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Is there some kind of enshitification domino effect going on right now or what? So many user-hostile decisions being made nearly at the same time can't be coincidence.
Free VC tech money has dried up post COVID, the bubble has burst. Capitalists want a return on investment now. Most IT stuff is not profitable. YouTube isn't profitable, most Amazon clones aren't profitable, social media outside of the Facebook/meta owned model is not profitable.
Does anyone else find it really funny that the model just doesn't exist? The Vultures Capitalists are busting at the seems for 20 years now, the next big app is gonna break free! but no, its not.
Yeah, the profitable way to do social media is the Facebook/meta model, but I don't think most companies can pull that off or copy the meta model. And Zuckerberg blew all the meta cash on VR metaverse nonsense.
Yannis Varoufakis has an interesting view of this reality - that it's digital serfdom. We are the serfs that browse many places on the internet for 'free' (living on the lord's land) and our data is our bodies being worked to farm the land. The profit ratio is the same - we get nothing but the 'privilege' of inhabiting a space, whilst they keep all the profits of our living.
I've probably butchered the explanation somewhat, so go check it out for yourself.
got it. so, much more intel-based, matching the ad against the user "need" or "interest" as it were. I had something similar to that happen on reddit but much more cringey. This was a couple years ago and I hadn't changed my settings to prohibit reddit selling my info to third parties. And I think also that they were less restrictive on who they sold user data to. Anyoo, I had made a comment in like a kayaking subreddit or something very topical like that completely showing absolutely no interest, just a comment basically on kayaks for whatever reason, using the term "kayaks" in my comment. The next day I was getting kayak ads sent to my gmail account. I quickly changed all my settings and it stopped, but it was quite interesting, and a proof of sorts. I posted about in on r/lifehacks and within an hour had over 1,000 likes or whatever. But all the main "front page" subs have rules that users are not allowed to post about reddit itself, so my advice got deleted. I remember feeling pretty frustrated, but also impressed by this organism's incredibly effective self-preservation techniques.
Except ads don't work outside the very top level agencies and brands anymore, so FB's model is also fucked in the medium term because the current digital agency model is fucked.
Yeah, and they have their own service for each demographic that they created or bought. Facebook for boomers and family friendly profile, Instagram for younger people and hustle nonsense, WhatsApp for instant messaging. And even within those services there's stuff like Facebook marketplace, WhatsApp communities and business, Instagram video and stories, etc.
This allows them to monopolise everything and sell nicely collected user data based on each demographic that uses the different services.
China does something similar with Weibo and WeChat
The actual start-ups never need to profit. The VCs invest early when they are worthless, hype the shit out of them, and liquidate their positions at IPO time to start the cycle anew. A bunch of suckers get left holding newly minted overvalued stock in doomed companies.
Yea, sounds right. Or as the imminent humanities scholar and Chicago saloon owner, Michael Cassius McDonald once put it, "...There's a sucker born every minute."
Also, the SBF crypto collapse had knock on effects. It's essentially wiped out Silicon Valley startup culture, hurt the balance sheets of a lot of angels/VCs and they're desperately trying to work out how to monetise AI to keep the grift going.
Correct. When you're paying no interest, you just take out loans and plow them into anything and everything. Crypto, Timeshares on future Mars colonies, you name it. When you actually have to pay interest on the loans, it suddenly becomes very expensive to run this enormous corporate and technical infrastructure with no realized profits.
The Web 2.0 bubble is bursting, web 3.0 is dead on arrival. On top of that capitalism on the whole is collapsing. It's not just tech that's floundering. The whole thing is unraveling
I think, at least in part, the free money from a galaxy of VCs is drying up. And many services that never were profitable in the first place, or hardly so, are having to disappear or make do.
I was wondering the same thing. It seems like reality finally kicked in, and people see the funding vanishing for whatever reason. Someone else mentioned above to keep our eye out on the international stage, maybe there will be some players emerging from India, China, etc.
As the funding dries up (for all the reasons everyone else said), investors are going to start pulling their money out of the least profitable businesses first. So all of the web businesses are trying to squeeze their users a little more than the others, so they can be slightly more profitable than the others, so they're not next on the chopping block. And all of them are doing this, so they're in a race to squeeze their users more than the other companies.
And investors are also kind of dumb and have their own capitalist class biases about what should be profitable, so companies can make themselves look better to investors by performatively cutting costs, squeezing customers, and appearing ruthless, regardless of whether those things actually will help the bottom line.
Is there some kind of enshitification domino effect going on right now or what? So many user-hostile decisions being made nearly at the same time can't be coincidence.
Free VC tech money has dried up post COVID, the bubble has burst. Capitalists want a return on investment now. Most IT stuff is not profitable. YouTube isn't profitable, most Amazon clones aren't profitable, social media outside of the Facebook/meta owned model is not profitable.
Does anyone else find it really funny that the model just doesn't exist? The Vultures Capitalists are busting at the seems for 20 years now, the next big app is gonna break free! but no, its not.
Yeah, the profitable way to do social media is the Facebook/meta model, but I don't think most companies can pull that off or copy the meta model. And Zuckerberg blew all the meta cash on VR metaverse nonsense.
they are basically ad based(?)
Ad based and user data based in which data on everything and anything is sold in large user packets by certain demographic groups to ad agencies.
Yannis Varoufakis has an interesting view of this reality - that it's digital serfdom. We are the serfs that browse many places on the internet for 'free' (living on the lord's land) and our data is our bodies being worked to farm the land. The profit ratio is the same - we get nothing but the 'privilege' of inhabiting a space, whilst they keep all the profits of our living.
I've probably butchered the explanation somewhat, so go check it out for yourself.
got it. so, much more intel-based, matching the ad against the user "need" or "interest" as it were. I had something similar to that happen on reddit but much more cringey. This was a couple years ago and I hadn't changed my settings to prohibit reddit selling my info to third parties. And I think also that they were less restrictive on who they sold user data to. Anyoo, I had made a comment in like a kayaking subreddit or something very topical like that completely showing absolutely no interest, just a comment basically on kayaks for whatever reason, using the term "kayaks" in my comment. The next day I was getting kayak ads sent to my gmail account. I quickly changed all my settings and it stopped, but it was quite interesting, and a proof of sorts. I posted about in on r/lifehacks and within an hour had over 1,000 likes or whatever. But all the main "front page" subs have rules that users are not allowed to post about reddit itself, so my advice got deleted. I remember feeling pretty frustrated, but also impressed by this organism's incredibly effective self-preservation techniques.
Except ads don't work outside the very top level agencies and brands anymore, so FB's model is also fucked in the medium term because the current digital agency model is fucked.
Yeah, and they have their own service for each demographic that they created or bought. Facebook for boomers and family friendly profile, Instagram for younger people and hustle nonsense, WhatsApp for instant messaging. And even within those services there's stuff like Facebook marketplace, WhatsApp communities and business, Instagram video and stories, etc.
This allows them to monopolise everything and sell nicely collected user data based on each demographic that uses the different services.
China does something similar with Weibo and WeChat
got it.
Facebook is also making a twitter clone
The actual start-ups never need to profit. The VCs invest early when they are worthless, hype the shit out of them, and liquidate their positions at IPO time to start the cycle anew. A bunch of suckers get left holding newly minted overvalued stock in doomed companies.
Yea, sounds right. Or as the imminent humanities scholar and Chicago saloon owner, Michael Cassius McDonald once put it, "...There's a sucker born every minute."
Also, the SBF crypto collapse had knock on effects. It's essentially wiped out Silicon Valley startup culture, hurt the balance sheets of a lot of angels/VCs and they're desperately trying to work out how to monetise AI to keep the grift going.
And now the credit freeze is reaching the top.
Maybe related to the Fed raising interest rates?
Correct. When you're paying no interest, you just take out loans and plow them into anything and everything. Crypto, Timeshares on future Mars colonies, you name it. When you actually have to pay interest on the loans, it suddenly becomes very expensive to run this enormous corporate and technical infrastructure with no realized profits.
The Web 2.0 bubble is bursting, web 3.0 is dead on arrival. On top of that capitalism on the whole is collapsing. It's not just tech that's floundering. The whole thing is unraveling
The Economist in a year:
"The death of the internet was caused by people not buying our bullshit while we use free labor to run these sites."
deleted by creator
I think, at least in part, the free money from a galaxy of VCs is drying up. And many services that never were profitable in the first place, or hardly so, are having to disappear or make do.
if everyone is angry at other companies at the same time you piss people off it has less of an impact probably
I was wondering the same thing. It seems like reality finally kicked in, and people see the funding vanishing for whatever reason. Someone else mentioned above to keep our eye out on the international stage, maybe there will be some players emerging from India, China, etc.
As the funding dries up (for all the reasons everyone else said), investors are going to start pulling their money out of the least profitable businesses first. So all of the web businesses are trying to squeeze their users a little more than the others, so they can be slightly more profitable than the others, so they're not next on the chopping block. And all of them are doing this, so they're in a race to squeeze their users more than the other companies.
And investors are also kind of dumb and have their own capitalist class biases about what should be profitable, so companies can make themselves look better to investors by performatively cutting costs, squeezing customers, and appearing ruthless, regardless of whether those things actually will help the bottom line.
Beginning of the new fiscal year