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WheeGeetheCat ,
@WheeGeetheCat@sh.itjust.works avatar

Wouldnt even be surprised if Musk wanted to convince huffman to do this to split the outrage.

LIke how all the tech companies did layoffs at the same time this year

TheLight ,

And before anyone says this sounds like a baseless conspiracy theory, remember that the big tech companies got fined a few years ago for having an agreement not poach each other’s employees to keep wages down. They do talk to each other, and for things that matter.

can ,

Spez already admitted he talked to musk and got inspiration from him.

WheeGeetheCat ,
@WheeGeetheCat@sh.itjust.works avatar

yeah I just mean I think musk might’ve manipulated him a bit, or they had both wanted to do things to piss of their communities respecitvely and agreed to do it ‘together’

Pillarist ,

enshittification

Give it a Google.

CaraDe3 ,
@CaraDe3@vlemmy.net avatar

I’m pretty sure that most of the companies do this type of crap because they know that we need their product.

BURN ,

Ads pay basically nothing now and VC funding has dried up. Most of these tech companies operated at a loss and are now being pressured into becoming profitable since investors don’t want to throw money at them anymore.

Data privacy laws have also gotten better, cutting off another revenue stream that was typically used.

Beliriel ,

But when did VC money get flushed in? I doubt that it just somehow stops out of nowhere. I mean all these companies weren’t exactly founded at the same time.

AnObscureTenet ,

During the pandemic VC slowed to a crawl and the stock market went to shit. While the market eventually rebounded VC is doing so MUCH more slowly. VC scum doesn’t care about innovation, it cares about making money. If there’s some level of risk it shrinks like balls in a January pool and it takes forever to coax the little guys out.

SpezCanLigmaBalls ,
@SpezCanLigmaBalls@lemmy.world avatar

Interest rates def have a factor in this also

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever ,

First and foremost: none of this is new. You know how we all hate Facebook? Or how everyone fled Digg for Reddit? Or even how it seems like every 6-8 months Twitch/Youtube becomes the worst place to stream and Youtube/Twitch is where it is at.

And a lot of that is about shifting the overton window. Everyone lost their god damned minds yesterday over twitter being rate limited (except the people who just love them the taste of some apartheid winky). But you can bet your bottom dollar that Bluesky and Thread are going to have “much more favorable” subscriptions for “power users”. And it will look amazing compared to twitter.

As for why we are seeing a burst right now? Part of it is very much twitter. Hairplugs bought it, fired off most of the staff, platformed insane amounts of transphobia and hate, and many feeds are just outright bestiality and CSAM. And the vast majority of users still insist “it isn’t that bad” and “there are no alternatives”.

Which tells social media/tech companies: They can do whatever the hell they want and users will stick around. So let’s do that.

And I’ll also add on that the Silicon Valley Bank debacle at the start of the year as well as the ongoing threat of a recession are a good indicator that it might be smart to do an IPO/sell sooner than later. Which means you need at least temporary profitability. Because the days of infinite venture capital are likely gone for a while.

partner0709 ,

Transfobia, lol

wagoner ,

The tech companies tend to follow the leader on unpopular actions. The first-mover bears the brunt of the backlash, allowing the copycats to implement the same policies without the same flak. Witness Twitter introducing fees and then Facebook following suit. Witness Twitter banning third party apps and Reddit… you know the rest.

damnYouSun ,

It’s the Romulans, they’re holding back human progress.

jameskirk ,
@jameskirk@startrek.website avatar

Unlike the Vulcans, who helped human progress!

DuskLoaf ,
@DuskLoaf@lemmy.world avatar

Everyone wants a piece of the AI pie

Shialac ,

Yeah, very likely. Platforms/Investors see a way to make money besides the usual Ad- and Subscription-Based monetization models

redballooon ,
  1. Grow a platform
  2. AI appears on the stage
  3. ???
  4. Profit
FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe Spez and Elon can use AI to write all the posts on their platforms to keep the advertisers interested.

Sabata11792 ,
@Sabata11792@kbin.social avatar

So, no changes?

peter ,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

All VC backed tech companies have been operating on the assumption that they can focus on growth and then make a profit later. That hasn’t happened for most of these companies and VCs are starting to demand returns. It was always going to happen, I’m surprised it took this long.

Overzeetop ,
@Overzeetop@kbin.social avatar

More importantly, the IPO market collapsed a couple of years ago. That is the VC's payday. Now that we're not in an IPO buying frenzy, investors are wanting to see positive cashflow before they buy.

zedtronic ,

Rates needed to rise before it was going to come to pass.

CrypticCoffee ,

It couldn’t be collusion, could it?

herzberd ,
@herzberd@kbin.social avatar

Kind of? It's certainly companies actively moving towards shittier services at the same time as others, but I don't think it's as much of explicit and intentional collusion as it is high school clique prom politics and VC money drying up post rate hikes. There's more of a focus by investors on generating profit over growth at this point because money is no longer free. The safest play for a lot of these boardrooms is to not stand out as a company not realigning priorities to reflect this.

Facebook did layoffs? Okay we have too as well or we're not in the same big boy class as facebook. ... See? We're safe, money please

MrSpArkle ,

Why are companies not favorable to people?

cyanarchy ,

Unchecked profit motive.

Stinkywinks ,

Like the downfall of everything in our society, greed.

RemembertheApollo ,

The BS idea of infinite growth that our financial system revolves around. The stock market and investments all demand endless growth, and that pressure on company quarterly reports drives everything from unbundling, to suppressing wages and benefits, to squeezing users for more money in any way possible- and for us that’s ad revenue to be extracted from our browsers and apps.

RatzChatsubo ,

Chatgpt is using up all their resources and inflating viewership by logging into these sites millions of times. And ad companies are mad that they can’t catch eyeballs anymore so they are pressuring social media giants to search for alternative income

Just my headcannon

bioemerl ,

I doubt it. There's no way one company is inflating the views of a website by a million times. And the users are not going around browsing the internet with Chat GPT in mass. Web scraping is definitely an excuse for them to make these moves, not a reason

theothermatt_b ,
@theothermatt_b@lemmy.ml avatar

Another step in the enshittification cycle just happened to affect three companies that you noticed at the same time.

Another day, another big website taking steps to make their user experience actively worse.

pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/-guys

dottedgreenline ,
@dottedgreenline@lemmy.ml avatar

My guess is their calculations are that they’re not necessarily being unfavourable to their more casual users. Which are probably the majority. People who have digested the idea of ads, don’t create content and casually scroll around for a laugh or for some biased news and surface level discussions probably don’t feel that much has changed.

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