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Cory Doctorow

The thing is, social media's business model is a giant rug-pull. They're not even bothering to hide their playbook anymore. For social media, the game is to get media companies to become reliant on third parties to reach their audiences. Once that reliance is established, the companies turn down - or even halt - the ability of those media companies to reach their audience altogether. Then, they *charge the media companies to reach their audiences*:

eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save

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24 February at 17:16 | Open on mamot.fr
16 comments | Expand all CWs
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Now, this wasn't always *quite* so obvious. Back when Vice was falling for Facebook's "pivot to video," it wasn't *completely* obvious that the long con was to take your audience hostage and ransom them back to you. But *deliberately* organizing your business to be reliant on social media barons *today*? It's like trusting your money to Sam Bankman-Fried...in 2024.
encourage

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24 February at 17:16 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

If there was ever a moment when the obvious, catastrophic, imminent risk of trusting Big Tech intermediaries to sit between you and your customers or audience, it was now. This is *not* the moment to be "social first." This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that *you* control:

pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now

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24 February at 17:16 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

encourage
Predicting that a social media platform will rug the media companies that depend on it today doesn't take a Sun Tzu - as cunning strategies go, the hamfisted tactics of FB, Twitter and Tiktok make gambits like "Lucy and the football" look like *von Clausewitz*.

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24 February at 17:17 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The most bonkers part of this strategy is that it's coming from private equity bosses, who laud themselves as the great strategists of the 21st century, whose claim on so much of our global capital and resources is derived from their brilliant insight, which allows them to buy "distressed assets" like Vice, "restructure" them to find "efficiencies" and sell them on.

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24 February at 17:17 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The reality is that PE goons - like other financiers - are basically herding animals. *Everyone's* hit on the tactic of buying up beloved media companies - from the 150-year-old *Popular Science* to modern publications like CNet - and then filling them with spammy garbage in the hopes that Google will fail to notice and continue to award them pride-of-place on search results pages:

pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-

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24 February at 17:17 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The fact that these billionaire brain-geniuses can't figure out how to "turn around" a site whose workers a) produce brilliant, popular, successful work; and b) depart to found successful firms that commercialize that work tells you everything about their ability to spot "a good business opportunity."

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24 February at 17:17 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

PE - like other mafiosi - only have one business-plan, the "bust out," where you invade a business that produces useful things, force them to pay your chosen suppliers sky-high fees for things they don't need, extract massive fees for your "management" and then walk away from the collapse:

pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plu

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24 February at 17:17 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

I'm on tour with my new novel *The Bezzle*! Catch me TONIGHT in LA with @adamconover at Vroman's, then on MONDAY in SEATTLE with Neal Stephenson (Feb 26, Third Place Books). After that, it's Portland, Phoenix, Tucson, Anaheim and more!

pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/nar

eof/
24 February at 17:17 | Open on mamot.fr
Nicole Parsons replied to Cory

@pluralistic

Parasites infect both healthy and unhealthy hosts.

They alter their host organisms to suit the parasite.

snexplores.org/article/parasit

In another example, vampire bats have similar strategies as hedge fund managers, of "feed & fly off".
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampir

Although in the case of Chris Hohn, it's more "feed & eff off".

24 February at 19:11 | Open on mstdn.social
Nicole Parsons replied to Cory

@pluralistic

Modern hedge fund managers are like chop shops.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chop_s

24 February at 19:05 | Open on mstdn.social
Rabidchaos replied to Cory

@pluralistic Drink!
... Wait, does that count for the von Clausewitz drinking game?

25 February at 0:05 | Open on hachyderm.io
hnapel replied to Cory
zeruch replied to Cory

@pluralistic I'm definitely moving in this direction. I didn't think I'd return to WP-style blogging as a format, but until I can investigate other options, it's familiar and comfortable and under my control.

26 February at 9:36 | Open on mastodon.social
Jonathan Mesiano-Crookston replied to Cory

@pluralistic

Oh shit is Sam not trustworthy?

I gotta make a phone call, stat.

24 February at 18:15 | Open on mastodon.social
Nicole Parsons replied to Cory

@pluralistic

So much of these acts reminds you of a protection racket.

An unwanted third party inserts themselves into the existence & survival of your business, and you're providing payola to mobsters in perpetuity.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protec

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket

24 February at 19:02 | Open on mstdn.social
CassandraVert replied to Nicole

@Npars01 @pluralistic
Doncha know that's the business model of the 21st century. Insert yourself into an ongoing business relationship and take a middleman fee. Control the relationship if you can.
Making and selling things is so 20th century.

25 February at 6:24 | Open on indieweb.social
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