only.

I don't do consultancy, I prefer sharing what I'm learning as it's happening and also having guiding, supporting conversations to share what I see. It's much cheaper this way too, and really, the hope is that the people around me will build up confidence.

Consultancy comes with the worry and stress ensuring I'm advising the best possible solution. With community conversations we can explore a whole range of things.

But I'd love for more of you to come, learn and explore new ways of doing community.

The old way is enshittified, well and truly done. It's time to think differently and rebuild.

Let's go.

🐌