Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Aral's posts Post Back to profile
Top-level
Aral Balkan

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:

ar.al/talks/#excuse-me-your-un

#startups #ventureCapital #VC #SiliconValley #BigTech #enshittification #PeopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #surveillanceCapitalism #video

10 May at 8:57 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
9 comments
petpet

@aral
Very good video, sadly enough still nothing has changed.

10 May at 9:34 | Open on social.tchncs.de
Aral Balkan

@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.

10 May at 9:40 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
petpet

@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

10 May at 9:51 | Open on social.tchncs.de
petpet

@aral
Its a bit like with the climate crisis, such huge problems can not be solved individially

10 May at 9:52 | Open on social.tchncs.de
Aral Balkan

@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: ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of

10 May at 10:04 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
db0

@aral Great talk! I thoroughly agree with your take on startups, but I'm curious what is the alternative when someone comes from the working class with no capital and has an idea for an online service which has the potential to sustain them. What other structures can we use to fund some initiatives, because, speaking as someone who's been working on FOSS for the past year, donations don't cut it.

10 May at 9:42 | Open on hachyderm.io
Aral Balkan

@db0 I hear you.

This is why must fund things for the common good from the commons. But we’re not. Not really. Not as we should be. (We’re in the same boat with Small Technology Foundation as we build the Small Web with zero EU funding.)

This is what I told the EU parliament a few years ago. It hasn’t made a difference as far as I can tell:

ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of

PS. Thank you for your kind words about the talk :)

10 May at 9:52 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
db0

@aral OK effectively sadly no actual solutions yet outside of the startup play :(

While criticism of the current system is important, I feel it's largely toothless if valid solutions outside it don't exist.

I wonder if something like the startup play, but incubated by non-profit orgs would work. Basically what NLNet is doing but without being as task-oriented and more of a long-term incubation until profitability. (I've already read your post about your NLNet troubles btw)

10 May at 10:06 | Open on hachyderm.io
Go Up