Reddit Migration

"enshittication" is actually a term coined by Cory Doctorow in this article: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It's a great read.

The growth addiction is a major part of the problem, I think. It's no longer good enough to have a company that makes steady profits year over year, now you've got to be increasing that profit margin. You made $50 million last year, and only $45 million this year? Hell, even "only" $50 million this year? You're failing, investors are pulling out, you're getting bad mouthed in the business world, etc.

They were never profitable and can never be profitable because the fundamental concept of what they do is thoroughly flawed

I actually don't believe this part. Reddit isn't profitable because they have 2,000 employees on their payroll when they could probably get by with < 500. They hired all these engineers, and then put them on go-nowhere projects like NFTs, rather than improving their core platform.

If Reddit actually put that effort into making their app comparable to something like Apollo, I have no doubt plenty of users wouldn't have minded shelling out for Premium instead of paying a similar price for a third party product. Hell, if they came out tomorrow and tied third party app API access to Reddit Premium membership, they might even turn profitable overnight.

3.) They are perfectly sustainable/profitable, but their financiers expect far more return on investment than they are capable of providing

This is the part that pisses me off. Its not that they're not making money, its that they're not making enough money. So, they make short sighted moves to make $100,000 bucks in the short term instead of a stable return of $10,000 in perpetuity.

This mentality will literally kill us.

I think it already has begun. There were massive tech layoffs last year, and this year has seen even more. And as you said, the VC money is drying up and demanding returns on existing investments.

God, I hope so. I don't see any way to stop the billionaires from killing off our species, at this point. But I want to at least see those psychotic monsters suffer before we all go!

I don't think this is a 'tech bubble burst', it's more of an awakening. Big tech will continue to be invested more and more in themselves and find new ways to harvest information and profit what they can from their user base.

People want to find a place to connect, share ideas/experiences without having corporate overlords breathing down their necks. This is one of those places, and it reminds me of the '80's when BBSs were the place to go.

What is still really popular with startups is: being bought by the big ones for an insane amount of money.

) They were never profitable and can never be profitable because the fundamental concept of what they do is thoroughly flawed

Honestly, I know what they're trying to say, but I kind of object to calling what they do "thoroughly flawed". Many of these big companies are starting to twist in the wind because they don't provide a service that provides business value, and they don't have a product that people will ever expect to pay for.

They provide community. And most people expect to belong to communities based on whether they can pay or not. Community isn't a commodity. It's just... Community.

And this is why Facebook is a cesspit. Because they had to break community bonds in order to actually sell things. Twitter's walking down that road, too, but they're too late, and anyone smart enough too make it woke is long gone. And now Reddit's having a go...

But there's nothing wrong with community. And there's nothing wrong with community not being profitable. It's not supposed to make money! That's not what it exists for.

But to people who make their living owning shit and, anything that isn't profitable isn't worthwhile.

I want to control money in my lives, not have it control my lives, and Fediverse may be a way to protect my own identity in social networks from being turned into other people's money.

Tech? No. Social Media? Maybe.

It's like how podcasts popped.

They were never profitable and can never be profitable

What does profitable even mean?

If they are reinvesting revenue is that profitable or not? You seem to think not but why not?

If they were instead just giving dividends to shareholders, or amassing cash, would that be more profitable?

Obviously now that it's more expensive to get loans and investment, it's better to have positive cash flow to be able to build up your own money for reinvestment and/or dividends, etc.

But saying they're not profitable as though they're failed businesses is silly, it's like when they say Donald Trump is poorer than a homeless man because he had debts, etc.