What’s with social media companies trying to destroy themselves recently? ( kbin.social )

It’s honestly really sad what’s been happening recently. Reddit with the API pricing on 3rd party apps, Discord with the new username change, Twitter with the rate limits, and Twitch with their new advertising rules (although that has been reverted because of backlash). Why does it seem like every company is collectively on a common mission of destroying themselves in the past few months?

I know the common answer is something around the lines of “because companies only care about making money”, but I still don’t get why it seems like all these social media companies have suddenly agreed to screw themselves during pretty much the period of March-June. One that sticks out to me especially is Reddit CEO, Huffman’s comment (u/spez), “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive”. Like reading this literally pisses me off on so many levels. I wouldn’t even have to understand the context behind his comment to say, “I am DONE with you, and I am leaving your site”.

Why is it like this? Does everyone feel the same way? I’m not sure if it’s just me but everything seems to be going downhill these days. I really do hope there is a solution out of this mess.

HuskyTranslator ,
@HuskyTranslator@kbin.social avatar

It's the inevitable enshitification of platforms due to capitalism, explained here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys better than I ever could

TacoButtPlug ,
@TacoButtPlug@kbin.social avatar

@HuskyTranslator this really did a fantastic detailed postmortem

Robotoboy ,
@Robotoboy@kbin.social avatar

Silicon Valley is feeling the backlash of not being able to deliver on their promise. The entire sector has been funded off the promise of forever growth, inflated valuations based on easily manipulated numbers and the concept that tech is the future.

Which yeah, tech IS the future - but it's not the future because some sociopathic individuals are good at social engineering.

It's a panic. Musk never intended to buy Twitter but was essentially forced to... and has ego issues. So instead of allowing it to function and making edits to the business model (that was already failing) he has simply shown that he has no idea how to run a Social Media platform. So he tries to exert force on his userbase so that he can monetize them. Reddit's CEO sees this powerplay, and that a vast majority of Twitters userbase stuck around, and didn't immediately leave, and decided to play the bullish part as well. Twitch has always suffered operating at a loss, so I can only assume Daddy Amazon has forced them to start making bigger changes to make a profit finally. Discord... well Discord is still mostly in its infancy. It's not completely a dominating force in the industry and it knows it. That's way their changes come much more incrementally.

If it's one thing you'll notice about big tech, it's that they have always operated at a loss. They grew, and their services kept expanding because Venture Capital kept coming in at the promise of this future mythical profit. Their model was never sustainable though.

The number one lesson to learn from all this is that investments are just a game for the rich... and I'm going to be real, they're often just as stupid as your average moron.

Moving on to the ActivityPub protocol will be for the good of everyone. It's a bit of a return to the old net... We lose some convenience for the benefit of freedom.

So yeah, they'll continue to make stupid decisions and ruin their companies... but keep in mind that ActivityPub and the Fediverse isn't immune to these sociopaths. We may well see a well funded VC backed venture that uses the protocol.

We'll just have to see how this holds out.

Deathsauce ,
@Deathsauce@kbin.social avatar

It's the age of Techtalitarianism. They've become more brazen and less discreet in the fact they want everyone to pay to access what has become an essential communication method. Soon enough, the "free" aspect of social media will be on par with a video game demo. One or two levels (or features in this instance), certain amount of posting and reading privileges per day, just enough to get a feel for the real thing hidden behind an increasingly hefty paywall.

theinspectorst ,
@theinspectorst@kbin.social avatar

I know the common answer is something around the lines of “because companies only care about making money”, but I still don’t get why it seems like all these social media companies have suddenly agreed to screw themselves during pretty much the period of March-June.

It seems like the proximate trigger for many of these decisions has been the rise of ChatGPT at the end of last year. Before this, they saw the best way to monetise their platforms as being about encouraging new content to create new clicks for advertising revenue. Since ChatGPT, they realised they're all sitting on goldmines of old content that could be used to train their own AI models - so suddenly they're prepared to take a range of seemingly-mad actions that will harm the quality and quantity of new content being created, because they think they've got enough revenue-generating potential from the existing content.

Of course the problem here is that a) they're killing the golden goose - monetising the back book while degrading the new content means they can only do this once, so they better hope it works and makes them a shit load of money, whilst b) although there's loads of potential in AI, we're yet to see someone actually make money through it and it has the potential to be a huge bubble where the hype eventually dissipates and the market collapses upon itself, with only a handful of players making it through unscathed to become the big success story.

All of these social media companies are betting the future of their platforms on them being the one that makes it through the AI bubble. Most of them will fail.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

Another potential problem with trying to monetize off the back of AI is that AI is such a rapidly developing technology that there's no guarantee that their stashes of data will actually be all that vital. There's been a tendency lately toward training AI with a smaller but more highly refined and curated data set rather than just shoveling vast quantities of text at them, for example.

Jaysyn ,
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

No idea, but I'm here to help them finish the job.

Aesculapius ,
@Aesculapius@kbin.social avatar

As users of these platforms, you are not the customer, you are the product. Your attention, your eyeballs, your information. That product is sold to the real customers - advertising agencies, marketing groups, retail companies, service companies, etc. Now that production of that product has gone through the design phase and scale up, it's time to monetize.

The real issue with Reddit didn't have anything to do wtih API rates. It had to do with product value. Third party apps don't carry through their ads, thus reducing their value to their customers (again, not you). Moving NSFW subs, which significantly increases their product (you), increases the value to their customers. If they were going to allow third party apps to exist, they desire recompense for the dilution in value, hence the high API costs.

This is the future of centralized web services.

ozmanthus ,

It’s advertising revenue collapsing and people realizing you can’t just run things for free. I am fine with not having these things if it means I get digital privacy

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