I, a victim of enshittification, would like to do something about it.
I sell stuff online, from Germany.
Small scale, on the side, more a passion project than a full on business. I’ve been doing this for 6 years.
First eBay screwed me and plenty small businesses to force us get a subscription plan: from plenty of articles without monthly fees, to paying for each one. From 11% on the sale price, to now even paying fees on the shipping costs, since they took over the payment system - by now I pay 15% or more on fees. They started with 5%, many moons ago.
I said: f that s. - I’m going to a different platform (I stayed with very few articles in eBay). Kleinanzeigen.de, which was pretty neat.
Couple of years down the road and a sell to venture capital later, that crap is unusable and expensive af.
From unlimited ads for business users, to 100 a month, then 50, then paid renewals every two months, then 10 and now 2 ads a month. They have the German market cornered and they know it: their fees are so grotesque that they would keep over 10% of my sales and it’s overflown with ads of the most annoying and intrusive kind. And they don’t even offer payment management. So many sellers just left completely, they only kept the large players and those selling expensive crap. Everything is pay to win by now.
So more than a competing platform I spent a lot of time developing a concept of a sort of private nonprofit alternative, as an antidote to Enshittification and a fat middle finger to corporations destroying the internet and beyond. I want to get it going in Germany and then expand across Europe.
Now I need to kick start this project (literally using a German Kickstarter of sorts) and I think I don’t really know how to reach my potential users.
It would be so neat if there was a platform to support exactly this deenshittification initiatives. I’d be all over that.