Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Perhaps also society has become more conservative, so selling a really innovative product to a customer has become harder. Customers are more locked into existing products. Network effects, switching costs, familiarity and branding, staff training (for businesses) and learning something new....
Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them. To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms. I really wish the US government was more pro-business competition; they're merely pro-business in terms of ensuring e…
> To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms.
I personally observe that people have quite different "sensitivities" to this phenomenon. It might be true that such people exist, but at least in my "echo chamber" it's rather exactly the other way: the more dark pattern such people observe, and the more they feel "jailed" by these large platforms, the more they are willing to leave the platform - just out of spite. Thus, at least many people of my "echo chamber" show exactly the opposite behaviour from what you claim and the platforms intend.
Thus, I believe the conservatism is a different phenomenon: people become less willing to try out new things because they observed far too often that a new interesting service turned more and more into a dark jail over the years.