[sircastor]

It's a sort-of inevitable thing when your focus becomes earnings and growth rather than whatever your actual business is. Facebook's business was providing a common platform for people that know each other to share publicly. Twitter's business was a billboard to share what they're doing. Google's business was to provide a way to find things on the web.

Unfortunately, none of those things is particularly easy to charge money for. So you take Venture Capital to fund your development, and then you try to find a way to pay that VC through other means - Advertising mostly, it turns out. Then you have to keep pushing that because your investors want returns, and it funds the party.

[pixodaros]

None of those things was Facebook or Twitter's business, because none was how they make money. Facebook and Twitter are for-proffit businesses, and for almost all of their history the money has come from selling advertising and surveillance (its pretty clear that birdsite guy never understood that twitter users are his products and advertisers are his customers). There are not many alternatives if you want to provide a centralized global service for tens of millions of users. So my web presence focuses on things hosted by small companies or run by community members, not on giant 'free' corporate services.

[doctor_eval]

What you’re saying is true in terms of where the money comes from, but it doesn’t explain why customers are being screwed.

The thing is, all of these companies make money by arbitraging value consumed by the end users versus value produced by advertisers. It’s a two sided market, except that consumers pay in attention rather than currency.

It’s catchy - and probably true - to say that if you aren’t paying, “then you are the product”. But these companies still need a quality product or, eventually, the advertising and data collection is not valuable to those with money.

Which is what we seem to be seeing with Twitter.

Abusing end users is a very short sighted strategy, even if they’re not paying.

[pixodaros]

Which customers are getting screwed? Posters or viewers on 'free' hosting sites are the products not the customers. Online ad buyers everywhere get cheated, but that is another story.

Many of these giant sites are really in the business of talking money out of investors, so their main business is not really selling a service at all (its "investor storytime").

I don't think that arbitrage model is useful because one side is paying cash and the other is not. Its like calling dating a marketplace, a bad metaphor.

[doctor_eval]

Well, I disagree with your previous assertion that Facebook makes money from selling ads.

Facebook makes money by creating a product that attracts a bunch of people to use it, and then they sell ads.

The whole thing falls apart if they don’t do #1 properly.

[fragmede]

we'll have to agree to disagree then. There are many other properties outside of Facebook.com where their ads run, in competition with Google.

[doctor_eval]

We are specifically talking about the user visible pages of these companies and their “enshitification”

> Facebook's business was providing a common platform for people that know each other to share publicly. Twitter's business was a billboard to share what they're doing. Google's business was to provide a way to find things on the web.

They may have other businesses in banner ads but I’m specifically responding to the question,

> do all platforms go through this? if so, it's very sad.

by trying to make the point that if their business is selling attention, then pissing off end users - thereby reducing the supply of attention - is bad management.