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Why all of a sudden tech companies are not being favorable to their users?

YouTube disallowing adblockers, Reddit charging for API usage, Twitter blocking non-registered users. These events happen almost at the same time. Is this one of the effects of the tech bubble burst?

492 comments
  • Tech companies were only favorable to their users during the corporate Web 2.0 genesis when these companies had to lure educated users in with extremely convenient free services, but they always did and continue to do so under terms of service that are intentionally made as hard to read walls of legalese bullshit, so they always click accept and hand them power by moving there.

    These companies usually are either publicly traded or aspire to be publicly traded, and are backed by venture capital loaned to them by banks and investors.

    Then during the late 2000s and early 2010s these corporations gobbled up web traffic by having all the valuable information and communities behind their walls. This drove their operating costs up a lot but it was no problem, since the zero interest rate policy was in effect so these now-megacorps had basically interest-free loans to get infinite money to finance the platform. However they realized around the mid 2010s that they controlled the vast majority of the web so they realized they could be as greedy as they wanted since no one is going to ever step up to them (YouTube is a shining example of this) and ever since the mid-late 2010s they started nerfing and crippling the user experience in order to please their investors and ad networks. This process was extremely slow initially to minimize the backlash. They applied the boiling frog strategy and it worked.

    By the early 2020s this was in full effect: websites do not respect your privacy and try to shove trackers and ads whenever and wherever they legally can, search engines are manipulated to put sponsored and SEO spam links first rather than useful answers, sites are implementing login walls to make sure the valuable content they hold hostage can only be accessed once they have the data of users, discourse is being controlled and micromanaged by corporations with automated censorship, mystery echo chamber algorithms, shadowbans and wordlists, news sites have article limits and paywalls now. It got so bad that it's already harming society as a whole because it's causing polarization and these platforms now have enough power to theoretically manipulate elections in some really bad cases.

    This is a process known as enshittification: start great then become shit and die. Now that the zero interest rate policy is over, and interest rates started climbing up it means silicon valley free money is over so they can no longer afford to be boiling frogs, they are turning up the heat to 11 and just roasting the frog alive. In other words, the enshittification cycle is becoming exponentially faster and it's only going to get worse for the corporate web and its users. The only solution is returning to decentralized technologies like Web 1.0 used to be, but it's extremely hard since free as in you pay with your data services are addictive like crack cocaine.

  • That doesn't fix YouTube's core issues with the ads that they run, impacting every free user without an ad blocker: 1) Not 100% safe 2) Unscrupulous advertisers, sometimes running scam ads 3) Poor user experience re: ads (far too many in general, and multiple mid-roll ads per video make for a horrendous time).

    I'm not going to reward them for these misbehaviors toward their user base by buying their "Premium" service. Same for any other site that does this and offers a "Premium service" to fix the problem that they, themselves, created. There are ways to have safe ads, and fair user experience even with them in play.

  • I find it the ad bubble is bursting so companies are increasing costs for api access and divert people into using their own apps (so they can't block ads and such)

  • They've reached such an economic power that now they just want to be as profitable as possible, crushing any kind of competition of popular pro-user participation while profiting over our data and content

    WE, the users, made them able to do so, giving them economic and sometime even geopolitical power. But WE still determine whether they can exist or not man, we still have the power to bring them down. It's time to take back what's ours!

  • We have reached the stage where the snakes have grown large enough that they must prey on their own tails, for there is nothing left to eat.

  • Interest rates went from almost zero to real rates. If you're sitting on a pile of money you can invest it in internet companies with crazy valuations and no profit or near zero-risk Treasury Bills and interest-bearing certificates.

    Many investors know they are betting on the greater fool instead of any real value in these internet companies. There are now fewer greater fools.

    If your business model was to give out free stuff paid for by piles of investor money, you suddenly had to find cash to keep the lights on.

    Elon has to pay $1B in interest every year for Twitter. That's still a lot of money.

    Elon being a cartoon villian gave other people cover to do the same. You're less likely to be singled out by the media.Your taking candy from a baby is just part of the trend or the run of bad luck falling on those poor billionaires.

  • There are a lot of reasons for this general trend, but let me add my two cents to make a case for the sudden influx of user-opposed changes:

    I don't have a source for this, but I remember that Linus spoke about this on the LTT WAN-Show. Basically, abunch of big silicon valley investors are pulling out of all of the big platforms, therefore leaving them with a huge hole in their profitability. This means, that right now a lot of them are scrambling to scrape together more money over time, so all of those platforms are sustainable.

    Obviously this has to observed in conjunction with all of those are trends that are already mentioned by other comments, but this gives more basis as to why now, and why to this extent.

    If someone else knows what I'm talking about please add quotes and sources because I don't like the good old 'dude trust me' guarantee one bit.

492 comments