The end of dribbble

A few days ago I recieved this email:

A terms of service email from online plaform Dribbble

Dribbble is actively enshittifying their platform, so I can't justify giving them money any longer. It used to be a great, no frills portfolio site, that I really enjoyed. Using it to discover new artists, enjoy their work and find inspiration for both my own work, and other projects that I’m a part of.

Yes, Dribbble helps unknown designers get seen by providing a centralized platform where people can share their work to be discovered when it otherwise may not have been. Yes, some of those discoveries lead to the exchange of goods and services. Yes, of course, there's value in all of that to the average artist. The problem is this. Dribbble already runs ads on their platform to monetize it. they also have an ad-free paid membership program called “Pro” (I was a member). They also allow users to pay to “boost” their work and capture even more eyes (I've used this function, and it worked better than Facebook or Instagram’s "boost" function ever did). Given all of these monetization tactics, the latest move to gatekeep contact information only reeks of further enshittification. It's simply a way to snake in between existing designers and their prospective clients by "gatekeeping" their contact info, unless a payment for a service is made through Dribbble first. They’re now nickeling and diming the artists they supposedly champion, to skim a few more bucks off the top. They're trying to create what Upwork and Fiverr (among others) already have created, and they are years late to that game. What's worse, is that many of the artists on Dribbble now, were the exact same ones alienated by Upwork and Fiverr’s previous enshittification (I’m one of them). People went elsewhere because it was better. And Dribbble was one of those places. The sad thing in all of this is that the platform known as Dribbble will carry on. they'll likely continue attracting more users and may even increase their profits as intended. But the users on their site that helped build it up to what it is, won’t be among that crowd. There are many reasons for this but here are two. First, the quality of the work posted by designers on their site will decrease. Their original core user base (people like me) simply won’t care enough about mediocre stuff. Secondly, it will slowly erode any leverage that a “good” designer might have for charging appropriate amount of money for their talents. In this dog-eat-dog world of jockeying for client attention through a third-party “finder” platform, there is always someone out there willing to do it for less (often for free). Dribbble will increasingly become filled with second-rate “hustle pigs” duking it out at lower and lower rates.