A Platform That Doesn’t Enshittify

A Letter to Casey Newton

Dear Casey,

You’ve spent years documenting how platforms die — how they start by being good to users, then shift value to business customers, then finally extract everything for shareholders until the whole thing collapses. You called it the platform lifecycle. Cory Doctorow called it enshittification. Same autopsy, different coroner.

I built something that can’t do that. Not “won’t” — can’t. And I think you might want to see how.

The Structural Problem

Every platform you’ve covered follows the same arc because they share the same structure: venture capital demands growth, growth demands monetization, monetization demands extraction, extraction kills the community that made the platform valuable.

The incentives are baked in at founding. By the time users notice, it’s already too late.

What’s Different

Liana Banyan has no outside investors. The users ARE the owners. Every person who contributes earns medallions — blockchain-verified equity in the platform itself.

Our margin is fixed: Cost + 20%. Not “up to” — exactly. That’s enough to sustain the infrastructure and nothing more. There’s no shareholder demanding we find “additional revenue opportunities” in our user base.

When I eventually step back, the platform doesn’t get sold to the highest bidder. It gets governed by the people who built it. The incentive to enshittify doesn’t exist because there’s no one to enshittify it FOR.

Why This Matters Beyond Theory

We’re launching with six community initiatives: food access, prescription medications, group purchasing, legal defense, medical savings. Real needs, real infrastructure, real stakes.

If this works — if a platform can sustain itself on thin margins and user ownership — it’s a proof of concept for everything. If it fails, at least we’ll know why.

What I’m Asking

Write about it. Or don’t. But look at it first.

I’m not asking for press — I’m asking for scrutiny from someone who’s seen every way platforms fail. Tell me what I’m missing. Tell me where the structure breaks. Tell me which assumption is naive.

I’d rather hear it from you now than discover it at scale.

The platform is live. The economics are published at Cephas.LianaBanyan.org. I’ll answer any question you have.

Jonathan Jones Founding Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation November 2025

P.S. — Platformer is itself a proof of concept — that journalism can be reader-funded without enshittifying. You already know this works.

406-578-1232 Support@LianaBanyan.org