The User Always Loses

>When users are scapegoated, Silicon Valley is left off the hook

Is this really the dominant narrative? Are there lots of thinkpieces going around about how fair and kind Silicon Valley is, if only it weren't for all those mean people using their services? Maybe it is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but when comparing the early internet to the current internet, we cannot let the users off the hook!

The further back you go, the harder it was to get on the internet, both as a user and a publisher. That meant the early internet was full of people who worked at universities, or were so motivated to discuss weird hobbies and interests with others that they struggled through the expense and technical difficulties, maybe even self-hosted, learned weird new languages from scratch. These were interesting, educated, intelligent, thoughtful and passionate people.

It's like air travel. If you were flying in the 1970s you probably had an interesting or important job or story. Getting on a plane meant meeting a bunch of interesting people. Now it doesn't. That is not a bad thing and it's not Southwest's fault. And when people complain about it, even though they might target Southwest (or Facebook), there is really an underlying snobbery about it. I can't believe I have to sit next to all these commoners on my internet!

The behemoths are already based upon open source tech and have contributed to it. But what they make on top of it neither has its "schema" (software sufficient to fork your own) open nor the instances accessible or communicatable. The same way that installing Linux doesn't mean I can access your files or configurations on top of them. The way I see it that is a price of open source software that you can't control how others use it in exchange for not being controlled.

Open standards as positive externalities would be a rational reason for tax discounts even if the value of it varies greatly - although good for repairs few would care for a specific printer model's firmware as it is so specific in its domain.

I think the worker co-op model has a lot of potential for tech startups. They're more stable than other ownership models, and the desires of the workers tend to be more aligned with consumers than the consumers are with investors (and obviously a worker co-op is far more aligned with the desires of the workers).

The primary advantage of venture capital is access to capital for growth, which isn't a great fit for purely digital companies with low capital requirements and the ability to bootstrap. The ability to rapidly grow is handy, but primarily addresses the needs of investors, who make their money off of growth. Getting investors to satisfy the needs of investors is awfully circular.

The big reason we don't see tech co-ops is simply tradition. Most big tech companies were VC funded. Most good startup advice comes out of VC companies like YC that naturally push people towards venture capital. On the flip side, worker owned co-ops are most common in the food industry of all things, even though that is quite capital intensive, because of the same sort of tradition-inertia.

I was going to say this seems factually untrue, because the number of films released each year has been going up for a long time, but there are some interesting parallels on how films are distributed. Looking at https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-..., the number of films released has gone way up over time, but the number of films in wide-release has gone done.

The internet has more content then ever, but the long tail of content there is consumed at a smaller rate relative to the big 3/5/100 web properties.

The problem isn't that consumer freedom has been killed- after all, all those films and content exist and likely more accessible than ever, its that the large centralized firms have managed to largely satisfy the majority of consumer demand without it. If I have the time to see a movie (a rare occurrence sadly) and Disney has a Marvel or Star Wars movie out, I'll just go see that, even if there might be a limited showing of a comedy-western-crime genre film out that I'd enjoy even more.

Note, I am concerned about media consolidation, but its more about distribution and IP ownership at this point than consumer choice.

> The issue is the company founders, not the VCs.

The issue is the veneer behind these IoT, Social media, Internet time wasters, and occasional productivity boosters are wearing off.

There is no competition (less VC money) to serve the community better and the real reason for these companies existing remains bare. All they want to do is monitor you, manipulate you, get your money, and kill your productivity.

The user always will lose outside of the occasional paragdim shift or productivity boost. As it stands now there is no vision to change existing platforms thus in this age the user will always lose.

There is no reason to contribute anything to the online sphere (outside of technical areas) as it is like pissing in the wind.