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?
This is also a great example of why higher interest rates aren’t automatically a terrible thing. In general, it’s probably a good sign for the economy that companies are expected to be profitable. Means resources are being used well. The limitless VC money kinda meant any dumb idea regardless of merit got funding.
I wish we lived in a society where not everything needed to be profitable. People deserve treats and sucks to have things that made our lives better go awake because shareholders demand money
There are a number of ways things can function that way. Unfortunately, they don’t scale well.
This is part of my hope of federalisation, it lets a group of small entities act as a single large entity. It also lets non-profit and profit making work together. The for-profit provide the brute force, the non-profits keep them from going off the rails too far. It might be the workaround we need.
Also, be the change you want. For-profit businesses often win due to the far better returns. More people are willing to pour the effort into a business that could make them rich than a charity that never will.
I think we’d see loads of improvements if the philosophy went from “be as profitable as possible” to “just be profitable”. You’re 15% lower than last year, but still profiting? That’s just a smaller bonus for all employees and a smaller dividend for the investors, after putting a healthy amount of it into savings.
There’s no concept of “enough”. That’s the big problem. It goes for both economics and career advancement. There doesn’t always have to be a “higher”. It’s okay to say “it isn’t worth it to go further”.
Whether we like the ongoing enshittification of Reddit or not, I think it’s fair that shareholders expect a return on their investment and they have the right to pressure spez to seek aggressive monetization of the platform.
That problem wouldn’t have existed if Reddit was a non-profit though, like the Wikimedia Foundation.
expect a return on their investment and they have the right to pressure spez to seek aggressive monetization of the platform.
Whilst I agree that investors have everybright to expect a return on investment I think this could have been resolved and a number of ways which didn’t include alienating a large proportion of the user base.
Yeah this is critical. These promises for money later mean that all sorts of stupid ideas were being funded, and therefore people hired, etc, but now that’s coming to a close. Companies and investors will be more likely to scrutinize spending (as they should) and see how to rightsize with reality and line of sight to profit. For significantly more complex reasons, it’s similar to an individual borrowing themselves into crazy debt, and banks eventually determining that they need more than credit/promises to keep seeding you cash.
Time to pay back some promises.
any dumb idea regardless of merit got funding
That’s still the case and high interest rates haven’t really fixed that because they are still not high enough. Just look at how any company mentioning “AI” in their earnings call gets extra billions in market cap overnight without having a real product yet.
This seems like a non sequitur: what is good about only profitable ventures getting funding? These unprofitable ventures were creating good jobs and providing enjoyable and sometimes useful products to consumers for low prices. So why is it good that funding is drying up?
It doesn’t seem completely crazy to me that it would be better for money to go to successful projects than just be sprayed like a fire hose in hope that you land a Facebook or Google sized moonshot.
Of course it sucks for the people that lose their job, but presumably that money should go towards sustainably growing things where they could work.
That rather assumes that it actually matters that VC money is being wasted.
After all it keeps the money in circulation and keeps people employed. They then get paid and will then buy useful things from companies that do make profit, so in the end it all works out. It’s only bad for the investors, but that’s always been the thing about investment, it’s always been a risk, and it’s never been guaranteed.
If the goal is simply to keep money circulating and people employed, there are more efficient ways to do that.
Reddit, as a whole only has about 2000 employees.
“only 2000 employees” Reddit should have maybe 200 employees. 2000 is an insane number of people for a single relatively simple piece of software.
