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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

@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/