Recent searches
Search options
Hello, I am a new startup!
I’m funded by venture capital and free to use.
Please come and make me valuable by using me. Make my numbers go up!
Once you do, I’ll have everything I need and I can do whatever I want with the time and effort you’ve put into making me successful.
Not happy? Fuck you, I don’t need you anymore (network effects FTW, amirite?)… I’m laughing all the way to the bank.
Goodbye!
…
Hello, I am a new startup…
* * *
When are we going to learn to say “no” at the start?
A startup cannot enshittify if you don’t allow it to start up.
Once it starts up, gains traction, and the network effects kick in, you lose the power to do anything about it.
The only time you can kill a venture-capital funded startup is at the very beginning.
The way you kill a startup is by not using its free services at the start.
The correct answer to a venture-capital funded startup is always “no, thank you!”
If you want to understand how startups and venture capital work, go to 26:24 on the recording of my talk “Excuse Me, Your Unicorn Keeps Shitting In My Back Yard, Can He Please Not?” from 2016:
https://ar.al/talks/#excuse-me-your-unicorn-keeps-shitting-in-my-back-yard-can-he-please-not
@aral
Very good video, sadly enough still nothing has changed.
@petpet Thanks. And yes, it’s clear that nothing is going to change unless we make viable alternatives and people start using them. Not easy to do with zero funding but some of us are trying. Statistically speaking, though, we don’t exist.
@aral
I agree, but then we also need legal certainty and law enforcement, and politicians who also understand digitalisation and its consequences, which unfortunately I only see to a very limited extent at the moment
@aral
Its a bit like with the climate crisis, such huge problems can not be solved individially
@petpet Indeed.
@petpet Yep. Institutional corruption – lobbying and revolving doors – make it nigh on impossible to regulate effectively. That, and the EU Commission’s “single market über alles” framing.
I had a go at them a few years ago but it was just a drop in the bucket: https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
@aral As mentioned in the video, the profiling that Facebook does will now also include generating LLM models, including on Threads and any instances federating with that. So the clear water which once existed between Mastodon and surveillance capitalists is becoming murkier.
@bob Oh, yeah, Mastodon gGmbH already laid out the red carpet to surveillance capitalists / people farmers. That ship has sailed.
(There wasn’t even a battle. Heck, they weren’t even hiding in a Trojan horse. They opened the gates anyway.)
@teknomunk @aral
I see your point but if we want to maintain democracy and finish the crisis we have to close that revolving door and protest for some principles:
1.) Public Money- Public code
2.) No force to use digital on user side
3.) What is illegal offline is illegal online and needs enforcement
4.) No gatekeeping at public services through companies (e.g. in case of IDs - no data to companies)
5.) No administration based on proprietary software or OS systems.
@petpet @teknomunk Yes to all of the above :)
@aral Great talk! I thoroughly agree with your take on startups, but I'm curious what is the alternative when someone comes from the working class with no capital and has an idea for an online service which has the potential to sustain them. What other structures can we use to fund some initiatives, because, speaking as someone who's been working on FOSS for the past year, donations don't cut it.
@db0 I hear you.
This is why must fund things for the common good from the commons. But we’re not. Not really. Not as we should be. (We’re in the same boat with Small Technology Foundation as we build the Small Web with zero EU funding.)
This is what I told the EU parliament a few years ago. It hasn’t made a difference as far as I can tell:
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
PS. Thank you for your kind words about the talk :)
@aral OK effectively sadly no actual solutions yet outside of the startup play :(
While criticism of the current system is important, I feel it's largely toothless if valid solutions outside it don't exist.
I wonder if something like the startup play, but incubated by non-profit orgs would work. Basically what NLNet is doing but without being as task-oriented and more of a long-term incubation until profitability. (I've already read your post about your NLNet troubles btw)
@db0 @aral “Better Than Free” from 2008 (https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/) has some non-VC ideas I’ve tried to mull over. Perhaps there’s an updated/revised inventory of such “generatives” somewhere?
@aral very interesting indeed. Will share that. 
/j Was expecting more disrespect to the CCC though, which is quite a let down. /J