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This reminds me of Reddit killing off third-party clients and Twitter doing the same. The decline wasn't immediately obvious at first, but it happened and it c

This reminds me of Reddit killing off third-party clients and Twitter doing the same. The decline wasn't immediately obvious at first, but it happened and it capped the growth trajectory of both. Twitter never grew as fast as it did during the third-party client and applications era. Reddit isn't adding meaningful, human-written content as fast as it was in that era. There's a lot more activity now, but based purely on an eye-count, it's over-run by bots (partly because the best moderation tools are gone!) and the human contributions are declining. All successful startups begin to drift away from the ground truth of their product. 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... My theory is that 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. Eventually leading to the cultivation of institutional arrogance. Externally, you can watch signs of this process unfolding. Companies start engaging in the startup / corporate equivalent of ignoring gravity. Which they can! For a while. When you're high, you have a ton of air time. You can't tell / feel the pull of gravity in free-fall. And it takes time, a very long time, but just like there ain't no such thing as free lunch; there ain't no such thing as "too big to care." It's merely, too big to care for now. The bill always comes due.

Wowfunhappy 2mo ago
It sounds to me like you're describing enshittification. As coined by Cory Doctorow: > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys (Although I'm not completely sure this maps onto Anthropic, which was never primarily targeting consumers.)
- verdverm 2mo ago
  it's always been this way with Claude/Ant though, not something that changed This is more SV modus operandi
- OutOfHere 2mo ago
  Precisely. Anthropic was never good to its consumer users.
- areoform 2mo ago
  (Although I'm not completely sure this maps onto Anthropic, which was never primarily targeting consumers.) This pisses off businesses though. I guarantee you that multiple businesses will set up workflows with different AIs for orchestration as sold to them by OpenAI and Anthropic. Cue agents.md not working, "What do you mean the thing I'm paying this much per seat for doesn't play well with the other AIs?" The consumers here are developers -- who are--> potential founders OR future purchase decision makers. It's a TERRIBLE idea to piss them off just because they're small. They're "small" right now. But quite a few of them will have long careers and they will remember. It's why so many trad corp companies give stuff away to students for free / treat the people on the come up as first tier customers. Because those are future decision makers. And the turn table turntables. A cautionary case study is Google. How many times does a founder who is considering which cloud service to use gets cautioned to never use Google Cloud? Google Cloud was a has been before it ever got out of the gate because of just how much goodwill Google blew up over the years. There's nothing, literally nothing, they can spend money on to make that go away in the short-term. And they're not willing to commit to the long-term.
chipsa 2mo ago
> My theory is that 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. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
- richardw 2mo ago
  My shorthand is builders vs extractors.
  - edoceo 2mo ago
    Companies start in Growth mode and as they get older investors demand they mature into Margin mode.
    - iamflimflam1 2mo ago
      There’s a point where you have to start paying people back the money they gave you. I’ve been in companies that have grown fast and then realised that their margins are very slim. It’s a very grim position to be in. Great turnover - where’s the profit?
monksy 2mo ago
Reddit is undergoing an even worse tragetory right now: They're a lot heavier on the censorship and sidewide ban. Subs are being astroturfed as much or worse than usual. On top of that they're trying to stop anonymous browsing by paywalling on a timer.
- ghostpepper 2mo ago
  They finally killed the `old.reddit.com` subdomain for logged-out users this week, which was the final push I needed to stop even idly browsing. I've been using the site since at least the digg exodus in 2010.
  - operatingthetan 2mo ago
    They are trying to stop scraping, I guess.
    - spaqin 2mo ago
      Scrapers won't be stopped by needing an account; in the recent discussion [0] about this, someone mentioned that there's even a JSON API you can use - by appending .json to any post! It's to drive engagement... for the advertisers. They gotta keep the valuation up after the IPO. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015533
      - operatingthetan 2mo ago
        Well ya, but they have written posts to mods explaining that their long term goal is to limit scraping.
      - dom96 2mo ago
        I exposed this JSON API in the same style as their original API at api.reddiw.com and they banned my account without warning. I explicitly included my reddit username in the user-agent so that they could reach out if they had a problem with it. Nope, straight to banning my decade old account. The company has turned evil sadly.
OkGoDoIt 2mo ago
I agree with you on this general pattern, but I don’t really see how it applies to Claude Code’s usage of claude.md specifically. I believe Claude code has been using that file since before the agents.md standard, so it’s not really a business decision to be different. There are some potential rough edges with changing over now, and the best proposed solution in the GitHub issue could be a bit complicated and error-prone from a technical or security point of view. I’m not saying I agree with the decision, I would certainly prefer if they standardized on agents.md, but I don’t really believe their lack of doing so is deliberate enshittification.
inigyou 2mo ago
This is the Iron Law of Bureaucracy
kaliqt 2mo ago
Actually, Reddit is a lot more dead than that right now. I would argue >90% of the content now is fake.
- bredren 2mo ago
  That is a big claim. I know some of it is because I have interviewed people who have described ~exploits building LLM redditors. But >90%? Can you provide something that supports something in this ballpark?
  - gpt5 2mo ago
    I don’t think it’s 90%, but also - fake content doesn’t apply just to LLM generated content. When you go the places which are clearly at the target of bots such as commercial products, geopolitical issues, and politics - the ratio becomes bad. This is also true in hacker news, but the moderation team here is good enough in burying these topics away from the front page for the most part.
thm 2mo ago
The Twitter situation was a bit different: I built the very first Android Twitter client which grew to millions of users. We later got acquired by TweetUp and I'm partly responsible for their strategy to acquire other popular clients, too. We basically owned 60%+ of the third-party market within months with the potential of 'migrating' a large portion to a new tbd Twitter competitor. Needless to say Twitter wasn't happy, and the rest is history. Never build on somebody else's turf.

Wowfunhappy 2mo ago

It sounds to me like you're describing enshittification. As coined by Cory Doctorow: > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys (Although I'm not completely sure this maps onto Anthropic, which was never primarily targeting consumers.)

verdverm 2mo ago
it's always been this way with Claude/Ant though, not something that changed This is more SV modus operandi
OutOfHere 2mo ago
Precisely. Anthropic was never good to its consumer users.
areoform 2mo ago
(Although I'm not completely sure this maps onto Anthropic, which was never primarily targeting consumers.) This pisses off businesses though. I guarantee you that multiple businesses will set up workflows with different AIs for orchestration as sold to them by OpenAI and Anthropic. Cue agents.md not working, "What do you mean the thing I'm paying this much per seat for doesn't play well with the other AIs?" The consumers here are developers -- who are--> potential founders OR future purchase decision makers. It's a TERRIBLE idea to piss them off just because they're small. They're "small" right now. But quite a few of them will have long careers and they will remember. It's why so many trad corp companies give stuff away to students for free / treat the people on the come up as first tier customers. Because those are future decision makers. And the turn table turntables. A cautionary case study is Google. How many times does a founder who is considering which cloud service to use gets cautioned to never use Google Cloud? Google Cloud was a has been before it ever got out of the gate because of just how much goodwill Google blew up over the years. There's nothing, literally nothing, they can spend money on to make that go away in the short-term. And they're not willing to commit to the long-term.

chipsa 2mo ago

> My theory is that 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. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

richardw 2mo ago
My shorthand is builders vs extractors.
- edoceo 2mo ago
  Companies start in Growth mode and as they get older investors demand they mature into Margin mode.
  - iamflimflam1 2mo ago
    There’s a point where you have to start paying people back the money they gave you. I’ve been in companies that have grown fast and then realised that their margins are very slim. It’s a very grim position to be in. Great turnover - where’s the profit?

monksy 2mo ago

Reddit is undergoing an even worse tragetory right now: They're a lot heavier on the censorship and sidewide ban. Subs are being astroturfed as much or worse than usual. On top of that they're trying to stop anonymous browsing by paywalling on a timer.

ghostpepper 2mo ago
They finally killed the `old.reddit.com` subdomain for logged-out users this week, which was the final push I needed to stop even idly browsing. I've been using the site since at least the digg exodus in 2010.
- operatingthetan 2mo ago
  They are trying to stop scraping, I guess.
  - spaqin 2mo ago
    Scrapers won't be stopped by needing an account; in the recent discussion [0] about this, someone mentioned that there's even a JSON API you can use - by appending .json to any post! It's to drive engagement... for the advertisers. They gotta keep the valuation up after the IPO. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015533
    - operatingthetan 2mo ago
      Well ya, but they have written posts to mods explaining that their long term goal is to limit scraping.
    - dom96 2mo ago
      I exposed this JSON API in the same style as their original API at api.reddiw.com and they banned my account without warning. I explicitly included my reddit username in the user-agent so that they could reach out if they had a problem with it. Nope, straight to banning my decade old account. The company has turned evil sadly.

OkGoDoIt 2mo ago

I agree with you on this general pattern, but I don’t really see how it applies to Claude Code’s usage of claude.md specifically. I believe Claude code has been using that file since before the agents.md standard, so it’s not really a business decision to be different. There are some potential rough edges with changing over now, and the best proposed solution in the GitHub issue could be a bit complicated and error-prone from a technical or security point of view. I’m not saying I agree with the decision, I would certainly prefer if they standardized on agents.md, but I don’t really believe their lack of doing so is deliberate enshittification.

inigyou 2mo ago

This is the Iron Law of Bureaucracy

kaliqt 2mo ago

Actually, Reddit is a lot more dead than that right now. I would argue >90% of the content now is fake.

bredren 2mo ago
That is a big claim. I know some of it is because I have interviewed people who have described ~exploits building LLM redditors. But >90%? Can you provide something that supports something in this ballpark?
- gpt5 2mo ago
  I don’t think it’s 90%, but also - fake content doesn’t apply just to LLM generated content. When you go the places which are clearly at the target of bots such as commercial products, geopolitical issues, and politics - the ratio becomes bad. This is also true in hacker news, but the moderation team here is good enough in burying these topics away from the front page for the most part.

thm 2mo ago

The Twitter situation was a bit different: I built the very first Android Twitter client which grew to millions of users. We later got acquired by TweetUp and I'm partly responsible for their strategy to acquire other popular clients, too. We basically owned 60%+ of the third-party market within months with the potential of 'migrating' a large portion to a new tbd Twitter competitor. Needless to say Twitter wasn't happy, and the rest is history. Never build on somebody else's turf.