Another catalyst is one company buying another. I cannot think of one example where the acquired company’s product/services got better after a M and A.

I feel like there have been some positive outcomes of mergers and acquisitions but I am having trouble thinking of them. What comes to my mind is Meta acquiring Oculus, Activision merging with Blizzard, and Microsoft acquiring Minecraft. All of those have led to a shitty Russian nesting doll of launchers and DRM.

The positives might be harder to note though. There must have been a couple times where some kind of acquisition has brought a series into the mainstream.

I know a lot of people prefer the classic Fallout games but I do wonder how people would be aware of the series if it weren’t for Bethesda buying the right to Fallout for example.

I think there can be an intermediary step where things get a little better before they get much worse. I’m thinking of Youtube, which pre acquisiton, iirc, was getting slow and bad. Google infrastructure made it faster, but then, well…

This is really just the first step of enshitification - first they make things good for users, then introduce advertisers, then claw back all the value for themselves.

Or put another way

• "don’t worry you favourite thing will stay the same - we don’t want to mess with a winning formula!
• “these changes will benefit users!”
• “we have to comply with industry standards and best practices. please read our updated terms of service.”
• "in order to compete in a dynamic marketplace, we’re introducing an add supported tier!
• “we’ve made changes to our subscription model!”
• “we’ve made changes to our subscription model and we’re introducing adds on paid tiers! suck it!”
• “sure, you paid for it, but our agreements are expiring and we don’t value you as a human being!”
• “really, where else are you going to go? lololololol”

Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all need to be broken up into a thousand different companies, same as we did with AT&T.

And unlike with AT&T, after divestiture there needs to be an order in place that perpetually prevents the divested companies from ever merging or buying each other up. At this point AT&T has almost completely re-formed from the companies it was broken into, and that should never have been allowed.

And for fucks sake we need to make the fine for white collar crime that extends state lines to necessitate the forfeiture of the entire C-suite’s and board of directors assets, both domestically and internationally, upon threat of seal team 6. Empty their bank accounts and leave them with nothing

Absolutely this. We need to abolish corporate personhood, and hold company leadership directly responsible for the company’s behavior. Since it is the people who are doing these things. The “company” isn’t some autonomous entity that has a will of its own. People drive it, and those people should be held accountable.

I’m really emotionally and mentally exhausted. But what you just wrote makes me think you are my spirit animal. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to see that other people are identifying a major issue and care about it.

Oh, also, it’s a common misconception that publicly-traded companies are required to maximize profits. They can have whatever goals their shareholders want. It’s just that the way modern publicly-traded companies work, most of their shareholders are people quickly buying and trading shares based on who they think will earn them the most money this month, so that sort of inevitably becomes the goal of any publicly-traded company.

I’ve worked for a couple startups and you’re absolutely right. If you make a profit you pay taxes on that money, so startups like to spend most of the money they bring in. They also want to show revenue growth, since that’s what investors like to see. You grow revenue by getting more paying customers. And you do that by doing what your customers want.

When you go public, your goal is to increase shareholder value. So you do this by reducing costs and finding ways to wring customers out of revenue. You find ways to nickle and dime customers out of revenue so much you develop an entire branch of law devoted to you suing your customers

They may not have to maximise profits but the shareholders will question every decision that doesn’t maximise profits so the result is the same. That’s why activist investors that push companies to more ethical behaviour are important.

This is like the “there are some responsible assault rifle owners” argument. Although corporations are not required by law to maximize investor returns, CEO “compensation” is often tied to “performance” so the incentives of those with the most decision power make it de facto required to maximize returns to investors. That’s why Musk needed to convince his board of directors (who are there to represent the best interests of the share holders) to approve some ridiculous pay package. His “performance” in their eyes is proportional to share holder profits so if they’re happy, he gets his absurd pay package, which is why his incentive is to maximize profits for shareholders by any means necessary.

Interesting little article

In other words, it is activist hedge funds and modern executive compensation practices — not corporate law — that drive so many of today’s public companies to myopically focus on short-term earnings; cut back on investment and innovation; mistreat their employees, customers and communities; and indulge in reckless, irresponsible and environmentally destructive behaviors.

So I guess the publicly-owned model allows the bad shit to happen when the majority of shareholders are get-rich-quick hedge fund types then?

You dont have those things not happen any more because of the stock market, you dont have to endure those things any more because regulations prevent it.

I can guarantee you 100% that if corporations could use child labor again, or dump rats in a meat grinder and sell it, they would in a heartbeat.

I’m a little bit confused by your post. Publicly-traded companies, by and large, place extraordinary emphasis on short term, quarter by quarter profit. Seems like a very strong contender for the root cause if the issue?

Enshitification is about monetization, getting more money from the same customer base.

Doesn’t this statement support publicly traded status being a riot cause, though?

I must assume I’m misunderstanding your argument…?

IIRC most successful VCs invest very early and get out often early-ish too. The real enshittification that dangers the actual position of the company often happen much later. At that point the company is traded publicly and there’s a large anonymous body of shareholders - they only care about profits. VCs are actually a little smarter and care about longer time frames as in that early stage often much larger (relative) growth rates are possible.

At a late stage (think Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc today) growth is much more difficult. How could Google grow today? They’ve saturated the search market years ago. So the only way of making more money is by sucking more money out of their existing user base. And they absolutely need to do it, as there’s huge pressure on the managerial class to do it, because the shareholders demand it. If the managerial class doesn’t do this (because often some older idealistic people know it would compromise the quality of the product), or they aren’t capable of doing it - they will get replaced by people who are more willing or capable - even if it’s detrimental for the company when viewed longer-term. VCs i would argue care all about profits, “but”. (they are smart enough to see the big picture. They are also small enough or “few enough” that they can communicate among themselves in order to agree on a more wise plan. That’s why they often get out once most of the possible (easy) growth has been achieved. They either know that now growth is much more difficult, or that the company’s value is much more stagnant - ow might decrease even. They can get out and invest their money in other more promising endeavours.

The shareholders of large publicly traded companies are not that coordinated as they cannot really agree on anything other than just “growth”. More sophisticated strategies would have to be negotiated (and communicated) among thousands. The only unifying bond among shareholders is that they want profits. Think about it: many shareholders often don’t even know what companies they own as they are often part of other investment packages. Maybe you’re retirement plan has invested in stocks of 50 different companies, or 10 different fonds that have invested in others still. That is a form of dilution (?). It’s very difficult to communicate any strategy more sophisticated than “profits”. (a side effect is also that many people have invested indirectly or wothout knowing in endeavours that make their life more shitty/expensive when they retire - without knowing it.) There isn’t enough nuance in the wants of the masses as to want any more sophisticated strategy than simply “growth”. That’s why only short term growth can be thought.

Of course sometimes also large companies can grow 2.5x or something like that. But it’s rare and takes more time. The exception makes the rule here. Early stage growth that VCs bank on is much more explosive i think. More like 10x or 100x.

EDIT: sorry i typed this on mobile and it shows.