Since I thought this post was too interesting to be only on the Supporter Forum, I decided to post it as a newspost.
Here's something that I thought was interesting. Newgrounds is one of the last places to express creativity without any algorithms or bullshit paywalls, but what if it stopped being that way? Now, obviously, I feel that the website itself is designed to prevent itself from becoming enshittified unlike other popular social media sites without a dramatic overhaul. But, let's just imagine a future where Newgrounds actually comes to a decline in its quality just to maximize profits. How would that go?
Here's how I think Newgrounds could become enshittified. The first thing that came to my mind was the Supporter Rank. At its current state, Supporter feels like a way of just, well, supporting Newgrounds with some quality of life features, and you obviously don't have to buy it to enjoy being on Newgrounds. However, if Newgrounds were to turn for the worse, then I feel that Supporter would start to feel more like a necessity. It could start off by being a paywall to many things, considering it already gives extra space for private messages, forum signatures, and extra images for posts, why not do the rest for all of the writing spaces? Why not have it so that supporters get a larger character limit for forum posts, blog posts, comments on blogs, even the reviews? Now, these aren't exactly bad per say, I would be fine with these possible changes I just mentioned. However, it could get a whole lot worse. Perhaps forum threads and blog comments get formatted to have supporters be at the top, regardless of whether or not they were the first to post? P-Bot's Daily Posting would have it so that the movies and games made by supporters become more likely to win and less likely to be a runner-up? Perhaps have it so that movies, games, and art made by supporters be more likely to be front paged? I just feel that if Newgrounds were to take the wrong steps, it could end up feeling like you have to pay in order to have attention, to have success, to gain a following. This is a future that if combined with the site allowing for algorithms and with a more corporate feel to how Tom and the others run the site, is one that I will forever dread and wish that it never happens.
