The companies want to make more money, and they have (what they think) a captive audience that will put up with the increase in costs. Pull off the bandaid all at once to maximize the probability that everyone will shrug and take it.
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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The other issue to consider is MBAs. Or at least the MBA way of thinking, that "caring about customers" actually means "leaving money on the table." The relentless search for "business efficiency," evaluated in pure accounting terms, can easily lead to destroying the core business due to a lack of understanding of how the core business shows up on a P&L statement.
Any company with a MBA at the helm always seem to make poor choices. Look at the all the companies that have started switching back to engineers for leadership they've started making comebacks.
Money. It really is that simple.
Reddit wanted to kill third party apps because they have ad blocking features and don't show unwarranted sponsored posts. Reddit wants to serve users as much ads and sponsored content as possible, which was not really able to happen with third party apps.
Dr. Capitalism, or How I listened to stop worrying and love the dollar.
You can provide quality services only for so long. Eventually quality will get in the way of profits.
They are trying to squeeze as much money out of their platforms as possible, regardless of the fact that it's at the expense of users and will downgrade users experiences.
Honestly they do it so consistently that i'm starting to wonder if they have a choice.
A common way to do things for tech startups is that they get venture capital funds, use them to run the business at a loss hoping to acquire market dominance, and then use market dominance to turn a profit. I think a lot of tech startups that we know are currently in phase 2, meaning they've thrown money out the window for years and are now trying to recoup their investments.
Also, Reddit wants to go public and Twitter already is. This is relevant because investors are animals, all they see is short-term profit, and they use their voting power to make the company behave that way.
There's a common thread between both my theories: it's shareholder capitalism. I say this as a lifelong shareholder myself, shareholders ruin everything.
$$$ M O N E Y $$$
Interest rates go up. Quantitative Easing go down.
They might have to play with real money lol
This is it. For nearly 15 years money was basically free for tech companies. Banks don't pay anything, bonds don't pay anything, the stock market is overheated and investors are still looking for return. So if your tech company was already public you could borrow in the form of bank loans or bonds for dirt cheap and if it was still privately held you can get money from individual and corporate investors.
Now that the free money era is over a lot of companies have had to finally think about making a profit so that they can keep the lights on. This is why there have been tens of thousands laid off in the tech sector in the last year or so.
As far as Reddit goes I have no idea what they've been thinking. It seems like they've been spending money developing features nobody wants or needs: locally hosted images and video which have to cost a fortune, live chat, and NFTs, to name a few. They've got the ~20th most popular website in the world with millions of daily active users and they can't figure out how to make it profitable?
The API the third party applications used doesn't serve ads. All they had to do for a bump in revenue is to insert ads and require third party applications to display them or risk losing their API access. Users would grumble but it's a pretty reasonable ask. The fact that they didn't do this demonstrates to me that they don't think the money is in serving ads, they think it's in data mining and they can only get the data they want from the official app.
capitalism β they want more money
Deleted.
Rabbits
Rabbits
The user bubble has popped now that investors started questioning why the fuck theyβve been investing huge amounts of money into companies that make no money just because they have lots of users. With that investment money drying up, these tech companies are desperate to start making a profit so they can survive and grow their value still.
TLDR: investment in unprofitable tech companies is drying up and companies that arenβt profitable are scrambling to make money.
Interest rates had been historically low for a long time. Loans were cheap and venture capital was flowing freely. Tech companies could focus more on growing their market share with lots and lots of runway before they needed to become profitable.
Then during the pandemic, Congress gave a massive bailout to businesses. Inflation went skyrocketing, and the Fed had to raise interest rates to limit the damage.
Now money isn't flowing nearly as freely for tech companies. Loans are more expensive, and investors are more content to leave their money in high-yield bonds instead. Tech companies are pivoting to stop chasing market share and instead start taking their profits from their current market share, even if it means their market share stops growing.
Cory Doctorow termed it "Enshittification", and wrote about the process here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
I'm glad I read through the whole thing.
Bummed that I won't be winning a testicle π°
I'm glad I read through the whole thing.
Bummed that I won't be winning a testicle π°
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Stupidity and greed, a great combination!
It's not necessarily greed. The infrastructure to keep Reddit alive can't be cheap. How do you pay for that? VC money has dried up so these services that have been free to users are all quickly scrambling to make money. I definitely think they did it wrong. They should have planned the API fee changes out for years instead of trying to force it in a month.
They make money by serving adds to the people providing their site content.
And no, that is not what happened. They were trying to increase their valuation for future share holders.
Edit: adding it is the only greed, that is the reason.