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?
Because investors are tired of the model where they dump a shit load of cash into something that has no good path for monetization. So they’re forcing them all to make money which hurts users.
You joke, but Reddit did something to piss me off a few months before the current fuckery, and I decided to find an alt and there weren’t really any, like I found Mastodon but that’s more of a Twitter replacement, never encountered this site while searching. What I ended up doing was downloading a bunch of books and putting them on my phone, then putting the books app where my Apollo app used to be on my homescreen. Now, more often than not, when I go to scroll, I end up just opening a book. I’ve got a little over 40 on there, they keep my progress, even across devices, and they work when there’s no signal so I no longer have to fear public toilets with shitty cell signal lol.
Yeah, I did download a few SW engineering books, but I haven’t gotten to them. I’ve been reading Chris Hadfields books, the Apollo Murders and and Astronauts guide to life on Earth, a few cooking books like The Food Lab, The Wok, Salt Fat Acid and Heat, Mi Cochina, and some books on playing pool like The Pleasures of Small Motions.
That’s such an awesome title. I just wish it wasn’t about pool but more like a meditative guide on how to enjoy life through slowing down and relishing everyday things or something.
Interestingly, the frogs are actually smarter than humans. Research has shown that they will start attempting to escape as soon as it gets too warm, no matter how slow you boil them.
Also if you drop a frog in boiling water it won’t jump out; it will die. That is not a survivable environment for a frog, not even long enough for it to jump.
Also if you put a frog in cold water and you don’t immediately shut the lid, it will jump out. They don’t sit still for you.
It’s amazing how thoroughly wrong that metaphor is. Like it’s just got it perfectly backwards.
While these changes will eventually happen, as all of these companies are meant to make a profit from the start. The reason they’re all happening now is because of the coming recession, or at least the believe that it will come.
That graph shows the Federal Funds Effective Rate. Until recently, VCs could borrow money while effectively paying zero interest. That meant their investments weren’t under any pressure to become profitable any time soon. Now, borrowing is expensive. VCs don’t want to loan any more money, and want their investments to pay off. Reddit and other pre-IPO companies are scrambling to become profitable.
I assume the big companies like YouTube / Google going against people blocking ads are just taking advantage of the chaos.
Interest rates and inflation is probably a significant source of panic for high growth tech companies with poor earnings.
When interest rates are low, there isn’t a lot of worry about future dollars being eroded by inflation, and investors tend to pay a premium for growth and future earnings. Money is easy to borrow in that kind of environment, so a company that has lots of growth, increasing daily active users, poor earnings, but the hope of finding ways to increase earnings, that kind of company will see their valuation skyrocket and they can use that valuation to secure funding.
When it flips around and interest rates are high, inflation is high, future earnings get eroded by inflation (a dollar in 2021 was stronger than a dollar in 2023), suddenly a company that has shit earnings and huge growth is a lot less desirable compared to a company that has consistent earnings and dividends. That growth stock with shit earnings used to rely on their valuation to generate funding to power that growth, suddenly that entire siphon gets broken, their valuation falls from the sky into reasonable territory, money is hard to borrow, and they’re stuck trying to stay afloat mostly with their shitty earnings.
After the great recession, tech was a very dirty word. We’re talking years after the great recession, 2012-2014 even. People didn’t want to invest in companies that didn’t make any money. 2020-2021, pandemic, lockdowns, historically low interest rates, all that, money was so easy to borrow and growth was so huge from people being stuck indoors that a lot of tech companies with shitty earnings had such insane growth metrics like daily active users that these companies went to the moon. Twilio, TWLO for example, quadrupled from pre-pandemic highs. 2022-2023, inflation becomes a very real thing and things are opening up again, all those metrics drop to normal levels, money is harder to borrow, future dollars getting eroded, growth tech gets crushed, TWLO is suddenly trading at levels lower than pre-pandemic (lost 80% of its value from pandemic highs).
We’re seeing a lot of ‘internet’ type tech companies go from boom to bust, and now they need to do whatever they can to drum up money the good old fashioned way - from generating income as opposed to securing funding through growth (debt).
Not only stuff like Twitter and Reddit, but Netflix cracking down on account sharing. A couple years back Netflix viewed account sharing less as a loss of revenue and more as an ‘unauthorized permanent trial’, hopefully some bandits eventually get their own account for the sake of convenience… But nowadays Netflix needs to think shorter-term and behave a bit more self-sufficiently, so they’re starting to take a more direct approach to compel people to obtain subscriptions.
Something like gfycat, when money is easy to borrow and inflation is low, investors will line up to pile in even if there is practically no revenue, because eventually they might monetize it and become wildly profitable… But in this environment nobody wants to touch something like that, so a zero revenue entity either scrambles for profitability or they simply dry out
They forget the users are their base, not their employees, or are bought by idiot billionaires who think they can turn the platform I to another money printer (or tax write-off)
Spez in particular saw Twitter and thought that would be a great idea.
I don’t think he understands he’s about to be CEO of Tumblr 2.0
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.
EDIT:
This was supposed to be a reply in a post chain below, and it got stuck as a new comment. Lemmy growing pains, lol (looks like we’ve added about 4k or so users on .world today alone… welcome new folks!)
The bottom line is that I decide what content is received, interpreted, and rendered by my hardware. Youtube can kick and scream all they want, the nature of the internet is not in their favor. I prefer to directly support creators I follow, when and where I can.
I’m pretty sure if they actually do that it has far reaching consequences and will get killed within a year by financial institutions. That is a massive security issue. Also AMD would rub their hands because it will flush a lot of money into their pockets to develop alternatives. They are already winning with CPUs.
It does not cause security issues (that banks are concerned about). It is a DRM content decryption that is part of their TPM. So it is even considered a security feature that can more generally be used to ensure data can only be decrypted using the proper application the data was intended for. Netflix is already using it for 4k streaming. Read more here.
Most of the aspects have already been covered but I would want to add one:
This was always the plan, it just wasn’t as highly prioritised as growth.
I work as a developer at a big tech company. We (the company) had our roadmap and it was mostly about getting more users. The more users you have the day the economy turns - the better off you are (… If you manage to turn an profit).
So when the economy went to shit and we (and other tech companies) no longer can loan money for free to cover our running expenses - the priorities shift. Working towards attracting more users is only going to increase your costs at the point and you don’t want to run out of money. So all roadmaps changed and cost saving efforts became the highest prio all of the sudden.
Gain a monopoly, get users addicted and reliant, then change the rules of the game and hope they stick with you. It’s happening now because of the economy for sure, but it’s not like it’s surprising.
It’s like an abusive relationship, they know they can do things against their customers but most will come back willing to pay to make it work. This trend will not stop until enough people leave.
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We are the most disposable asset they have. They need to turn a profit so we are being squeezed.
No tech burst.
It’s just a cold recession. No one is admitting it, including consumers who keep spending away savings.
But companies are aware of it enough they are tightening purses preparing for harder times ahead.
Of course, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If everyone makes their products worse chasing this quarter’s dollar, and people leave, those companies are going to have a harder time.
Especially as it becomes easier and easier to compete against them at scale.
Just wait until new feature requests and bug reports for something like Lemmy can be handled within moments by AI at dirt cheap pricing.
A very interesting future awaits around the bend.
Because investors are tired of the model where they dump a shit load of cash into something that has no good path for monetization. So they’re forcing them all to make money which hurts users.
Capitalism.
Capitalism is like cutting off your wings because you believe the reduced weight will make you fly higher.
Well, I hope the Fediverse works out. Otherwise I think were gonna have to go back to hand printing zines.
You joke, but Reddit did something to piss me off a few months before the current fuckery, and I decided to find an alt and there weren’t really any, like I found Mastodon but that’s more of a Twitter replacement, never encountered this site while searching. What I ended up doing was downloading a bunch of books and putting them on my phone, then putting the books app where my Apollo app used to be on my homescreen. Now, more often than not, when I go to scroll, I end up just opening a book. I’ve got a little over 40 on there, they keep my progress, even across devices, and they work when there’s no signal so I no longer have to fear public toilets with shitty cell signal lol.
That’s a good idea. There’s so much stuff I should/could be reading in the time I’m browsing social media.
Especiallybas a software dev with all the new tech that is coming out, will hopefully get myself to do the same (with Lemmy as a backup of course)
Yeah, I did download a few SW engineering books, but I haven’t gotten to them. I’ve been reading Chris Hadfields books, the Apollo Murders and and Astronauts guide to life on Earth, a few cooking books like The Food Lab, The Wok, Salt Fat Acid and Heat, Mi Cochina, and some books on playing pool like The Pleasures of Small Motions.
That’s such an awesome title. I just wish it wasn’t about pool but more like a meditative guide on how to enjoy life through slowing down and relishing everyday things or something.
Having read the book, if you read it for that purpose, it would work, it just uses playing pool as a medium for that.
removed by mod
Oh yes.
True Foss, became radicalized crazies.
Crypto was for criminals and terrorists.
Truly open forums shut down because racism or pedophilia.
If lemmy will be attacked on all these fronts, being a lemmy user will be equivalent of your boss asking you serious questions.
Get those vpns in place. Full speed ahead.
Interestingly, the frogs are actually smarter than humans. Research has shown that they will start attempting to escape as soon as it gets too warm, no matter how slow you boil them.
Yeah, it’s an extremely common false metaphor.
Also if you drop a frog in boiling water it won’t jump out; it will die. That is not a survivable environment for a frog, not even long enough for it to jump.
Also if you put a frog in cold water and you don’t immediately shut the lid, it will jump out. They don’t sit still for you.
It’s amazing how thoroughly wrong that metaphor is. Like it’s just got it perfectly backwards.
While these changes will eventually happen, as all of these companies are meant to make a profit from the start. The reason they’re all happening now is because of the coming recession, or at least the believe that it will come.
There’s a coming recession?
It’s the end of cheap credit.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=16J5X
That graph shows the Federal Funds Effective Rate. Until recently, VCs could borrow money while effectively paying zero interest. That meant their investments weren’t under any pressure to become profitable any time soon. Now, borrowing is expensive. VCs don’t want to loan any more money, and want their investments to pay off. Reddit and other pre-IPO companies are scrambling to become profitable.
I assume the big companies like YouTube / Google going against people blocking ads are just taking advantage of the chaos.
As for Twitter: Elon Musk is an idiot.
You forgot one thing. Fuck /u/spez
Interest rates and inflation is probably a significant source of panic for high growth tech companies with poor earnings.
When interest rates are low, there isn’t a lot of worry about future dollars being eroded by inflation, and investors tend to pay a premium for growth and future earnings. Money is easy to borrow in that kind of environment, so a company that has lots of growth, increasing daily active users, poor earnings, but the hope of finding ways to increase earnings, that kind of company will see their valuation skyrocket and they can use that valuation to secure funding.
When it flips around and interest rates are high, inflation is high, future earnings get eroded by inflation (a dollar in 2021 was stronger than a dollar in 2023), suddenly a company that has shit earnings and huge growth is a lot less desirable compared to a company that has consistent earnings and dividends. That growth stock with shit earnings used to rely on their valuation to generate funding to power that growth, suddenly that entire siphon gets broken, their valuation falls from the sky into reasonable territory, money is hard to borrow, and they’re stuck trying to stay afloat mostly with their shitty earnings.
After the great recession, tech was a very dirty word. We’re talking years after the great recession, 2012-2014 even. People didn’t want to invest in companies that didn’t make any money. 2020-2021, pandemic, lockdowns, historically low interest rates, all that, money was so easy to borrow and growth was so huge from people being stuck indoors that a lot of tech companies with shitty earnings had such insane growth metrics like daily active users that these companies went to the moon. Twilio, TWLO for example, quadrupled from pre-pandemic highs. 2022-2023, inflation becomes a very real thing and things are opening up again, all those metrics drop to normal levels, money is harder to borrow, future dollars getting eroded, growth tech gets crushed, TWLO is suddenly trading at levels lower than pre-pandemic (lost 80% of its value from pandemic highs).
We’re seeing a lot of ‘internet’ type tech companies go from boom to bust, and now they need to do whatever they can to drum up money the good old fashioned way - from generating income as opposed to securing funding through growth (debt).
Not only stuff like Twitter and Reddit, but Netflix cracking down on account sharing. A couple years back Netflix viewed account sharing less as a loss of revenue and more as an ‘unauthorized permanent trial’, hopefully some bandits eventually get their own account for the sake of convenience… But nowadays Netflix needs to think shorter-term and behave a bit more self-sufficiently, so they’re starting to take a more direct approach to compel people to obtain subscriptions.
Something like gfycat, when money is easy to borrow and inflation is low, investors will line up to pile in even if there is practically no revenue, because eventually they might monetize it and become wildly profitable… But in this environment nobody wants to touch something like that, so a zero revenue entity either scrambles for profitability or they simply dry out
They forget the users are their base, not their employees, or are bought by idiot billionaires who think they can turn the platform I to another money printer (or tax write-off)
Spez in particular saw Twitter and thought that would be a great idea.
I don’t think he understands he’s about to be CEO of Tumblr 2.0
Or famously digg
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.
EDIT: This was supposed to be a reply in a post chain below, and it got stuck as a new comment. Lemmy growing pains, lol (looks like we’ve added about 4k or so users on .world today alone… welcome new folks!)
The bottom line is that I decide what content is received, interpreted, and rendered by my hardware. Youtube can kick and scream all they want, the nature of the internet is not in their favor. I prefer to directly support creators I follow, when and where I can.
Intel is about to disagree with their DRM bullshit baked right into your CPUs silicon. Welcome to the “You will own nothing” future
I’m pretty sure if they actually do that it has far reaching consequences and will get killed within a year by financial institutions. That is a massive security issue. Also AMD would rub their hands because it will flush a lot of money into their pockets to develop alternatives. They are already winning with CPUs.
It does not cause security issues (that banks are concerned about). It is a DRM content decryption that is part of their TPM. So it is even considered a security feature that can more generally be used to ensure data can only be decrypted using the proper application the data was intended for. Netflix is already using it for 4k streaming. Read more here.
Well, they saw how so many redditors “protested” then came back to daddy spez with their tales between their legs.
Hey, the furries have mostly migrated to lemmy!
Most of the aspects have already been covered but I would want to add one:
This was always the plan, it just wasn’t as highly prioritised as growth.
I work as a developer at a big tech company. We (the company) had our roadmap and it was mostly about getting more users. The more users you have the day the economy turns - the better off you are (… If you manage to turn an profit).
So when the economy went to shit and we (and other tech companies) no longer can loan money for free to cover our running expenses - the priorities shift. Working towards attracting more users is only going to increase your costs at the point and you don’t want to run out of money. So all roadmaps changed and cost saving efforts became the highest prio all of the sudden.
Gain a monopoly, get users addicted and reliant, then change the rules of the game and hope they stick with you. It’s happening now because of the economy for sure, but it’s not like it’s surprising.
This was always the plan, to put a world in your hand…
And then squeeeeze it until the last drop of blood dripps out of it.
It’s like an abusive relationship, they know they can do things against their customers but most will come back willing to pay to make it work. This trend will not stop until enough people leave.
It always boils down to corporate greed unfortunately