I think it's a consequence of higher interest rates drying up VC money, meaning that tech companies now have to actually be profitable, rather than just grow.

If the plan was grow now, profit later, then later has come

Venture capital has shifted very quickly from companies HOSTING content to companies SCRAPING content (LLM’s). This means renting compute is now very expensive and moving into the hands of ‘AI’ companies. It’s like trying to fly a plane while monkeys are tearing the wings of.

As discussed here:

Honestly they do it so consistently that i’m starting to wonder if they have a choice.

A common way to do things for tech startups is that they get venture capital funds, use them to run the business at a loss hoping to acquire market dominance, and then use market dominance to turn a profit. I think a lot of tech startups that we know are currently in phase 2, meaning they’ve thrown money out the window for years and are now trying to recoup their investments.

Also, Reddit wants to go public and Twitter already is. This is relevant because investors are animals, all they see is short-term profit, and they use their voting power to make the company behave that way.

There’s a common thread between both my theories: it’s shareholder capitalism. I say this as a lifelong shareholder myself, shareholders ruin everything.

YouTube is blocking adblockers? News to me

Short answer : Enshittification.

Long and brilliant explanation here : https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

Companies expect infinite profit growth

Capitalism.

Capitalism is like cutting off your wings because you believe the reduced weight will make you fly higher.

They've got you - you're addicted and/or locked in and the hastle of moving to alternatives is too great. The short answer is : 'They no longer need to be favorable, they have you, your data, and your friends and it's too much effort to go somewhere else'

SOXL - an EFT for US semicondutor companies is doing well.

i e read this mostly because of AI…

Well, I hope the Fediverse works out. Otherwise I think were gonna have to go back to hand printing zines.

I'm ok with the YouTube one. Twitter dumb. Reddit not that bad but should have just charged people.

We're not people to them, just part of a product. Why do anything more than absolutely necessary to keep the money flowing in? Save a fraction of a penny on bandwidth, earn another fraction by selling more complete data and ad views. Multiply that by the number of users and if enough will tolerate it, somebody at the top can buy a shiny new yacht.