Hi, we’re a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.
We’re not a newspaper, we’re a content portal.
We’re not a taxi service, we’re a ride sharing app.
We’re not a pay TV service, we’re a streaming platform.
We’re not a department store, we’re an e-commerce marketplace.
We’re not a financial services firm, we’re crypto.
We’re not a space agency, we’re a group of visionaries who are totally going to Mars next year.
We’re not a copywriting and graphic design agency, we’re a large language model generative AI platform.
Oh sure, we compete against those established businesses. We basically provide the same goods and services.
But we’re totally not those things. At least from a legal and PR standpoint.
And that means all the laws and regulations that have built up over the decades around those industries don’t apply to us.
Things like consumer protections, privacy protections, minimum wage laws, local content requirements, safety regulations, environmental protections… They totally don’t apply to us.
Even copyright laws — as long as we’re talking about everyone else’s intellectual property.
We’re going to move fast and break things — and then externalise the costs of the things we break.
We’ve also raised several billion in VC funding, and we’ll sell our products below cost — even give them away for free for a time — until we run our competition out of the market.
Once we have a near monopoly, we’ll enshitify the hell out of our service and jack up prices.
You won’t believe what you agreed to in our terms of service agreement.
We may also be secretly hoarding your personal information. We know who you are, we know where you work, we know where you live. But you can trust us.
By the time the regulators and the general public catch on to what we’re doing, we will have well and truly moved on to our next grift.
By the way, don’t forget to check out our latest innovation. It’s the Uber of toothpaste!
Wow. You just somehow accurately summed up the modern day result of late stage capitalism in one post. Nicely done
It took longer than I care to admit to realize this was satire.
Which says something about the world and life.
Yooo Mastodon post on Lemmy let’s goooo
@ajsadauskas @technology The one thing I don’t sympathise with in that list is the taxi services — at least here in #Ottawa, they were even more exploitative than Uber or Lyft, with a small number of plate holders acting as feudal lords for the drivers, and extracting rent from their vassals even on a bad shift with few fares.
The city could have fixed that by issuing more plates, but the plate-owner lobby was too powerful.
It’s not all black or white, those startups brought some good things like breaking highly profitable monopolies and creating well designed apps that provide a much better service which ended up being picked up by the former monopolies, overall the quality of service often improved and we sometimes have more choice now, like picking the less human exploiting alternative that still has a usable app.
While we don’t like what these services have become, lots of people forget how bad comparative services were before these came along. Example: bookstores. Everyone dreams up some ideal bookstore that didn’t exist for the majority. Growing up, my local bookstore was run by a religious nut who refused to get Devil literature like Lord of the Rings. The good bookstores were in Ann Arbor, which was a 45 minute drive away. Chains like Borders, B&N, or web stores like Amazon were a huge positive change.
Ah yes, the “local taxi lobby.” Uber helped show a lot of us what a fucking joke that is, not just in Ottawa.
Innovation, choice, quality and freedom are the choice spices for capitalism soup. These shit-cook-legislators kept sprinkling in taint like protectionism, cronyism, extortion and corruption thinking nobody would notice. Well guess what? Now it’s just taint soup.
Why does it matter who’s serving you taint soup? The problem is there’s no other soup and they keep telling you it’s fine.
@ajsadauskas @technology “enshitify” is my new favorite word.
Thanks, @ajsadauskas, for summarising extractivist platform capitalism strategies. The patterns are so clear that mainstreet is getting aware these days. At least partially. Time to rebuild the economy and the internet with collective & public interest first.
@wtebbens
hope you’re aware that this means to abolish #capitalism!
@ajsadauskas @technology
Wish I could upvote this 1000 times.
@ajsadauskas @technology One factual point I’m not clear on–how exactly are Lyft/Uber getting away with operating unlicensed taxi services? Are they just ignoring the law but getting away with it because city governments are tech-enthralled? (But could, theoretically, bust every uber driver for operating a taxi without a license)? Or do they actually have some legal basis for not needing medallions?
They’re not in the UK, they all have to be registered and lisenced here like any other minicab.
@ajsadauskas @technology don’t forget the fact that a good amount never turn a profit
@ajsadauskas @technology
And we’ll change our TOS and user agreement to our advantage whenever we feel like it but won’t tell you what changed or why or how it’ll effect you. But legally we told you so f*ck off if you have a problem with that.
We are not just a startup. We are a mix of dreams, passions, and a ton of passionate slogans.
When we aren’t drinking craft beer…
Had us in the first half not gonna lie
honestly i’ve started to realize that startups are the modern day robin hood. they take and burn money from VCs and turn them into very low cost services. then they try to turn a profit and everyone runs away to the next new startup that is there to “disrupt the competition” but in reality is just the same company in a younger phase.
fucking lol
You left out, “once we get the IPO, we’re fucking right off with our billions.”
This could be one of the more important social media posts of all time. And not one in 100,000 people will have enough information to appreciate a single word of it.
Source: @ajsadauskas
https://mastodon.social/@ajsadauskas@aus.social/110762848575512188