Idk if this is the right community for this conversation, but it’s been on my mind and I want to share it with someone.

In the 00’s every new thing we heard about the internet was exciting. There were new protocols, new ways to communicate, new ways to share files, new ways to find each other. Every time we heard anything new about the internet, it was always progress.

That lasted into the early teens and then things started changing. Things started stagnating. Now we’re well into the phase where every new piece of news we hear is negative. New legislations, new privacy intrusions, new restrictions, new technologies to lock content away and keep us from sharing, or seeing the content we were looking for. New ways to force ads.

At one point the Internet was my most favorite thing in the world. Now I don’t know if I even like it anymore. I certainly don’t look forward to hearing news about it. It’s sad, man. We’ve lost a lot. The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

We’re at the end of an era, and unlike the last 20 years of progress, I don’t think most of us will like what the next era brings.

  • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Think like Bill Gates: use monopoly power to drive all your competitors out of business then write your own antitrust settlement where you pinkie swear to be a good boy for five whole years.

    • trailing9
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      1 year ago

      The key part is that Bill Gates made the conscious decision to leave profits on the table for others. I haven’t heard that advice from anybody else.

      That said, there are many more evil things like breaking the platform promise and taking over app categories. But there is no need to copy those ideas.

      • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Bruh you just told people to think like a billionaire pedophile eugenics guy and you really need to address that before we talk about anything else.

        • trailing9
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          1 year ago

          Changed. Better?

          I forgot the pedophile allegations and haven’t heard about the eugenics. The critique is correct and that background information makes me feel bad for the phrasing.

          The phrasing was meant for the billionaire part, though. When a person is all about making money and that person stresses how important it is not to be greedy when building a platform, then that’s something to remember.

            • trailing9
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              1 year ago

              Not my favorite anything.

              About that money on the table, that’s for building a platform. A vaccine is no platform. That’s why he took it.

              It shows how calculating he is. It also shows how few compassion is needed to build a platform.

              To add another hustle platitude: imagine what a person with compassion could build.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                The entire point of this thread was someone dreading the kind of hustlegrindy monetize-everything bullshit that you came here to heap onto it.

                A vaccine is no platform. That’s why he took it.

                Skullduggery from your favorite pedophile billionaire is acceptable to you as long as it is skullduggery that plays out according to excerpts from your sacred book of profit.

                It also shows how few compassion is needed to build a platform.

                What compassion? Or is that the point: your favorite billionaire pedophile saint of profit didn’t need it to make you fawn over him and his sacred ways?

                To add another hustle platitude: imagine what a person with compassion could build.

                A person with compassion and means would demolish the entire corporate police surveillance state that your favorite pedophile billionaires have forced upon the rest of the world.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        there are many more evil things like breaking the platform promise and taking over app categories

        That’s so very much more evil than anything that happened at Little St. James during Bill Gates’ return visits, huh? epstein maxwell libertarian-alert

      • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The idea that Bill Gates left money on the table for others with Microsoft isn’t just wrong, it’s so exactly the opposite of reality that it boggles the mind. Did he leave money on the table for other DOSes with windows 95? For other office suites with MSOffice? For Netscape with bundled IE?

        Where did you get such a comprehensively false idea from?

        • trailing9
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          1 year ago

          I read it in an interview years ago.

          The office suits and the browsers are indeed among the apps that were taken over. The money was made by all the other commercial apps, and games.

          I should say that I don’t support that abuse of power.