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Comment by mattgreenrocks | Hacker News Reader

I remember graduating in 2004 and ingesting the message from the [current] BigTech companies that, "this time it'll be different!" and "we aren't like those other companies!" I ate it up, of course. I didn't have the experience to see that the promises were hollow by the nature of the arrangement.

Fully expect a new crop of companies to make the same pitch, and people to fall for it again.

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To be fair, it was different for a while. Those companies started out with visionary product designers and engineers who cared about creating a great product that genuinely helps the customers. But once the product is out in the market the culture inevitably changes over to one of patent trolling lawyers, stock buyback schemes, layoffs, outsourcing, dishonest marketing, squeezing the customers with difficult-to-cancel subscription models, etc.

It is incumbent upon those of us who want better to build companies that do not do this. You don't need to be a unicorn startup, you can be a small company that employs a small handful of like-minded individuals who want to build good products for people, who reject the ravenous growth machine that plagues tech today.

Yes but only if you stay a private company. Once you issue stock, those like-minded individuals are going to be pressured to enshitify to maximize shareholder value. Or pressure the like minded to get acquired by a big pile of enshitification like Broadcom.

What actually legally establishes shareholder primacy? Ford vs Dodge?

What people don't seem to realize is that the business cycle today mirrors your average ponzi scheme.

The company has a product, gets loans based on said product. The terms are front-loaded according to your standard S-adoption curve which under some representations mirrors a Ponzi curve.

The debt taken must eventually be repaid. The bankers know this which is why they loan to these entities to begin with, and I'm sure they get kickbacks when the debt defaults as it almost always does from market manipulation. Then someone comes in buys everything up for pennies on the dollar to enhance their monopoly.

Non-reserve debt issuance is money printing. The business either fails later when it should have failed overnight, or it becomes or gets acquired by a silent state actor that can be coerced.

This is the ugly reality. Bankers get rich off the usury, and bailouts, the market shrinks and dies. Eventually products vanish, and once you realize the game as an actual producer you stop playing into their hands.

When the entire environment is disadvantaged from the get-go, you stop participating, you withhold your intellect, and strike. Keeping the fruits of your mind for yourself, and others of like mind.

You are not imposing destruction by doing this, you are getting out of the way, because eventually the bill always comes due, and parasites kill their hosts and then die themselves.

Yep, we want to be seduced. The completely hollow moral core at the center of global capitalism is an unpleasant reality we want to avoid while we give hours of our life to our employer.

"Don't be evil"

If invading on privacy was evil they have been doing it for as long as they have been saying it. Even before the start of Android vs iPhone. There were bits and pieces around it but MSM never wanted to go and report it, at least not at the scale of what they are today.

Ultimately the facts and evidence are all there at least since 2005. We just all turned a blind eye to it.

Just writing this I cant believe it has been 20 years. I still remember the day when rumours started Google is doing their own browser and worried Firefox may not be funded by them anymore.

It took the world another 15 years before they were cynical enough to admit something is wrong.

It is incredible how much unearned good will this generated over its lifespan.

Nowadays you could not get away with it. But once the meta shifts again there may be another timespan in which it is possible to run with it.

Couldn't get away with it? It's a story as old as time. A brave knight defeats the evil dragon only to become a dragon himself.

Google or Meta couldn't pick up this line and start using it, but there's no reason that a startup with charismatic leadership couldn't fool some younguns.

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