[l337h4x0rz]

In my opinion tech used to be fun and we used to create products that actually empower people. Think MySpace, early-days Facebook, Soundcloud, Ableton Live etc. They exist to empower the masses to connect and to create.

Today the business model has made every products and contents to be enshittified.

We've optimised for the wrong thing and not only the common people hate the tech industry. Even I no longer feels the joy of working in tech.

[beached_whale]

When it comes to empowering, I am not sure much beats Excel. It lets non techy people codify amazing things and get real work done.

[red-iron-pine]

excel runs the world

[ymolodtsov]

YouTube empowers millions of creators around the world.

It's more about the fact that at a sufficiently large scale any platform faces the same issues. Some creators are terrible without breaking the rules, people argue, etc.

[SecretDreams]

> YouTube empowers millions of creators around the world.

Agree.

But it empowers them to vie for attention in mostly the worst ways possible and, overwhelmingly, has led to a lot of bad content. There's some gems too. But, by and large, YouTube is less desirable for me to use than it was 10 years ago and I think it's because of the transformation into an industry, rather than an indie platform that also paid out.

It feels like it went from a farmer's market with a lot of local farmers selling their goods to shopping at Walmart.

[pixl97]

Yep, the creators have to play the algorithm as much as the users get played by the algorithm. If you constantly pump out crap and buy promotions for your videos you can make money, but you put yourself on a treadmill you can't get off of.

[red-iron-pine]

empowers them to create slop clickbate shit

yeah there are some truly great creators but they're drowned out in the sea of piss that is the generic YT algo

AI is now taking those jobs, which I'm not sure if it is better or worse

[ajrouvoet]

I think that just highlights how “empowerment” through tech is biased towards producers, which makes sense because that aligns with the usual business propositions.

For consumers, YT is not empowering. It fulfills a need, well enough to tie them to the platform. But it is obviously not set up to hand them any more power than to serve that goal. You want to shield yourself from wasting time here? Sorry, not sorry, our goal is to steal your attention and entertain you just enough that you keep scrolling.

[jackvalentine]

YT can be/was empowering for the viewer. Product choices have made it far more of a pointless timesuck and consumer hostile but it still remains the place where I can find a video of a guy taking the front off the same model dishwasher that I have to fix the latch in the soap dispenser while he points out how to do it without permanently destroying the clips that hold it together.

[GJim]

> creators

I'd argue the very expression "creating content" is a euphemism for producing shit, of which algorithm driven platforms like Youtube excel at promoting.

[bitwize]

Information systems has always been about empowering business leaders to produce more with less human effort. In that respect, AI for example has been a game changer. Everything else was a sideshow.

If you've been leaning hard on programming and lack the people skills to join the business class, that's on you. Things are going to get very hard for you in the near future, if they haven't already. People skills are the new moat.

[l337h4x0rz]

> If you've been leaning hard on programming and lack the people skills to join the business class, that's on you.

where did i say that I've been solely leaning hard on programming and not focusing on the people skill?

[bitwize]

I didn't say you did. But the industry is full of people with technical acumen but little in the way of people skills or a knack for business needs; and in the supposedly halcyon days of the past many of them could grow rich, or at least popular, by developing something cool. These people are going to have a very bad time.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

As always, capitalism can be counted on to destroy anything it touches.

[purpleflame1257]

Without the promise of return most promising technology would never have been created.

[l337h4x0rz]

Agreed. Such is the duality.

[l337h4x0rz]

At the start founders got the joy from making products that makes people happy. Then it inevitably evolves to chasing the dopamine of achieving larger and larger numbers based on some quantifiable metrics.