[emodendroket]

I’m not sure how much to read into an interview, but how many times are we going to be surprised by this cycle? They don’t care about monetization until their user base has grown large and established, and then they do and monetize aggressively. Where have I seen this movie before?

[stefandesu]

I'm surprised because it never ends well for the company in the long term, and they should know this.

[MengerSponge]

"Did it ever work for these people?"

"No. It never does. I mean these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might. But......it might work for us."

[WhyNotHugo]

Won't investors just sell stock when it's high and then move their money onto the next platform?

[maest]

For every seller there's a buyer, so there will always be investors parking money into the platform.

[WhyNotHugo]

The new buyers are the same folks that buy stock in Yahoo.

[jtode]

Looking too closely at that abyss leads to some disturbing implications, for people who like to sit on their ass and collect dividends while other people work.

[emodendroket]

It doesn’t? Facebook is worth a gazillion dollars and YouTube seems to be doing alright.

[QkPrsMizkYvt]

It worked for Meta.

[pjmlp]

A side effect of free beer and the effect of early FOSS and Web days.

It turns out paying employees and business infrastructure requires money in a capitalist society.

Free only works when someone else is paying, until they don't.

[lakomen]

If I could downvote I would. This is completely missing the topic.

It's about too aggressive monetization vs. user experience and the loss of visitors/ad targets, not some "yeehaw things cost money"

[jtode]

I think the point he's obliquely trying to make is that the monetization of attention is not a thing that can actually be done right, at all.

We should have solved the problem of bandwidth costs another way - taxes or paying individually for each thing. People keep saying the internet failed. No, the internet has been working perfectly while a bunch of bridge trolls came in and setup shop.

[CyberDildonics]

These two things have nothing to do with each other and this is a very black and white mentality. Reddit already had ads and already made money. This is about squeezing more money out of users, not any sort of charity for a system that doesn't sustain itself.

[emodendroket]

Those ads aren’t helping anything if you consume the site through an API and a third-party application.