Comment by JohnMakin
2 years ago
This is a false dichotomy. You can have services, and not have them devolve into complete unusability in the name of profit. This isn’t sustainable either. The myopic pursuit of short term gains at the expense of the product will collapse at some point in the future, no matter how much you believe in this weird frog-boil internet we’ve inherited now.
Complete unusability is when ai tools clone the content and people stop visiting the original service and participating. I'll leave it up to them to defend blocking duck duck go for example, but blocking "AI" bots for an online community is a matter of survival at this point.
Alternatively, it's because the base platform has also devolved into unusability. Both Reddit and Twitter are in a position where their info is easily scraped, and their community is barely worth the advertising/paid-premium experience they demand from you. As both platforms continue to decline in quality, you might not even need to replace the original service. Both businesses appear intent on getting replaced.
> The myopic pursuit of short term gains at the expense of the product will collapse at some point in the future,
The myopic pursuit of short-term gains is the only playbook that works. Long-term business strategy is a gamble, and today's businesses have all learned that they'd rather make hay when the sun is shining than be remembered as a good business.
Twitter tried a long-term playbook to reverse their unprofitable sinkhole of a website. That ended up with them being undervalued and sold to the highest bidder.
> Twitter tried a long-term playbook to reverse their unprofitable sinkhole of a website.
From what I recall reading at the time, Twitter was finally becoming profitable before the sale (last two years? It’s hard to find a source now since every story since is about some shit show or other post sale).
> That ended up with them being undervalued and sold to the highest bidder.
You make it seem they were in dire straits and had to be sold for scraps, but that’s far from the case. They sold for more than their valuation to the only bidder because they understood what a good deal it was for them. They forced the buyer to not back out, after all.