Submitted 1 year ago by fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
I find it slightly sad that when our leaders talk of Technology and Innovation - they often mean these ‘tech’ companies that essentially work out how to better sell advertising and occasionally provide a useful service alongside this.
Where is the Bell Labs? The Skunk Works?
We have incredible problems facing us such as Climate Change and decarbonisation seems like it will be a very difficult challenge. And yet we focus on banal “innovation” in frivolous things.
Have they ever really had ideas in the first place? Content created by the users is the main reason why anybody goes to these sites, not because we’re wowed by their brilliant ideas. r/place is apparently the peak of Reddit’s fresh ideas and people are just using that to shit on Reddit’s CEO, but again, r/place is nothing without an army of people contributing (or writing up bots that contribute). For the most part, people tend to hate whatever ideas that Social Media companies come up with outside of the core functions (seeing other people’s content), look at how long old.reddit has hung around for because people absolutely could not stand Reddit’s ideas. Every “idea” that Social Media companies come up with are usually weirdly stupid and have some sort of ulterior motive behind it (almost always profit/cost-reductions).
tl;dr Social Media companies aren’t out of ideas, they just never had them in the first place.
Paywalled :/
Meanwhile Apple: Introducing the revolutionary new iSpoon, complete with a 4K OLDED touch screen and a built-in Siri that tells you how to chow your cereal properly. Starting at the low price of $1600 $1099.99.
But of course, don’t forget to buy the iBowl, iPlate, and iNapkin as well, because who needs an ordinary cutlery set when you can have everything in true Apple fashion.
(Disclaimer ⚠️: The iSpoon can only be used with the iBowl.)
Didn’t read, had to laugh. Its funny that they use one of the most used symbols for copy paste to criticise the lack of fresh ideas.
ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Social media has been out of ideas since we got video chat. The fact is people want a free place on the internet to share interests with other people and communicate with them. Every company tries to figure out how to monetize it.
So of course they’re out of ideas, they never had them in the first place. Capitalism cannot drive progress
nivenkos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In theory it’s easy to monetise - allow some targeted ads to communities and/or occasional relevant boosted posts, or paid awards like Reddit, etc.
The issue is greed / growth. They always need more and more - so you end up with more irrelevant ads, political ads, more boosted posts than natural ones, etc. - most companies aren’t happy to just do one thing well with a skeleton crew maintaining it and keeping costs low - they need constant growth.
Just look at Reddit and Twitter for example.