Take away:
Every single tech company eventually becomes an ad-company and/or a data company. Whether it’s “humble” beginnings are hardware or software…
They’ve just not envisioned any other way to monetize. As “smart” and “innovative” as they supposedly are…
We are now, and shall be for the foreseeable future, The Product. With little to no control how data about ourselves is consumed/used/monetized.
🙄 🤡 🖕
I would suggest redirecting slightly. Every single publicly traded tech company eventually fully enshittifies into predatory ad/data revenue generation due to the fundamental requirement that they not only generate profit, but that they consistently generate growth.
I could create an amazing app, sell it for $5, and if 5 million people download it and I don’t sell out or incorporate and go public, I could just cruise on it and retire happily. There’s no intrinsic pressure to switch profit models because I don’t owe anybody shit.
Yes. But not (just) that they haven’t envisioned other monetization - even if other cash is flowing in, they’ll eventually put ads and data brokerage into their business model on top of that.
And why not? Consumers have repeatedly, time and time again, shown tolerance for it.
:(
This bullshit is why I’m never buying a smart TV, and if I can’t find a dumb one I’ll just attach a Nvidia shield or Raspberry Pi streaming box and just watch my Plex content on it. The days of paying to watch commercials should be long over
Android TV at least you can do simple custom launchers. I’m still hoping a more normal Linux becomes popular for TV. Hoping maybe SteamOS will be the pathway for that
