Comment by graemep
2 years ago
Fiancialisation and short term incentives are part of the problem, but not all of it.
In tech (and increasingly elsewhere) businesses have realised there are other ways to keep repeat customers without needing customer trust: lock-in, buying out competitors, network effects, being the best for long enough to obliterate competition (at least in customer's minds), branding tied to identity etc. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google etc. have very little to gain from trust or products that are better for consumers as people will use their products regardless.
Of course businesses require some level of trust. If Amazon simply took your money half the time and didn't ship your order, they would have problems. Of course, we can debate the degree to which they should be selective about and have more controls over third-party shippers, etc. But tradeoffs (and there are almost always tradeoffs) are different from saying that trust doesn't play a role at all.
Yes, but I am talking abut the long term trust the article talks about not rip offs that are quickly apparent to customers.
> long term trust the article talks about
Yes this goes beyond ordinary sharp practices. A larger, more dangerous phenomenon nibbles at our way of life.
A couple of buzzwords/concepts rattling around my circles are "epistemic trust" and "systemic abuse" [0], the former is an effect of the latter. To cultivate it, in old-fashioned psyops talk, is "sapping". Epistemic mistrust changes the way we process all future information and is long lasting.
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202012/...