No Stupid Questions

Interest rates went from almost zero to real rates. If you're sitting on a pile of money you can invest it in internet companies with crazy valuations and no profit or near zero-risk Treasury Bills and interest-bearing certificates.

Many investors know they are betting on the greater fool instead of any real value in these internet companies. There are now fewer greater fools.

If your business model was to give out free stuff paid for by piles of investor money, you suddenly had to find cash to keep the lights on.

Elon has to pay $1B in interest every year for Twitter. That's still a lot of money.

Elon being a cartoon villian gave other people cover to do the same. You're less likely to be singled out by the media.Your taking candy from a baby is just part of the trend or the run of bad luck falling on those poor billionaires.

I've worked in the tech sector for a LONG time and have met and worked with some of the most shockingly brilliant and insightful people in my life….and many that are far less so.

As with any population.

Bad decisions, lack of strategy or plain old monetization motivated by greed or a desire to cash out before the cash runs out are sadly commonplace. The method taken says everything about the quality (or lack thereof) of leadership.

Some real stinkers lately.

We have reached the stage where the snakes have grown large enough that they must prey on their own tails, for there is nothing left to eat.

enshittification

Give it a Google.

Because the days of just shoveling money into various silicon valley projects in the hope that maybe they'll turn a profit eventually is over. Big investment firms now want an actual return from their investment, and because of that, tech companies are desperately trying whatever they can to turn a profit from these massive services that are also very expensive to run. That usually comes in the form of changes that makes things harder for the users, but is significantly more profitable for the companies that run them.

It's more like you now notice this because it have visible effects, but it's been going on for years. Restricting content, abusive rules and stupid changes have been the norm, all toward a centrally controlled experience geared toward generating internal profits on the back of users and content creators.

It's also why some prominent content creator started their own platforms, too.

It's just that now it reaches "intolerable" level for most end-users.

They were like this before also, but you're right: now they're much more overt and like they're pushed or hurried by something... And that something is the prospect of recession. They're not publicly announcing it, but their liquid assets are running low and they hit the ceiling for growth. YouTube is trying to maximize their exposure and revenue for ads by cracking down on adblockers; Twitter and Musk doing the dumbest decision just for money, the last one for the rate limitation being connected with not paying the bills to Google Cloud; Reddit introducing 3rd party API usage fees for, maybe, the same reason... They ran out of "smart" and covert solutions to milk their product, partners and clients of money and they would rather go down in greed. And they won't even be directly responsible due to those golden parachutes

Everyone wants a piece of the AI pie

When billionaire fascists start being held to account, they lash out.

Combination of VC money drying up and fear of LLM sucking up their future revenue streams. I think the former is the the logical driver and the latter is the secret fear.

While these changes will eventually happen, as all of these companies are meant to make a profit from the start. The reason they're all happening now is because of the coming recession, or at least the believe that it will come.

Companies expect infinite profit growth

Oh you thought the end goal was to make a good website. Hahaha.

Cheap/free money has dried up.

There are a lot of reasons for this general trend, but let me add my two cents to make a case for the sudden influx of user-opposed changes:

I don't have a source for this, but I remember that Linus spoke about this on the LTT WAN-Show. Basically, abunch of big silicon valley investors are pulling out of all of the big platforms, therefore leaving them with a huge hole in their profitability. This means, that right now a lot of them are scrambling to scrape together more money over time, so all of those platforms are sustainable.

Obviously this has to observed in conjunction with all of those are trends that are already mentioned by other comments, but this gives more basis as to why now, and why to this extent.

If someone else knows what I'm talking about please add quotes and sources because I don't like the good old 'dude trust me' guarantee one bit.

It's the Romulans, they're holding back human progress.

Like the downfall of everything in our society, greed.

YouTube can try lol. But they've never cared about users. They're just all at about the same point where they have to stop pretending in order to feed that capitalism machine (or try to at least). It looks like hostility, but it's just them finally being honest.

Wouldnt even be surprised if Musk wanted to convince huffman to do this to split the outrage.

LIke how all the tech companies did layoffs at the same time this year

Because usually the greed, money and power corrupts, no matter how good you are in the beginning.

Money is tighter since the inflation affects VC and stupid money flowing in. Stock prices are not going up, people have no money to play with (see the death of NFTs at the same time, the definition of a stupid investment).

They forget the users are their base, not their employees, or are bought by idiot billionaires who think they can turn the platform I to another money printer (or tax write-off)

Spez in particular saw Twitter and thought that would be a great idea.

I don't think he understands he's about to be CEO of Tumblr 2.0

Because users are not the customer but the product for others. And with network effects meaning there's less competition (ie no place to go to), then they no longer have to attempt to appease the product and can focus on appeasing customers.