I start to realize how synchronized big tech is acting currently
google experiments with blocking youtube users with ad blockers
twitter blocks unregistered users, heavily advertises its app
reddit blocks api and 3rd party access, heavily advertises its app
microsoft creates windows 11 lets windows 10 users with old hardware insecure
Is this because they all act in unison? Or is it the general ecnomic situation (low prime rates by the central bank) of the American tech giants that leads them to "coincidentally" making the same decisions? My suspicion is its the latter combined with the power they accumulated over the past decade.
That definitely makes sense, especially now that they're seeing how valuable all that data is to train AI. Even stackoverflow is having a bit of an ordeal with their mods.
It very much feels like we've fully moved into a new phase of the locked down internet. You forgot Netflix's crackdown on password sharing, imgur deleting NSFW and anonymous content, increasingly ridiculous subscription prices (youtube tv went from $35 to $73 in 4 years). The corporations have us locked in and now it's time to squeeze.
When it comes to enshitification, no one wants to go first. But once a company with enough clout to absorb and survive the backlash does, it's open season for everyone else.
Isn't it just the cycle of tech captitalism? Build a product that pleases users, make it spread far an wide at a loss fueled by venture capital and hype, and then when you cornered the market, there is nothing to look forward to. No more insane year by year growth in traffic or users because you are limited by the number who realistically will sign up. You can no longer promise growth so you have to promise ever increasing profit, and then it comes to light your premise was never very sound to begin with. Youtube costs too much to keep running with the original idea, Reddit has lousy data gathering opportunities because they can't couple anonymous users to real people, There is no reason to even visit Twitter because you'll read any tweet worth mentioning by the thousands of sites who are built around taking tweets and writing articles about it, without all the overhead of actually supporting the Twitter infrastructure.
They are all decent ideas if you want a lot of traffic, not so much if you want to monetise it.
Microsoft doesn't belong in this list because they can honestly do what they want with their end user product, they have the office space cornered. The minimum requirements are so easy to bypass they might as well not exist. It is just a way of being able to cut down on the range of hardware they need to support. They have Azure and Microsoft 365. If they could ditch Windows completely while keeping companies glued to those two they would. Windows desktop sales are small change in comparisson.
They have Azure and Microsoft 365. If they could ditch Windows completely while keeping companies glued to those two they would. Windows desktop sales are small change in comparisson.
windows is already being treated/offered as just another provisioned service. they dont have to choose to ditch it.