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The User Always Loses

thenation.com

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Re: The User Always Loses

#41

Post by Meandering »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #16

The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to "capture value". Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that our entire open-source ecosystem…

I think you're scapegoating VC's for normal business practices. The consumer/producer relationship for internet services is distorted by the freemium model. The free access drives consolidation on the best early contender. Once companies have attained a significant amount of market share they can do pretty much anything that they want in regards to user experience. This is particularly important where the magnitude of the user network is directly correlated to the quality of the product. The reciprocity of the consumer/producer relationship dissolves and the network of users can be subjected to major changes without a feasible option for recourse.

This is basically localized forms of market monopolization. The internet is always pro-producer because the user has very little influence in the relationship.

Re: The User Always Loses

#42

Post by cryptica »

> How did the Internet get so bad?

The article misses the point. The problem has its root in monetary policy. The problem is supply-side economics.

Money printing and giving control of the money supply to banks has made consumers redundant appendages of the financial system.

Imagine that you're the CEO of a unicorn startup or a big corporation and you constantly deal with investors, banks and customers. Which of these 3 groups do you derive most of your wealth from? Banks and investors.

Banks print money and loan it out to your investors and your investors use that money to buy your company stock and drive up its price - Also, banks loan your company money directly to buy back its own stock... As an executive, if you want to maximize your bonus, banks and investors are the only two entities you really care about... Your actual customers are merely appendages; they're merely a useful metric which allows you to get more money from investors and banks.

So long as all the new fiat money enters the economy through big institutions and big investors via bank loans, the consumer will always be an afterthought in the decision-making process. You're the product because you're not the source of money. Consumers don't have any money. Only institutions have money because they're printing it for free and distributing it among themselves by the trillions.

That's why we need UBI (Universal Basic Income) urgently - That's the only safe way to switch to sane demand-side economics.

Re: The User Always Loses

#43

Post by inetknght »

yerabotarry wrote: post #28
superkuh wrote: post #7

So don't be a user. Self host and federate. The internet of the 90s is still alive if you step outside the walled gardens. And when you use other's services, like, say, reading an article hosted at 'thenation.com', a site which attempts to block you from reading unless you run their javascript and CSS, use a browser with tools that allow you to toggle things like JS and CSS to read it anyway. Then re-share the articl…

>The internet of the 90s is still alive if you step outside the walled gardens. Dont you see the bars on the windows and doors?

> Dont you see the bars on the windows and doors?

Yup. Captchas are everywhere. Javascript is everywhere.

Finding a website that loads without having to enable javascript or go through captcha is a breath of relief. They do exist.

Re: The User Always Loses

#44

Post by cryptica »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #16

The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to "capture value". Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that our entire open-source ecosystem…

>> The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology

It's not the root cause but it's along the right path and very close to the root. The root is the monetary system with banks being able to print trillions of dollars and decide who can get that money and who can't... And VCs get a lot of that newly printed money, so do corporations (who provide exits for VCs).

Re: The User Always Loses

#45

Post by amelius »

We also have "The customer always loses".

I guess it all translates to "The small guy always loses".

And VCs piling up money doesn't work in favor of the small guy.

Re: The User Always Loses

#46

Post by ohazi »

jasode wrote: post #32
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #16

The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to "capture value". Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that our entire open-source ecosystem…

>The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns [...] VCs are not the root cause. You're not looking hard enough for counterexamples . Examples of software companies that didn't take VC money that many consider to be "user hostile" are: - Intuit -- see 1-star reviews on Amazon of annual Quicken releases and forced upgrades of bugg…

> The real root cause of "user hostility" is that companies are run by humans and humans are self-serving and want to make more money.

At least for software, we know of one solution that works: free (as in speech) software. Still made by humans, but usually without the self-serving greed, and if any of that does turn up, you never lose access to the last-good version and source, in case you or someone else wants to fork it.

That's not to say that there aren't valid complaints about the availability and usability of free software.

There are some free applications that can do amazing things, but are genuinely less intuitive than comparable commercial software. It's not surprising that users who aren't free software diehards don't want to use these tools.

There are also entire ecosystems where free software just isn't a thing, e.g. phone software and hosted user services.

Re: The User Always Loses

#47

Post by chongli »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #16

The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to "capture value". Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that our entire open-source ecosystem…

No, the problem is centralization and consolidation. The same sad story of the Internet was mirrored in the film industry, without the VC model at all. Disney owns basically everything and they've largely killed off the broad spectrum of film genres in favour of Marvel / Star Wars tent-pole spectacle.

Centralization of economic (as well as political) power is the true killer of consumer freedom. It occurs so regularly that it's difficult to imagine any possibility of escape.

Re: The User Always Loses

#48

Post by ponker »

jasode wrote: post #32
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #16

The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to "capture value". Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that our entire open-source ecosystem…

>The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns [...] VCs are not the root cause. You're not looking hard enough for counterexamples . Examples of software companies that didn't take VC money that many consider to be "user hostile" are: - Intuit -- see 1-star reviews on Amazon of annual Quicken releases and forced upgrades of bugg…

I don’t agree on your “user hostile” examples outside of Intuit but agree with your take —- founders know what VC is. The reason they started the company in the first place is to get rich.

Re: The User Always Loses

#49

Post by kergonath »

DataWorker wrote: post #22
chris-orgmenta wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But people look for you and connect on the popular platforms they frequent: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Back in the day even normies would pick up some tech and talk to you on IRC or USENET Is that true? Peak IRC users appears to be 10 million (2013) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Decline , Citation needed. Pretending that all IRC users were in the US... That's ~3% of the population. Usenet is…

You are counting 2 year olds in the denominator. IRC and Usenet were the internet. If you used a computer you used these. But yes, computers were less common then, especially amongst two year olds.

He’s also counting only Americans. There never was a time when normal people hanged out on IRC. Wikipedia has ~120 millions people on the Internet in 1997, and 10 millions IRC users at its peak in 2003. So 8% of Internet users on IRC is a wildly optimistic upper bound. 1% is probably closer to the truth.

Re: The User Always Loses

#50

Post by benjaminjosephw »

chongli wrote: post #47
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #16

The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to "capture value". Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that our entire open-source ecosystem…

No, the problem is centralization and consolidation. The same sad story of the Internet was mirrored in the film industry, without the VC model at all. Disney owns basically everything and they've largely killed off the broad spectrum of film genres in favour of Marvel / Star Wars tent-pole spectacle. Centralization of economic (as well as political) power is the true killer of consumer freedom. It occurs so regularl…

Centralization and consolidation are problems created by a culture of building companies that need to have an exit.
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