RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@jpl99/116701763295155738
If you can't decouple from big tech, you will pay them a monthly rent.
AI has brought the rent-seeking model from enterprise and SaaS customers to every single individual user of big tech software.
And rents only ever go up.
When big tech commits hundreds of billions to capex for data centers, the only way to satisfy wall street margins is to squeeze the captive tenant.
GoDaddy Is Not a Service Provider — It’s an Internet Toll Booth
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Hiawatha, Iowa, USA
Published June 4, 2026
GoDaddy Controls Access, Not Outcomes
GoDaddy is routinely described as a “service provider.” That description is false — and the distinction matters.
GoDaddy does not primarily provide services. It controls access.
At the core of its business is domain registration: an administrative choke point embedded into the basic architecture of the internet. Domains are not optional. They are not a premium feature. They are the address system. If you want to exist online in any meaningful way, you must pass through a registrar. GoDaddy positioned itself early at that gate and never left.
This is not innovation. It is rent collection.
The Toll-Booth Model of the Modern Internet
Once positioned at the choke point, GoDaddy layered revenue extraction on top of dependency — hosting, email, SSL certificates, “website builders,” SEO packages, security add-ons.
None of these offerings are inherently fraudulent. What matters is how they are framed and sold: not as tools with measurable outcomes, but as implied necessities justified by fear and confusion.
The pitch is simple: if something breaks, you will be blamed.
The solution is always another subscription.
This is toll-booth logic. You do not pay because value is created. You pay because passage is required.
Scale Without Accountability
The early internet rewarded first movers not with accountability, but with insulation. GoDaddy learned this lesson quickly.
Scale did not produce excellence. It produced inertia.
Once millions of domains sit inside a single system, failure becomes survivable. Customers may suffer, but they rarely leave. Migration is complex. Fear is effective. Confusion is profitable.
In this environment, performance stops mattering. Control does not.
Monetizing Dependence, Not Success
GoDaddy’s public identity — cheerful branding, small-business language, “we help you succeed” rhetoric — exists to obscure a more basic reality: the company monetizes dependence, not outcomes.
Most customers will never generate meaningful revenue from their websites. That is not a side effect. It is built into the funnel. Hope scales better than success stories, and disappointment does not disrupt recurring billing.
Calling this a service relationship misleads both customers and regulators. Services are evaluated by performance. Toll booths are evaluated by traffic volume. GoDaddy optimizes for the latter.
Why Complaints Rarely Change Anything
This distinction explains why complaints rarely produce reform.
When failure occurs inside a service model, it is a defect.
When failure occurs inside a toll model, it is noise.
The system is functioning exactly as designed: extracting recurring payment from locked-in users while externalizing frustration, confusion, and risk.
The modern internet did not become expensive because it became sophisticated. It became expensive because intermediaries learned exactly where to stand — and once embedded, they could charge for standing still.
GoDaddy is not broken.
It is functioning precisely as an internet toll booth should.
That is the problem.
For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com
References (APA)
Kende, M. (2017). Internet governance, intermediaries, and the role of gatekeepers. Internet Society.
Khan, L. M. (2017). Amazon’s antitrust paradox. Yale Law Journal, 126(3), 710–805.
Varian, H. R., Shapiro, C., & Carl, S. (1999). Information rules: A strategic guide to the network economy. Harvard Business School Press.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs.
#digitalEconomy #domainRegistrars #GoDaddy #internetInfrastructure #platformCapitalism #rentSeeking #techMonopolies #webHosting #WPSNews
@EndlessMason @iamada yes but also:
Still, the problem is capitalism!
#ManagementCulture #capitalism #MarketDominance #RentSeeking #Enshittification #Greedflation #greed
L’économie de guerre permanente : État, armée, industrie et syndicats
Thomas K. Duncan et Christopher J. Coyne montrent comment la Grande Dépression et la Seconde Guerre mondiale ont fait naître une économie de guerre durable, fondée sur l’alliance entre armée, industrie et syndicats. Une lecture utile pour penser #PermanentWarEconomy, #MilitaryKeynesianism et #RentSeeking. L’article de Thomas K. Duncan et Christopher J. Coyne propose une thèse nette : l’économie de…
And for those that have time to watch the details last nights ABC's #4corners program has the detail and is worth the watch:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/the-bhp-files/106720178
Sadly, it's just stating the obvious for most people that have an interest in #renewables - but can't be shared widely enough for the people that have their News Limited ;-)
Should be criminal negligence by now, but we all know how the gas&mining lobby pays both sides of politics
The screeching from the usual reactionaries and the boomer fear merchants has already started even though the budget has not even been announced:
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/budget-2026-labor-pitting-australians-against-australians-through-divisive-changes-to-negative-gearing-cgt-expert-warns/news-story/01c5f974228277801b8d46fcf06d4c42
Of course, the same crowd that also opposes any fair revenue from the gas industry ripping off the country.
Just remember, today is as good as any to start to finally start the #BoycottMurdoch you've been planning.
jpl99
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