Technology

big money ruins everything

From Cory Doctorow:

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

Some of it is because we had a decade of cheap borrowing which has come to an end and many of these platforms were never profitable.

in this day and age, you have to be really screwing your customers to get any money from investors

What's going on with Twitch ?

The internet users are learning about corporate greed and rights!

The big sites got big by being there when a previous big site died. But nothing lasts forever, and eventually a social site becomes desperately uncool because there are people old enough to have grandkids on it. And they totter on, like a zombie, until they fuck out badly, and most people leave. But not everyone, I still get linked to blog entries on Livejournal now and then, sometimes I even end up on Blogger when I’m following a trail and people are still updating some of those.

Rich people like money, and will destroy anything to get it.

Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?

gods, i hope so. shall balance finally be restored?

Well, while it is surprising it's all happening within a year or so, it's not unexpected at all.

They're ultimately for-profit companies. They have openly demonstrated the obvious truth that when push comes to shove, users don't matter to them, at least not as much as money. Our attention was the product.

These companies have proven time and time again that a quick moneygrab will win over retaining the people who make the site work. capitalism 101 baby.

I think it's all part of a cycle. Right as a phoenix burns off the last of its light the eggs can be seen forming within the ash.

Twitter, Reddit probably won't be going away anytime soon but they could feasibly end up as the ashes of what they once were.

please can youtube be next?

I really want to stop using my google account and that's the only thing keeping me from moving away from it.

Corporate greed.

I don't think that's true. The web is growing.

However what you might be seeing is a natural progression of a web project. Reality is that not many business projects in IT make it to 10+ years.

What's happening with Twitch? I haven't heard anything.

The post title implies it were prevalent. Which it is not. Three platforms is not a lot overall.

The reasons between Twitter and Reddit are very different.

Twitter was fine. It's on a single Person - Elon Musk - who bought Twitter. All changes after it were through them.

Reddit became a big platform. Now it's run not by a small team but by a big company with management and CEO. Supposedly targeting going public, and probably focusing no longer on usefulness and the service but on profitability and growth. An inherently, broadly, and very different mindset and goals.

Higher interest rates means less investment, resulting in these companies racing to make a profit. The reality is that Reddit is bleeding money and has been for years, and Twitter is barely profitable.

Companies trying to squeeze every penny out of their employees and customers leads to catastrophic damage that is very visible, then everyone has to suffer, except the execs with their big fat bonuses.

louis rossman talks about this in two of his recent videos on twitter and reddit. obviously he tackles it using layman's terms, but there's still a lot of valuable insights and it's super palatable.

essentially it boils down to what @[email protected] says here:

"The valuation of a lot of these sites was grossly inflated by the market, so when the largest shareholders saw their billions halve and know what the future holds, they start doing things to temporarily boost their profit margins and sell off the company."