this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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Many tech companies were overvalued for a long time. Everyone was happy to invest and pump money into those companies because "those platforms are going to be the future and I want to be part of it when they are starting to make a ton of money". It didn't matter that many of those companies were not profitable because they always promised to make up for that in the future.
This classic idea is starting to break down a bit. Many Tech companies have become profitable in the meantime, but many of them also have various troubles like moderation.
So why are so many media companies making "shitty decisions"? Well, because from a business perspective, they aren't necessarily "shitty decisions", they are kinda smart decisions. Reddit makes money by gathering data and by showing ads. They cannot show ads on apps they don't control. So they have to handle a lot of traffic for which they get nothing back. That's why they are trying to push as many people to use their app as possible. They know that the hardcore oldschool community won't like that, but they are probably pretty sure that enough will switch to the app to make it worthwhile for them.
Meta is fighting to stay relevant as well. Facebook was the foundation of social media for a long time, but in the digital space, this can change very quickly, so they constantly have to try new things.
And if we look at games like the Sims, the game who really escalated the whole DLC thing, it's a similar story. From a consumer perspective, what they are doing is bad. From a business perspective, it's smart. And that's what it ultimately comes down to.
Companies' main goal isn't to satisfy their customers, it's making money. If fucking over customers makes them more money, they do it in a heartbeat.
They've also made a lot of shitty decisions. Reddit decided to invest in NFTs when they had cheap money. That's been about as successful as a lead balloon. That also burned a bunch of user good will in the process. Meta went all in on VR and the Metaverse. They've admitted that's been a bust. This seems more like an A and B with A being cheap money evaporating and B being bad decisions.
I'm reluctant to call the latest Reddit thing enshittification, but it really seems like they're between steps 2 and 3.
On a slightly different note, does any think enshittification will be the word of the year?
They’ve also made a lot of shitty decisions.
That's the thing with tech companies. They are fast to rise, but also fast to fall, so they are always on the lookout for the next big thing. Blockchain tech was supposed to be the next big thing. Crypto currency was at the time already kinda the big thing in the tech industry's eyes. And of course when that happens, everyone wants to be early bird for the next big thing and caution is pushed to the side.
VR and AR are the same. It was and still is supposed to be the next big thing. Another one would be language models and "A.I.". But because all those "new things" tend to be massively over hyped by people who often don't really understand it and just have dollar signs in their eyes, they inevitably support the wrong thing every once in a while.
only now? to me most social media platforms were shitty to begin with, or had become shitty long before.
I feel this is a matter of perspective. The average Joe whose concept of "social media" is Facebook probably has never noticed anything getting any worse. The mainstream users who just want to see funny pics and couldn't care less about 3rd party clients might actually be quicker to side with Reddit than with the protesters.
Twitter has never been attractive to me. Even back when its API was public (ancient history). Not only is their feed noisy and of poor quality, constantly swayed by "trending" stuff I don't care about, it also has always had you depend on a privative and closed source walled guarden. Things were much more open before twitter, when people used blogs to post their stuff instead.
Reddit might have been a bit more open once.. but it stopped being so long ago, this is not a change in behavior. Maybe this is an unpopular thing to say, but I'm actually glad this is happening. I think the API fiasco might be an overall good thing if it helps people get away from Reddit, and if so I hope Reddit does not backtrack.
I don't know honestly, greed probably. But it's such a shame. It seems like the internet as a whole is heading in a horrible direction, and not enough people care about it for there to be something done about it.
But here we are dipping our toes in the fediverse, a bit early for the non tech savvy people but from my point of view we are currently proving that monolithic corps are no longer needed. They are convenient, but not alfa-omega.
The climate is heading in a horrible direction, and not enough people care. Politics are heading in a horrible direction, and you know what? Not enough people care!
Sorry, the last 4 years has made me very cynical. And I'm in a particularly blue mood today.
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What were the bad decisions discord is making? Im out of the loop
Actually I once applied for a job at Reddit, there were like 5 or 6 interviews spread over 2 days basically. And almost everyone I talked to did something related to Ads. (The position I was considered for would have been about some service to deal with problematic posts, hate etc.) So it's just a huge ad machine.
This reminds me also about this Facebook documentary from 2 years ago, how ML algorithms implicitly shape how we interact. Maybe such efforts were better put into good moderation (oof), and a well-working UI...
That said, I wouldn't mind paying a little and already even did so to give awards and also for an App. (Can't be that much they earn with ads anyway?) I hope Lemmy is there to stay though, I'd be happy to donate/contribute every once in a while.
Everything in the Fediverse is self-hosted on somebody's dime, if not yours, with the cool part being that you can host yourself and at least have some control for your money and hassle.
Fediverse users seem to tend toward the over-40 set, with lots of people who can eat a $25 monthly hosting fee for their own instance if it matters to them. I think we're reaching the point as an internet community where a lot more people are saying fine, I'll pay for the social media thing if I have to, goddamn, fuckit can't take it with you. All we have to show for "free" social media is communities that turn sour again and again, and a sort of perpetual fleeing of the storm from one site to the next.
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As a phenomenon you'll see a lot of people call it "enshittification." The term seems to originate with Cory Doctorow who writes, "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."
The whole article on his blog is worth a read here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys. His Mastodon handle is @pluralistic if you'd like to follow his work there (woohoo federation!).
woohoo federation!
bro wtf we are actually living in the future, i just followed the equivalent of someone's twitter from the equivalent of my reddit account
The main sticking point is profitability. Not many platforms have managed to create a business model that's sustainably profitable. Reddit certainly hasn't. Now they're basically looking for a way to cash out so they're prioritising short term profitability over everything.
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I literally just came across an article that talks about why and how it happens https://open.substack.com/pub/catvalente/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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I honestly feel like - and this is just my thought, no data to back it up - all the major companies or sites felt like they were the only ones around, there was nothing to replace them, so they could make whatever decisions they wanted to make.
Like when we all left Digg for Reddit - Reddit was already a thing so it was a relatively "painless" switch. With this one it's like... Musk took over twitter and I sort of heard about the fediverse but I'm personally waiting for Hive to get a desktop - but once Reddit started doing it's thing it was like "yeah I really need to move now" and kbin had a much better landing page than any of the other fediverse things I'd stumbled upon which really helped with the onboarding... And it's been nice watching it grow.
But yeah previous to this it was like...there was nothing else available so why did they have to care about what they did if we were "stuck" there with the decisions they were making anyway.
lol...and yet here I am on kbin so - yeah looks like that plan (assuming it's at all correct) didn't pan out entirely like they were hoping.
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ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion are the reasons. I’m starting to see commercials that are using highest tier video tech. Just keep pushing.
That’s one community that’s worth supporting.
What? That's an... interesting theory. I've heard a few bad reasons to dislike generative AI, but this is a new one!
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Greed. It's all driven by greed. It's not just social media companies either. My best guess to why it's happening now.. The boomers are aging out and want to take every last bit they can squeeze out before they retire/die.
I wish it was just the boomers. We have a whole new generation of greedy corporate bootlicks on their way up.
What are the dumb updates discord is doing? I haven't noticed anything different, except for the username change that doesn't have a gamertag anymore.
There is also that weird hidden alternate layout that is an ungodly eyesore (I think it can be accessed either in the settings or if you double click the sparkle emoji for some reason?) Admittedly I'm not as familiar with Discord's issues, mainly heard others talking about it
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Capital only looks out for itself. Online communities are a product to be exploited in the eyes of investors. The purse strings are getting tighter with rising interest rates, and investments that relied on potential are suddenly less exciting when the price to service goes up. Profit is king at the end of the day. It sucks, but that's capitalism.
But the good news is, tech is a highly disruptable industry. Barrier to entry is accessible for regular people.
And that's why we're here.
Reddit doesn't die because we left. They die in a few years when the Fediverse just works better than Reddit. And we fund that.
Speaking of, how do I kick in a few bucks to help out various Lemmy servers? Anyone know?
I was able to donate to Ernest who runs kbin. I can't find the link at the moment but it is floating around here somewhere.
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Hmmm if I had to put my conspiracy cap on it would have to do with the upcoming election. I haven't tested the waters enough to know how lemmy will react to me.