👀

      • Fantastic article, thanks for sharing! I had a hard time trying to figure out how to reply to you since we’re on different domains, but I found a reply button in my message notifications… The pains of learning a new platform!

        I’m excited to read some more articles from Pluralistic :)

      • That was fascinating and depressing.

        We should nationalize the big tech companies, or at least mandate that they operate on open protocols. There is no good reason to allow these mega tech companies to keep making profits off the back of the value that is almost entirely created by the users. Especially when making those profits makes the product worse for the very users that make it’s existence possible.

        • I’d be glad to see some changes, but I’d be pretty concerned to see a large part of big social being nationalized and run by the US government. Especially with one of the USA’s two political parties openly supporting fascism.

          I think the best thing we can do right now is work on alternative platforms and protocols that do not rely on tons of VC money to stay afloat.

      • Yep, you can have a free ride on investor bucks for a while, but eventually any corporation is going to squeeze their users for profit, as profit was always their goal, not community-building.

        Reddit’s CEO was then asked about concerns the social media platform had become too focused on generating profits. However, Huffman didn’t try to sugarcoat Reddit’s effort to generate revenue. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,” he said(Opens in a new window).

        The fediverse gives me some hope we can escape this cycle.