this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Opinion An apocryphal tale regarding the late, great footballer George Best being interviewed by a reporter just after getting suspended from Manchester United offers an apt description of today’s tech industry right now.
The Cambrian explosion of business ideas that the invention of internet produced a generation ago have ossified into rent seeking, buying out the competition, and funneling huge amounts of cash to shareholders.
Google won its place as the search champion on merit, but these days users must scroll past endless sponsored ads or SEO articles – something AI will likely make worse.
With a few small portals dominating the technology landscape and either buying out or crushing the competition, it's looking like entrenched interests are ceasing to innovate themselves, and settling into just generating value for shareholders – customers and suppliers be damned.
Then that dream shrank to working for a few years, quitting and doing a fake startup to get hired back by your old boss in the world's most inefficient way to get a raise," he told the Def Con crowd last August.
In the end it should be possible to reverse the current trend and reintroduce a more competitive technology industry environment that can spur innovation, spread the wealth, and grow more efficient for users, employers, and investors.
The original article contains 1,834 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
That was fuckin useless bot, fuckin hell
Here's what Kagi gave me:
The passage discusses the concept of "enshittification" in the tech industry, where companies initially attract customers through innovation but then exploit them by increasing prices and fees. This phenomenon has occurred at companies like Facebook, Google, Uber and food delivery services. The term was coined by author Cory Doctorow to describe how these companies stop innovating and focus only on generating value for shareholders at the expense of customers. However, the passage notes that increased unionization among tech workers and more aggressive antitrust enforcement could help reverse these trends and encourage more competition in the industry. An interesting point highlighted is that while enshittification is not necessarily directly malicious, it can be a product of business environment pressures and lack of regulation that incentivize prioritizing profits over customers. This suggests policy changes may be needed to realign company incentives with serving users.
Pretty long article though, granted.