• jetsetdorito@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    All these tech companies are really getting bold lately with wildly unpopular decisions to try and raise profits

    • Prior_Industry@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In Google case their looking at all angles to increase profits now. Tech stocks don’t just rise based on a concept of far off future revenues anymore. Dickhead CEO’s have become emboldend by Musk’s actions sadly.

    • RaoulDuke@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      The platforms cost billions to run, and they are run by companies that are expected to have yearly growth.

      You can blame the companies for being greed, but the users are equally naive if they think the money is just going to materialize out of thin air.

      Free to use with no ads just isn’t going to work, someone is going to need to cover the server cost.

      • Xiphorang@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        That’s true, but they’ll never be satisfied with just making some profit. There will always be a rapacious desire for infinite profits. If they could find a way to make you watch nothing but ads on there and charge you for it, they would do it. It’s only going to get worse.

        • XanXic@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I like the “That company looses money every year!” and when you look into it they profited some ungodly amount and spent it on ‘infrastructure’ and bonuses. Then go ‘woe is us, we can hardly make a dime!’ while treating everyone near them like shit. (Looking at you DD)

    • zekiz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lately? That always has been the case. You just forget them. Remember when they removed the dislike button? Or polls? Any any other feature?

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, lately. This news about a Youtube three strikes policy, Reddit shutting off API access, and Twitter forcing people to log in to see content are all happening on basically the same day. Is it just a coincidence, or is there some underlying factor causing these services to all tighten their respective nooses simultaneously?

        • Hup!@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Twitter was apparently just a glitch. I’m told it’s tricky to run a half billion user website with a skeleton crew.

        • Ruxias@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          As with all innovation that was started at the behest of public (taxpayer) initiatives, companies are initially greeted with wide open frontiers - new horizons to exploit, extract, and dominate.

          In the fledging stages of a startup, they will sing praises of openness and public good and the importance of community. However, once they have reached a certain point they pull the ladder up behind them, close the door, and claim they did it all based on their own ingenuity and merit.

          Were it not for the effort of the public - through the creation of the internet, and the average person putting into making content and value on the internet - these companies would not exists. Don’t forget that. People; regular people, are what make the internet a place worth visiting and using. These companies are just extracting from the richness that we generate.

        • 429@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I thought Reddit and Twitter were pretty clearly responses to the massive data grab by OpenAI that let them train their language models.

          I assume there are other factors involved too, like Reddit trying to force everyone to use its app. But I don’t think it’s coincidence this happened not long after ChatGPT took off.

          … Though now that you mention it, I wonder if there’s a connection between Netflix stamping out password sharing and Youtube getting serious about ads.

          • Ruxias@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I feel like this is their reaction to the feeling that (1) frontiers are not as wide as they used to be in the younger days of the internet and (2) economic undercurrents driving them to put the clamps on, locking in their user base and trying to squeeze every dime they can before things go tits-up.

        • swnt@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Except that CCs make almost no money from ads - unless you’re already big and produce lots of clickbait videos.

          High quality produced videos are discouraged with these incentives. successful CCs have switched to sponsorships and merchandise and Patreon since a long time because it’s much more stable and sustainable for them. And by the time they can make enough from ads via YouTube they’re big enough to have good sponsorship deals anyways.