I think my most compact and simplified view on all this is that tech ventures spent about a decade between 2011-2021 willfully bleeding money in order to assert themselves as Good Guy:tm: science visionaries who wanted to revolutionize day-to-day life with technology. They were rolling out reliable, easy, order-from-your-phone Uber rides that were cheaper than scammy taxis. They gave you Twitter as a public square where everyone could be heard, not just the elite. They gave you Netflix over clunky, corrupt cable packages. Google had the "don't be evil" motto (which is a hilarious thing to do away with, like, well we're evil now sorry :( )
Then for the last 5 years (huge interest rate hikes, tech stock drop-off scare in 2022, US regime change in 2025, blah blah blah) they snapped the trap and decided to activate the money machine, which is rampant enshittification and bleeding everyone dry with higher baseline costs and forced subscription costs and forcibly app-ifying every single thing (needs a login needs a credit card needs an id nees a ) and backing pretty far away from the "your good relatable buddy" tech CEO image. Like it's been the world's most blatant and annoying pig-butchering scheme.
But, they're also rolling out AI like we're still in that 2011-2021 era of "we're your buddies revolutionizing your life with wow-worthy technology." They're shoving AI under our noses going "remember when you LOVED new technology? you love this, right? you love this? you want this? you want this?" and they're not getting why so many people are bristling and do not trust a single word out of their mouths.
