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There's a special phenomenon that happens as startups grow large. They begin to drift away from the ground truth of their product, their users and how it's used

There's a special phenomenon that happens as startups grow large. They begin to drift away from the ground truth of their product, their users and how it's used. It's a drift away from users. And a drift towards internal politics. A lot like Rasmussen's drift towards danger, https://risk-engineering.org/concept/Rasmussen-practical-drift https://risk-engineering.org/concept/Rasmussen-practical-dri... As startups grow beyond a critical threshold, they start to attract a certain type of person who is more interested in mercenarily growing within the company / setting themselves up for future corporate rise than building a product. These people play to the company's internal court and create deeply bitter environments that leads to more mission-driven individuals leaving the company. Which is why we end up with decisions like OnlyFans hitting $1B / yr in revenue (with extreme profitability) off of porn and then deciding to ban porn, https://www.ft.com/content/5468f11b-cb98-4f72-8fb2-63b9623b7b2b https://www.ft.com/content/5468f11b-cb98-4f72-8fb2-63b9623b7... Or, Digg deciding to kill its "bury" button and doing a radical "redesign" that made Reddit worth billions. Unity's decision to update its pricing. Sonos' app "redesign" etc etc. Corporate vampires will cheerfully slaughter your golden goose. Or, in the best case, severely cripple it.

tyleo 8mo ago
I don’t think this is a phenomenon. At the best places I’ve worked, I’ve seen success correlated with actual user value. You do find climbers at certain places but I tend to think it’s a large reason they fail. Also, I don’t think your OnlyFans analogy holds up. My understanding is that their threat to ban porn was a stunt. A pretty effective one.
- tyre 8mo ago
  Do you have reading on it being a stunt? That seems like a huge gamble. You’re basically inviting competitors and pissing off your supply (content creators.) If they view you as unstable, unreliable, or adversely motivated, they will look for alternatives to at minimum diversify. It’s their livelihood.
  - tyleo 8mo ago
    I don’t know for sure but it’s been implied that it was an intentional action to garner public outrage at the banks who wanted to stop processing their transactions.
guluarte 8mo ago
that's true, guilds moved to discord because it was easier to use than teamspeak
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
canada_dry 8mo ago
In pretty much all cases, the companies in question had peaked were experiencing declining growth and attempting to do a hail-Mary... and failed miserably. Compare Digg and slash. One completely died, the other has stuck with its formula and hasn't disappeared, but has just faded into irrelevance.
marcd35 8mo ago
I think this decision is more defensive than "losing touch with their customers." The winds are shifting in other countries that are cracking down on social media use for children. Discord does not want to get caught in the shit storm of legal issues if they fail to comply. This is a proactive measure.
- Aerroon 8mo ago
  Yeah, this really seems like it's our politicians screwing us. The older I get the more harmful politicians seem to be.
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    If you're in a democracy, that's the call to pay attention and vote in helpful representatives.
    - Aerroon 8mo ago
      There are no helpful representatives is the problem. It doesn't matter who you vote for, because they're all just varying degrees of bad. There isn't a single politician I could vote for that could improve this situation. Even if there was, they would just get swept away by the ocean of people who actually believe in this "think of the children" narrative.
      - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        If that's the case, you need to grow the representatives you want. Many of the people voted into mayor or governor didn't pop up out of the ether. They were working in local boards or as comptrollers or even business owners. That's why local elections are so important, despite the dreadfully low turnout.
        Aerroon 8mo ago
        A mayor or governor can't change these things though. That's part of the problem since I'm in the EU. It's irrelevant what representatives in my country want because they're too small of a minority. But even among those representatives there's nobody that actually cares about issues like this. >That's why local elections are so important, despite the dreadfully low turnout. Local elections here are about parties, not candidates. You can give your vote to Jim, but it's counted as a vote for Jim's party instead. The party picks whomever was their #1 candidate for the locality.
jabroni_salad 8mo ago
I think this is actually a different growth problem, which is that they became so large that several countries are designing new regulations that specifically target them. I think discord is trying to spin this into a regulation-as-moat opportunity instead of dying by a thousand papercuts.

tyleo 8mo ago

I don’t think this is a phenomenon. At the best places I’ve worked, I’ve seen success correlated with actual user value. You do find climbers at certain places but I tend to think it’s a large reason they fail. Also, I don’t think your OnlyFans analogy holds up. My understanding is that their threat to ban porn was a stunt. A pretty effective one.

tyre 8mo ago
Do you have reading on it being a stunt? That seems like a huge gamble. You’re basically inviting competitors and pissing off your supply (content creators.) If they view you as unstable, unreliable, or adversely motivated, they will look for alternatives to at minimum diversify. It’s their livelihood.
- tyleo 8mo ago
  I don’t know for sure but it’s been implied that it was an intentional action to garner public outrage at the banks who wanted to stop processing their transactions.

guluarte 8mo ago

that's true, guilds moved to discord because it was easier to use than teamspeak

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

canada_dry 8mo ago

In pretty much all cases, the companies in question had peaked were experiencing declining growth and attempting to do a hail-Mary... and failed miserably. Compare Digg and slash. One completely died, the other has stuck with its formula and hasn't disappeared, but has just faded into irrelevance.

marcd35 8mo ago

I think this decision is more defensive than "losing touch with their customers." The winds are shifting in other countries that are cracking down on social media use for children. Discord does not want to get caught in the shit storm of legal issues if they fail to comply. This is a proactive measure.

Aerroon 8mo ago
Yeah, this really seems like it's our politicians screwing us. The older I get the more harmful politicians seem to be.
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  If you're in a democracy, that's the call to pay attention and vote in helpful representatives.
  - Aerroon 8mo ago
    There are no helpful representatives is the problem. It doesn't matter who you vote for, because they're all just varying degrees of bad. There isn't a single politician I could vote for that could improve this situation. Even if there was, they would just get swept away by the ocean of people who actually believe in this "think of the children" narrative.
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      If that's the case, you need to grow the representatives you want. Many of the people voted into mayor or governor didn't pop up out of the ether. They were working in local boards or as comptrollers or even business owners. That's why local elections are so important, despite the dreadfully low turnout.
      - Aerroon 8mo ago
        A mayor or governor can't change these things though. That's part of the problem since I'm in the EU. It's irrelevant what representatives in my country want because they're too small of a minority. But even among those representatives there's nobody that actually cares about issues like this. >That's why local elections are so important, despite the dreadfully low turnout. Local elections here are about parties, not candidates. You can give your vote to Jim, but it's counted as a vote for Jim's party instead. The party picks whomever was their #1 candidate for the locality.

jabroni_salad 8mo ago

I think this is actually a different growth problem, which is that they became so large that several countries are designing new regulations that specifically target them. I think discord is trying to spin this into a regulation-as-moat opportunity instead of dying by a thousand papercuts.