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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 22:51:57 JST Aral Balkan

   Oh ffs, why do I even look into these things? I think I’m being harsh and then it’s always worse than I thought:

   FairPhone has taken venture capital.

   https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Crowd-Notification.pdf

   They’ve been invested in by, among others, Invest-NL (currently three exits, all IPOs¹) and Quadia (also three exits, all acquisitions²).

   I would just like it if for once – fucking once – it wasn’t just about making money.

   *sigh*

   ¹ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invest-nl/recent_investments
   ² https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/quadia/recent_investments

   #VentureCapital #VC #FairPhone

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:05:01 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Cogito ergo mecagoendios

     @elrohir I don’t know, I haven’t been following that closely.

     I’m just rather disappointed. But then again, what else is new? :)

   • Cogito ergo mecagoendios (elrohir@mastodon.gal)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:05:02 JST Cogito ergo mecagoendios

     in reply to

     @aral Didn't they also recently descalate their mission, from "made with fair trade materials" to "we'll do a best effort to source fair trade materials if possible", IIRC?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:06:59 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Steven Saus [he/him]

     @StevenSaus No worries, it’s a feeling I’ve become accustomed to over the last decade.

   • Steven Saus [he/him] (stevensaus@faithcollapsing.com)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:07:00 JST Steven Saus [he/him]

     in reply to

     @aral Ooof, that came across right as my reply posted. Sorry to dump on you there while you were being disappointed.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:11:28 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • CaveDave

     @engravecavedave Not how they presented themselves to me at least. I (naïvely, because I’m an idiot) believed they were about the social mission first. Even invited them to speak at the Ind.ie Tech Summit and spent time with them in Amsterdam.

     I’m just disappointed is all. Don’t worry, it’s a feeling I’m intimately familiar with by now.

   • CaveDave (engravecavedave@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:11:29 JST CaveDave

     in reply to

     @aral I mean, as much as I'm not a pro-capitalist tech bro. I don't understand why this is surprising. Weren't they always a for-profit company?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:33:02 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • jberg

     @jberg Tell me about it :)

     https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/

   • jberg (jberg@toot.community)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:33:03 JST jberg

     in reply to

     @aral if we want it to be about something else than profits, then some systemic changes are going to be necessary.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:40:35 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Christian Mutig 👻🚫
     • CaveDave

     @Ductos They’re a Dutch company.

     @engravecavedave

   • Christian Mutig 👻🚫 (ductos@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 23:40:36 JST Christian Mutig 👻🚫

     in reply to

     • CaveDave

     @aral @engravecavedave A Chinese company being "about the social mission first"? Come on, man.

   • Jeffrey P Burdick (burdickjp@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Aug-2023 00:12:34 JST Jeffrey P Burdick

     in reply to

     @aral
     Invest-NL and Quadia are both impact investors

     https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_investing

     Again, not perfect, but at least working toward ideals pragmatically.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 31-Aug-2023 00:12:34 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jeffrey P Burdick

     @burdickjp Is Nanosys in the United States also working towards ideals? Or Blekmann or Econocom? Because they bought three of the companies Quadia invested in. (Every company those venture capitalists invest in has to be sold – exit – either to the public via an IPO or to any random corporation). So Google buying FairPhone, for example, would be a successful exit as far as those “impact investors” are concerned.

     https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/quadia/recent_investments

   • Codhisattva (codhisattva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Aug-2023 00:38:05 JST Codhisattva

     in reply to

     @aral the IBM PC may provide a model for how to do it with VC and without greed.

     Create an open specification for a cell phone that uses commodity components and can be assembled by hand. V1 might be the size of a book but it would be a start.

     Might be impossible given some of the complexity in cell phones, so maybe a WiFi only tablet is a better way to begin.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 31-Aug-2023 00:38:05 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Codhisattva

     @Codhisattva Oh I don’t think IBM is anyone’s role model. I mean, putting the small matter of helping Hitler carry out the Holocaust aside (oops), we’re talking about a corporation that worked with Duterte and wrote a fawning open love letter to Donald Trump when he got elected.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rhzge9r6k4

   • Codhisattva (codhisattva@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Aug-2023 01:15:37 JST Codhisattva

     in reply to

     @aral sure I understand all that. What I am referencing is the 12 person team that gave the world a specification that lead to the PC revolution in the 70s. The PC specification was public domain and defined the standard that would dominate computing for decades.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 31-Aug-2023 01:15:37 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Codhisattva

     @Codhisattva Yeah, but they didn’t even do that from the goodness of their hearts. They just wanted to unseat Apple who had beaten them to the punch (and they succeeded; at least for a while). Google used the same strategy with Android. And, once it was successful started doing what these companies do: started closing off Android by moving new feature development into the proprietary Google Play Services.

     I guess my point is we need fundamental change in funding, success criteria & structures.