Mike Masnick ✅Following on @pluralistic's brilliant article about the "enshittification" process of companies, I added in something that I thought was missing from Cory's analysis: the role of "The Friedman Doctrine" that the only thing companies should work for are maximizing profits for shareholders... and highlighting how that leaves out not just other stakeholders, but the important variable of "over what time frame."
Nick Bax@mmasnick I’m curious how you square Zuckerberg and Meta into that, given that Zuckerberg has a majority of the voting stock and he doesn’t have to follow the Friedman Doctrine.
It might just be that he does, without having to do so?
It’s also interesting how Twitter keeps chugging along with less than half the staff. I wonder if meta could do that, and just make more money? Especially if they chose to outsource more development to outside developers connecting in apps. (In an honest way.)
microtherion@mmasnick @nickbax I believe at Alphabet, the founders also retain a majority of the voting stock. And with Twitter, the public ownership definitely had a major role in the decision to sell the company, but it would be hard to argue that things have not worsened significantly since the company went private.
I had the same concern when I read the article — “Wall Street” may play a smaller role here than it’s credited for.