Tailscale addressing concerns over potential enshittification of the platform
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.
This person is desperately trying to convince themself. Once the finance capitalists gain control they will be steering the company. They don't care about long term profits if they can squeeze high short term profits. They don't give a shit about the company, especially in tech. They'll sell off any IP (or keep it for their collection) when it's time for bankruptcy and move on to the next target.
Agree. The person who wrote the article is Avery Pennarun, co-creator of tailscale. I've heard him in interview ; he's very smart, both technically, and in high picture thinking.
But... Missing the point that VC money is cursed because they don't care if your product is good, successful or a boon to others, is a bit naive.
I call them locusts. Destroy everything for their own benefit and move on to the next target.
This is excellent article on enshitification, some of the factors that can lead to it, and ways founders could think about it to hopefully avoid it. What it doesn't seem to talk about is how Tailscale intends to avoid it, now and in the future.
you guessed it!
Based on their early mode and communication, I think this was always the plan. VC culture is toxic 🙄
Better yet, why put yourself at the mercy of something that can enshittify in the first place? I've never understood why people get into selfhosting and then go right back to giving power over their network to a 3rd party again.
I don‘t think it is a binary situation: Complete self sustainability vs. full dependence on large corporations. Rather it is a spectrum and everyone feels comfortable somewhere else on it. Also I don‘t think the ends really exist, as someone else will always have power over you (you can‘t reasonably maintain everything yourself) and you can always migrate/quit from a service. Over time your position might change. For me personally I think Tailscale is a great service and for someone just starting out I would definitely recommend it. I think a lot frustration can be avoided when you don‘t set your self-hosting goals to high at the beginning. You can always update your setup later on.
Because it's a stepping stone in the learning. Using something like tailscale that just works allows you to develop skills with other software and workflows. Eventually you progress to harder things like hosting your own private VPN.
Convenience. Setting up Tailscale is easier than setting up WireGuard by yourself and dynamic dns. Not by much but enough that those who don't know how to do latter might opt for Tailscale
I think all they can really say is it's not on the near horizon, but every public company will enshittify at some point. I can't see a future where the investors will be OK for anything but going public or an acquisition by a public company. It's just a question of when, and when they start to turn the screw.
I always look for the companies that are advertising heavily. If we could see their books, I'd say the ones that spend more on marketing than engineering, product, and ops are likely the ones who will enshittify, eventually. They are building the product or service to sell later so they are trying to drum up users and corner the market.
Unfortunately, this is just about everything in the US now.
I always run headscale on my own server for my own network.
Been thinking about this for a while. What's the lift to switch to headscale? Do I need a VPS for external clients? Would a separate site work, such as a family member's house? Any other snags to worry about?
"An expansive vision that's not about money" 🤣 thanks for the laughs.
Huh TIL. Thought it was cock.
It said it was going to explain why enshittification wouldn't happen to them, but didn't.
I hope this turns out to be true but we have heard this a thousand times. ‘Don’t be evil, oh wait but profit…’
Re-brand to "Tailsale" when?
I've always figured that if it was free on the internet, at some point I'd have to find something else to do the same as the former free software/item. That's just the way it goes. Hardly anything stays the same.
I always operate under the assumption that if the product is free, then the user('s data) is the product
In a lot of cases yes, but things like Truenas Bitwarden are paid by enterprise users and the community versions help them with spreading word about the software and helping signal bugs etc.
Yes they can also turn to shit, but generally the consumer markt is so slim that they don;t care
Not entirely the case. There are several companies that market primarily to business users that offer freebies to hobbyists -because those hobbyists sometimes eventually get to buy services for their employer.
Sure, but there are a lot of things you can do with the use of a good firewall, Pi-Hole, VPN, et al, you can mitigate those leaks. Anytime I fire up a new piece of software, my firewall pops up and says 'Hey bro, you really want this chatty piece of software running uninhibited on your network?' and here I go plugging holes. It's not 100%. Some software absolutely refuses to work unless it has internet access. Bluebeam comes to mind. You do what you can, and decide if the hardwired software is something you really need or not.
time for me to find an alternative
Headscale already exists and the Tailscale clients are open source.
Fork their project :) CLI clients are easy enough to use on PC Mac and Linux, All we need is for someone to build Android and iOS clients.
There are loads of alternatives now so it's a good time to have a look.
I've setup netmaker at home, and netbird at work They are both good solutions.
I think if I had to redo home I would swap to netbird. Both of these are fully self hosted.
Neither are as easy to setup as tailscale, but once you get over that hurdle it's fine.
"I can't think of any examples of companies that, in real life, enshittified because they were successful."
Microsoft.
EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft, The New York Times, Fox "News", Walmart, Amazon, Google...
The list is very, very big. They must just be blind as all fuck.
Isn't this a closed-source source service based out of the US? The US government could demand a backdoor in it at anytime in a secret court and no one would know.
Why is enshitification the thing being debated?
Tailscale is Canadian.
I thought they were based in Toronto
Believe their servers are closed source, but the rest such as their clients are open source.
Mate, this isn't a new church roof.
Your fundraisers are going to want that money back and then some. Forever.
This shit text was generated by llm, wasn't it?
They have enough open source code out there to make the CLI clients and server.
It could be forked right now and turned into a separate project. BSD3 license. Rerelease with modifications. A couple of multi-platform devs could manage it.
This is why I really wish the "control servers" were selfhostable on the open web. Kind of similar to how you can self host a relay node for Rustdesk.
You can connect a headscale derp server to a tailscale environment.
Well here it comes
I think the article is pretty accurate about what to expect. The author's view is grounded in reality. They are a business, but that doesn't mean "the capitalists are in control". I would like to think commenters have researched Accel's prior fundings, but I know that is not likely. In short, they do not attempt to control companies. In 300 fundings, they have never attempted to take a majority stake in any company and do not hold majority stake in any company. They don't do acquisitions.
Accel is probably one of the few equity groups that isn't pure fucking evil. If anyone wants to pick a fight over that, fine, but at least research that company first.
the first paragraph is not like in the post. did they rephrase it because of the "as it does" part?
this is the current version:
Tailscale recently announced our Series C fundraise. We were grateful for all the community support, but the Internet also raised a few of its collective eyebrows, wondering whether this meant the dreaded “enshittification” was coming next.
the internet archive does not show your version either: https://web.archive.org/web/20250702140430/https://tailscale.com/blog/evitability-of-enshittification
where did you get that quote from?
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.
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....
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.
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.
Have I discovered a rare pro-capitalist user of lemmy.ml?