Comment by hashstring

Finance follows money.

Turns out that money never was a good proxy for the public good, or even the ‘good’ of paying users. The goal has never been maximizing UX, the goal always was squeezing profits.

End-users not voting with their feet is misrepresenting the issue, it’s a symptom of end-users being actively lied to during campaigns (I think the euphemism for that is “lobby groups”).

Why? Because politicians care about being re-elected and their approval rates, and finance has proved to be an unnaturally large factor in that equation.