Economy is going bad, interest rate are up, and all Silicon Valley's company are built upon VC loans and expansion goals. Scale economy is bound to fail, and it's happening now.

There is the “enshittification theory” — https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Article specifically mentions TikTok but is relevant for Reddit.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Running out of VC dollars, now they gotta actually make a profit.

This is just what living in late stage capitalism looks like.

I don't know honestly, greed probably. But it's such a shame. It seems like the internet as a whole is heading in a horrible direction, and not enough people care about it for there to be something done about it.

Because capitalism, that's why.

The lie that eternal growth is possible has companies making really stupid moves to increase short term gains at the cost of long term stability.

Because most services we are using aren't sustainable. They all bleed money.

This is pretty typical for all big companies that take off there is a tipping point when it goes from agile and nimble start up to behemoth company that needs to pay dividends, only they have captured all the market share they can capture and may in fact losing people to other newer services. They're panicking and trying to make things look profitable before it all collapses like Yahoo and they can't sell it. Just my take on it all anyway.

they are choosing money over people because machines can't say no

Silicon Valley Bank collapsing is putting pressure on tech companies to actually turn a profit, so they're turning to slimy tactics just to survive IPO

Hmmm if I had to put my conspiracy cap on it would have to do with the upcoming election. I haven't tested the waters enough to know how lemmy will react to me.

Because a user base has yet to demonstrate that there will be significant consequences for such actions. Maybe there will be, but they will be less-tangible long-term consequences that can’t easily be attributed to these actions.

It all happening in a span of months I think is sheer dumb luck from an entertainment point of view, but deep down the cause seems to me to be the expectation of continuous growth of profits on the part of a product free business model.

I feel it's like a sellout on stock exchange: once the first company started to heavily monetize, the others felt like they needed to cash out now, before "stock values drop" i.e. the internet users find different models of social media that make the corporation owned ones obsolete. Thank you lemmy! :)

Because you are the product, not the client. You are only catered to enough so that you may be coralled. You are basically cattle to these corporations.

As for why this is happening now:

• The economy is in a downswing right now so we are going to see cost cutting and belt tightening.
• Entrenched proprietary social media platforms are basically monopolies. You cannot choose to use an alternative because these are walled gardens and leaving means losing your ability to communicate with large groups of people. The larger and more entrenched these big firms get, coupled with lack of regulation means they can do whatever the fuck they want. You have no power and no choice (except for the Fediverse, a one-time pain to migrate to).

A lot of these companies have never been profitable and have been running on VC money on speculation alone until they reach critical mass and can turn on the monetization streams.