Microsoft Has "Made the Customer the Product."
They say Microsoft is "worth" trillions of dollars, but it only has about 0.017 trillion dollars in the bank and about six times that amount in debt (to be very clear, "has debt" and "in debt" is the same thing, except to people who love lying to themselves in order to feel better). We made an animation about this the other day; it helps illustrate the absurdity of "market caps" or "valuations" in Wall Street, where a company that only every loses billions of dollars says it wants 7 trillion dollars. What kind of drug is Scam Altman on? His own sister is suing him for sexual abuse while the lousy press treats him like the smartest person on the whole planet.
Anyway, the above comment, which is new, helps capture how people feel; it's very likely this comment was made by a Microsoft employee. █
Bluesky sucks less than old Twitter did, yes. It has nice features, like subscribable community-maintained block lists. It’s still a business, though. They are not making money yet. Their plans to do so appear remote. Which means that somehow, I’m the product.I’ve said this so often it’s turning into a Lucas Cliche, but: the Internet’s business model is betrayal. Every mature social media platform has betrayed us. Every big search engine has betrayed us. (Search Google for “the strike is the compromise”. Then ask yourself why they’d be hiding some of the most contentious bits of labor history. No, I’m not afraid that the Goog will deprioritize me. They already have. Google once sent me hundreds of blog each day. In the middle of the year, that fell off a cliff.)
Bluesky might be a public benefit corporation, but that only means they are allowed to consider public benefit as well as profits.
Is it possible that Bluesky will stand by their declared morals and not eventually sell us out? Yes. But I’ve watched Internet companies rise and fall for decades. I haven’t seen any company remain benign, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. I don’t want to invest ten years in a third party platform only to have it do a rug pull at the end of my career.
Until it can prove otherwise Bluesky is just another company, sowing another crop of victims.