Aral Balkan
Hello, I am new startup!
I’m funded by venture capital and free to use.
Please come and make me valuable by using me. Make my numbers go up!
Once you do, I’ll have everything I need and I can do whatever I want with the time and effort you’ve put into making me successful.
Not happy? Fuck you, I don’t need you anymore (network effects FTW, amirite?)… I’m laughing all the way to the bank.
Goodbye!
…
Hello, I am a new startup…
* * *
When are we going to learn to say “no” at the start?
Aral Balkan
A startup cannot enshittify if you don’t allow it to start up.
Once it starts up, gains traction, and the network effects kick in, you lose the power to do anything about it.
The only time you can kill a venture-capital funded startup is at the very beginning.
The way you kill a startup is by not using its free services at the start.
The correct answer to a venture-capital funded startup is always “no, thank you!”
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:
https://ar.al/talks/#excuse-me-your-unicorn-keeps-shitting-in-my-back-yard-can-he-please-not
#startups #ventureCapital #VC #SiliconValley #BigTech #enshittification #PeopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #surveillanceCapitalism #video
Aral Balkan
@imsnif Having made and maintained a tracker blocker for quite a few years, it’s a losing game.
The surveillance capitalists control the browsers. You can only be as effective in policing them as they allow you to be (see what’s happening with Chrome, etc.)
And it doesn’t even have to be free for this to apply. Venture-capital-funded is the core issue. Because with VC you’ve already sold your company,you’re just waiting for the sale to mature (the exit) – which it will do if you’re successful.
Aram 🌈♾️
@aral This might be a bit of a weird take on this, but I think the most concrete thing most of us can do against this is use and encourage the use of ad-blockers.
We can't compete at scale with this sort of money. Free services will always trump donation-based or paid services, because that's what we're used to as consumers.
We *can* however try to make this industry totally not worth it for VCs to invest in. And this is where ad/tracking blockers at a massive scale come in.
Aral Balkan
@imsnif It’s not just the ads; it’s the tracking. Sure the ads are the visible symptom. Many ad blockers (e.g., adblock plus) are actually part of the advertising industry and they unblock folks like Google for money (that’s their business model – see “acceptable ads”). And they usually don’t block trackers, opting for a cosmetic approach. (Assuming you use uBlock Origin, which is good.)
These folks don’t limit themselves to tracking you on the web either. They buy data from brokers, etc.
Aram 🌈♾️
@aral I've been told this - and I totally believe your superior experience - but honestly, I use firefox (and used Netscape before that) and have not seen an ad in twenty years. So I'm not sure what I'm doing differently.
Aral Balkan
@Walrus @imsnif You’re up against trillion-dollar budgets. The best approaches, in my opinion are:
1. Regulate them (hard, because institutional corruption – revolving doors, lobbying, etc.)
2. Create – decentralised, free and open, etc. – alternatives (see Small Tech: https://small-tech.org/about/#small-technology and Small Web: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/)
Walrus 🏴
Is it possible to poison them with fake data, instead?
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 trying. Statistically speaking, though, we don’t exist.
petpet
@aral
Very good video, sadly enough still nothing has changed.
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:
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
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.
Aral Balkan
@petpet Indeed.
petpet
@aral
Its a bit like with the climate crisis, such huge problems can not be solved individially
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
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: https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
bigTanuki
@aral there is no free tier in corporate solutions, there is only bait.
Aral Balkan
@petpet @teknomunk Yes to all of the above :)
petpet
@teknomunk @aral
I see your point but if we want to maintain democracy and finish the crisis we have to close that revolving door and protest for some principles:
1.) Public Money- Public code
2.) No force to use digital on user side
3.) What is illegal offline is illegal online and needs enforcement
4.) No gatekeeping at public services through companies (e.g. in case of IDs - no data to companies)
5.) No administration based on proprietary software or OS systems.
teknomunk
Aral Balkan
@hi_mayank Thank you. I can only hope they make a difference. Doesn’t always feel like it.
💕
Mayank
@aral this talk is excellent! you really have a way of telling an engaging story
Aral Balkan
@airwhale That’s insulting to vultures :)
Tormod Halvorsen
Venture capital? More like Vulture capital in most cases…
Widdershins Smith 🐘
I read that thinking YOU were a startup... 🤣
Aral Balkan
@juglugs *shudders* :)
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