Product managers made the internet annoying. Let's not also make it useless.

The technology and business decisions that created today's enshittified internet landscape was ushered in by product managers. As Cory Doctorow's thesis has described, once products focused on providing as much value to users as they could to attract them. Now we (and our bosses) are instead obsessed with extracting as much value from them as possible. For this, PMs are directly culpable. 🫣

As product management became more standardized in the 2010s, PMs learned to frame their worth through business metrics. Features driving engagement or revenue - metrics which illustrate growth - became the easiest to explain, prioritize and justify. By amplifying a "quantifiable outcomes" mindset, our profession gained organizational clout. But in doing so, we directly enabled and loudly championed enshittification - products built to relentlessly pursue OKRs and KPIs, not to safeguard user experience. This is a trade I'm not sure was wise in hindsight. (I still love IG though.)

🧐 Now generative AI has arrived - potent models like Claude and ChatGPT. We'll soon witness reams of shoddy, AI-spun content - dwarfing even WikiHow circa 2013. Teams struggling to pump out "fresh" material will eagerly hand the reins to generative AI tools, effortlessly mass-producing blog filler and landing pages. This low-quality content will soon envelope the web. It’s too easy.  Only now, instead of wading through yesterday’s rehashed spam blogs, we'll face a glut of flimsy yet superficially "unique" writing.

😇 So if you're a human product manager aghast at enshittification, here's your chance to take a firm stand. When inevitably pressured to integrate generative AI, how will you allow it into your product? As a principled PM, consider whether extracting AI’s value to hit your OKRs is worth the trade off - as eventually, carelessly deployed generative models spitting out low-effort content will create a scorched-earth endgame dubbed "model collapse", rendering the entire technology, and maybe the internet, useless.

I ask my fellow PMs - carefully consider how you'll wield the power of generative AI. Don't optimize for this quarter's KPIs while blinding yourselves to the wider ramifications our collective choices could bring. The open internet's very nature hangs in the balance. 🪦

What do you think?