1w ago

Tailscale addressing concerns over potential enshittification of the platform

tailscale.com The evasive evitability of enshittification

Tailscale recently announced our Series C fundraise, and while we were grateful for the support, the Internet, as it does, also raised a few eyebrows — some wondering whether this meant the dreaded “enshittification” was on the horizon for Tailscale.

Tailscale recently announced our Series C fundraise, and while we were grateful for the support, the Internet, as it does, also raised a few eyebrows — some wondering whether this meant the dreaded “enshittification” was on the horizon for Tailscale.

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I have read so many posts like this, that try to explain why their company is a special case and why it could never happen to them, only to see the same thing happen again and again.
Tailscale are trying to insert themselves into the stack and become the go-to choice for this kind of networking. When their customers are dependent on it, of course they'll start extracting rent and capturing as much as they can.
That's their right, but it's also a little condescending to pretend otherwise.
- Yeah, this post started as a reassurance that Tailscale wouldn't enshittify. But it turned out to just be an argument about how to avoid enshittification that boiled down to two principles:
  You shouldn't make your product worse because it'll eventually harm the company; and
  Founders are magic and need to never turn over control of the company to others (be it new CEOs or VC) to resist enshittification.
  Both are partially right and partially wrong.
  For #1: Yes, making your product worse eventually harms the company. No, you can't expect CEOs to accept that as a reason to not make their product worse because even if it harms the company, short-term incentives that lead to enshittification are eventually going to become irresistible. His comment about reaching "zen" with leveled growth and profit will never stop VCs from calling in demands and favors.
  For #2: Yes, founders typically "get it" more than their VC- or failure-initiated replacements. No, that doesn't mean founders are uniquely resistant to enshittification. This is your point too, and it's why I don't believe this person - they lose credibility here because they don't acknowledge they aren't special. Every tech bro out there thinks they've cracked the code to permanent tech hegemony. That exceptionalist thinking turns into enshittification, since the product-worsening or overcharging is easier to justify as temporary/necessary/not-a-big-deal (until it isn't).
  And all of this doesn't explain why Tailscale specifically gets immunity if the principles are true.
  So interesting post, and a lot more self-awareness than most founders which is still a little reassuring, but a lot of warning signs too.
  Edit: clarity
  
  Definitely agree with you
  From my experience most companies enshitify before the IPO to juice the metrics and boost their valuations (I.e. their payout).
  The fact that they aren’t doing that yet that is a positive sign.
  But founders aren’t immune to suffering from billionaire brain rot and years of exposure to the constant sycophancy and wealth seems to turn nearly everyone into a greed driven money soulless vampire.
  
  enshitify before the IPO
  I always see it after. Because then the suits take over and it becomes a mandate to increase profits quarterly for the share holders. IPOs want to show happy users to sell the idea of future revenue from milking those users.
- Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil"?
- I really don't see how the enshitification could work when we have the fee version of the central servers Headscale
  So yes, it could be a pay wall for some advance featuresike funnels and so on. But the primary use is secured....
  
  Tailscale has an employee who is contributing to headscale. I think this is helpful and they could decide to stop this collaboration the moment they feel it is counter productive.
  they may decide to start adding undocumented/proprietary/"secure" elements which prevent headscale from working.
  There is no guarantee headscale can keep working the way it does or that it is allowed to keep existing.
  Edit: FYI headscale is not at all at feature parity with what tailscale offers.
  
  Honestly, this seems more than your assumptions and fears than anything else.
  Clients are open source and foss, the moment something strange is in, Headscale could adapt.
  If they finally goes to full close source, then the community will fork (emby - jellyfinn drama).
  Your arguments don't hold together, for the good of the community
  
  I feel you are a bit out of touch when the topic is specifically enshittification and that it is based on the history of companies turning against their users, showing little good faith. It is also not something which is sparing open source projects (remember bitwarden's attempt?). So sure, I'm not going to deny that I'm making assumptions and that I am concerned it may one day happen. But it is grounded in reality, not some tinfoil hat stuff.
  Edit: and the fact that bitwarden did not eventually go through with it does not counter the fact that they intended to and tried. Sometimes companies back off and play the long game and try to be more subtle about it.
  
  Precisely bitwarden movement proves my point. Bitwarden tried to degrade the features/compatibility of the solution and they couldn't because of the vaultwarden implementation.
  Can they always add new features after a pay wall? Sure! But once foss Sw is here it is simple impossible to remove functionality, at most, to get some coins for services not fully selfhosted.
  If tailscale tries to do something similar is goint to be a shoot into their own leg, because all the sw already disclosed makes it impossible. Could they make the relay a paid one? Sure but then they will face the competence of a vps with the Headscale implementation.
  This and only this is because in your home lab only foss Sw should be allowed, even if you need to pay some money from time to time
  
  I switched my company over to Bitwarden because it was open source, any the code could be vetted. I'd definitely be dropping it if they ever started making things proprietary.
  We got burned by Lastpass and it was an easy sell.
  
  Their brilliant idea was to combine the amazing Wireguard with all the ideas from the VOIP world for performant p2p connections of mobile devices. That gave them a head start but especially with headscale existing, anyone can replicate that. Now, their business depends on being the slickest option for managing authentication, users, devices, and ACLs for businesses. The writing is already on the wall for selfhosters - we don’t really need all those features.
- The article also doesn't address how tailscale could enshittify and that they won't do it.
- extracting rent
  That's their right
  lemmy.ml
  Have I discovered a rare pro-capitalist user of lemmy.ml?
- Ur dumb.
  Have you ever thought about how we're different though?

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